15 Feb 2024 7:04 am
(PART II OF III)
In his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney writes, “Pervasive and vicious racism was present in imperialism as a variant independent of the economic rationality that initially gave birth to racism." https://www.versobooks.com/products/788 ... ricaRodney and many others have documented how, although the African continent possesses a proverbial embarrassment of riches relative to natural resources, colonialism and imperialism have kept Africa impoverished through the underpayment for and the outright theft of those resources by Americans and Europeans. It's a plundering that has long been enforced and protected by handpicked indigenous comprador regimes, i.e., Mobutu Sese Seko's in Congo, who have facilitated the grotesque enrichment of European and American capitalists while subjecting their people to grinding poverty, disease, and their accompanying violence. But this is a reality few Americans understand since capitalist media sources nearly wholly ignore it or blame it on the "tribal and violent nature of black Africans." The economic exploitation of Africa is not unlike the financial exploitation of Central America, where the US government has forever blocked indigenous economic development and installed fascist regimes that protect American multinationals from workers and peasants. All the while, many Americans scratch their heads and wonder why the undocumented keep coming. Answer: Because they would starve to death were they to wait for as long as thirteen years for legal immigration status. But I digress. So, there's nothing to know, for human biological evolution has nothing to do with this.
I wrote: "Concerning 'how to fix a bridge [or which bridge to fix under Socialist Industrial Unionism (SIU)], I imagine it would be a combined effort by the transportation and construction industries as roughly indicated by the SLP's Socialist Industrial Unionism chart: http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf And, given that elected, rotated, recallable, and thus fully accountable managers would decide which bridges need repair, there'd be no need for the cumbersome process of each worker voting on which bridges need repair."
Cannonpointer: "Sounds like representative democracy. We've tried that - and we're reduced to fighting over who goes into which bathroom stall. Also, you switched the argument from how to fix a bridge to which bridge to fix. Without hierarchies, the how-to becomes more of an issue than the which.
No, "representative "democracy" is a manifestation of capitalist rule. It's a political process in which politicians quarter-heartedly represent workers while vigorously protecting the capitalist class' legalized theft of gargantuan amounts of working-class-produced wealth. SIU would amount to worker self-government. As indicated above, workers elected to positions of authority by their fellow workers would serve for set durations and return to their previous jobs upon completing their terms. They would be subject to immediate recall whenever a majority of those who elected them deemed it necessary.
Cannonpointer: "Engineers should have no more say than bricklayers - should they?"
It's not that any worker would have more or less say than any other worker. It would be a matter of workers voicing their say in their workplaces. Engineers wouldn't vote for bricklayers, and bricklayers/construction workers wouldn't vote for engineers because they'd be employed in separate industries.
http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf
(END OF PART II)