[Reader-list] Guardian Unlimited: Daring to dream

[Keith Hart]

Dear Vivek,

I would normally miss out the endearment in a posting to an impersonal 
list (as I did in my public message to Sanjay), but on this occasion 
gratitude compels reciprocity. We should allow the occasion of our 
correspondence to remain anonymous. I would draw attention in particular 
to the photo at http://www.foet.org/JeremyRifkin.htm. Enough said.

My 'silences' and 'blind spots'' come from trying to simplify an 
argument for purposes of discussion, especially since I am a newcomer to 
the list as contributor; but I am happy to oblige if you want at least a 
trailer of my thoughts on Islam, nationalism etc.

I am a fan of Tariq Ramadan, who shares Swiss citizenship with my wife, 
and I side with her against him on the issue of the veil in French 
schools. There is no topic more complex that the history of 
anti-semitism in France, the republican legislation that persuaded so 
many German and East European Jews to settle there, the vicious record 
of French colonialism and war in North Africa, the immense presence of 
Moslems in France today, the anti-semitic attacks of Moslem youth and 
the move of some  French Jews to Israel. I live in Paris and there is 
nowhere in the world that the dark side of 20th century history is 
replayed on TV as in France. The holocaust is today's news there, for 
the simple reason that the French were never held account for their part 
in it nor for thwir North African atrocities. But they are culturally 
engaged in the politics of history, unlike the anglophones. At the same 
time, Chirac has been trying to cast himself as the friend of Islam 
against Israel and the USA -- he was the first French president to visit 
Algeria since independence! Living in this social cauldron makes me less 
than engaged when outsiders pronounce on the single issue of the veil 
question (which also includes banning the use of Christain corosses and 
Jewish yamulkas in public places). Tariq Ramadan has his line, you have 
yours. I am trying to get on with my life as a writer in a Paris attic. 
I recognize that this is a total social fact of our world. But maybe it 
isn't the main point of the issue I raised.

Since the maintenance of the dollar as the world currency is how the USA 
gets to spend what it likes regardless of what it earns, I too am in 
favouur of the euro or th eIslamic gold dinar or the yuan or whatever 
making inroads into that monopoly. I was immensely cheered to learn 
that, when the Americans in Iraq banned the Saddam dinar and started 
giving away $20 bills as the putative new currency, the old dinar 
doubled in price against the dollar and drove the Americans to accept it 
as the standard. If the Iraqis can turn down free dollars, why do the 
rest of us buy them at any price? This is linked to the new Republican 
version of Keynesian economics: deficit spending in favour of th erich 
and powerful and let the rest of the world pick up the tab. If they 
don't, we will beat the shit out of them and we can always count on 
their government's support since they live vicariously off our violence.

Now the really serious questions you raise -- and I admit I took a 
simple view of the answers for the sake of argument -- are the following 
(lightly edited):

> We're not talking of replacing one hegemony with another, are we? ... 
> there is obviously a NEW global aristocracy taking shape, and if it 
> prefers to invest in or inhabit the East as opposed to the West (but 
> never, alas, the strangled South) that's not necessarily a positive sign.
>
> I'm not sure at all that the forces you speak of are "inherently 
> progressive and revolutionary"; isn't it up to us and our imagination 
> to seize the moment and ride the forces into progress or liberation?  


> Much research goes into illegal networks, one finds that even within 
> the subversive chaos there are shifts towards economies of scale, 
> specialization, institutionalization of different kinds- and that may 
> well, in some cases, mean new bossmen, henchmen, slaves, even at very 
> local levels. I am concerned that we should not celebrate chaos 
> without recognizing it as an ambiguous thing, a moment of 
> transformation into a new order that may not be All Good.
>
> I would rather we attend closely to the newly forming hegemonies and 
> the possibilities for diverting, subverting and resisting them.


Now that is an agenda for discussion. I think you extrapolated beyond 
what i actually said, but, for the sake of any lingering readers, I will 
save a response for later, after I have touched on the peripherals here. 
I am, however, immensely grateful to you for bringing these issue sup in 
that way. I will offer two personal anecdotes. I have a life-long 
engagement with the 'informal economy', but I do not romanticise it. 
Life under feudalism, whether criminal mafias or the KGB, is not 
appealing to me. And I have a novel on the back-burner, a 
science-fiction murder mystery called Futures: the death and life of Don 
Quick. In it I envisage a world recolution soon that leads to another 
dual hegemony of India and China and 300 years later there is a grass 
roots revolt  against it formed by a Christian type movement drawing on 
a decadent and fragmented West as well as the still excluded South. this 
i snot a prediction, it is a fiction. But I find it allows me to discuss 
the issues you raise in a form more suitable than most non-fictional 
discourses.

The real question is whether capitalism is about to give way to some 
other social principle or is merely taking on its truly global role, in 
which the location of power is irrelevant My scenario is one where the 
world in the 24th century (incidentally the same time as Star Trek) is 
still trying to emancipate itself from a wage-slavery enforced by 
Indo-Chinese imperialism. This is not a rosy picture and I hope it is 
wrong. But my aim is to get people thinking in terms that transcend the 
limits of their own life-times.

Once again, thanks for encouraging this self-indulgent post. I hope to 
be more rigorous in future.

Keith