OR LIE CRAVEN COWARDS IN OUR GRAVES:

Manifesto for a Capitalist Revolution (Stephen Schwartz, 03/16/2004, Tech Central Station)

How can anyone believe that Islamic countries will forever elude the global impetus that has swept through such formerly impoverished nations as South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia (the latter, by the away, about as Muslim as a country can get)? The information revolution and such items as satellite communications have contributed enormously to the advance of financial and political accountability. A little more than a century ago Friedrich Engels, the confrere of Karl Marx, wrote of the "invading socialist society," referring to an inevitable and observable transformation of capitalism from within, by which the goals of the old socialism -- greater prosperity and equality of access to it, and a general sense of common purpose throughout society, would be realized. [...]

A Marxist colleague of mine has observed, somewhat sourly, that rather than a decline in the rate of capitalist development, we are now in a period of accelerated capitalist development. Let me state the case rather more directly: the past century and a half have seen a speedup in the rate at which countries become stable, prosperous, democracies. It took 150 years for Spain, once the richest country in Europe thanks to the gold and silver of the New World, to become what it is today, and the true "new Spain" did not emerge, bright and beautiful, until the death of Franco in 1975. Germany required 75 years, from 1880 to 1955, and the presence of American troops; Japan needed 60, from 1900 to 1960, also with direct American help. But for South Korea the process took only 30 years, from 1953 to 1983, and suddenly the country was ripe for transformation into the democratic state we see today. In 15 years from Pinochet's seizure of power to his resignation, in 1998, Chile was equally transformed. And in Zizek's Slovenia, the years from the end of Titoite dependency to economic success were so short they are difficult to measure. The country came out of Yugoslavia in 1991, ready to bloom.

I will not deny that bloodshed accompanied all these processes: Spain suffered two civil wars and countless rebellions, over two centuries, and Germany and Japan fought in both world wars; South Korea was devastated by aggression from its northern neighbor; Pinochet was hardly an admirable figure, and, yes, 70 people died when Slovenia decided to go its own way. Yet the worldwide capitalist revolution continues, and produces positive results, with America in its vanguard. And it will end up victorious in Iraq and elsewhere a Muslim majority resides, from Morocco to Indonesia, from Albania to Tanzania. The terrorism of al-Qaida and other Islamist reactionaries cannot stop it; nor can window-breaking by anarchist teenagers at Starbucks or McDonalds; nor the reactionary leftism of a Chavez in Venezuela; nor the irritable wit of intellectuals like Slavoj Zizek. As for the enthusiasts of sociological film criticism, I recommend putting The Searchers aside, and watching My Darling Clementine (1946) and High Noon (1952). Sometimes, even in the real world, the good guys win.

It's an interesting thing though, in those movies there's always a single man or a small group who end up having to act unilaterally against evil for the good of folks who generally won't lift a finger to help.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2004 8:53 PM