Harry Baird wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:24 pmWhat is revisionist about my position that South Africa was colonised and exploited, and what is the non-revisionist history?
Your view requires a perspective that developed in the Marxian and post-Marxian world. In this specific sense it involves having received and integrated a framework through which the world and world history and economic relationships are viewed. It is revisionist in
this sense. One employs that view, or view-structure as I say, in a revision of the circumstances. Modern moral attitudes and also economic theory are then reverse-engineered and arrays of moral judgments are made. To point this out is not necessarily to discount elements of that view, but only to attempt to answer the question that you challenge me to answer.
I do not discount the term ‘colony’ and I do not see the arrival of a colonial culture as something
completely different, but what I do object to is the entirety of the view which results, which as a consequence undermines the existing civilization. For example the present and on-going critical position of the US and its establishment is a narrative with a
function. Critical theory generally and many of its variants. They are wielded as *armaments*.
I do not establish such strict binaries, that is your doing, as to imply an absolute separation between one view (yours) and another possible way of seeing the establishment of South Africa, so I resist having to explain a view as a ‘non-revisionist history’. While it is possible, and certainly common in our present to use such charged terms as colonized and exploited, and I am certainly aware of what comprises these views and how they are employed (for example I have read many titles by Noam Chomsky, notably
Year 501: The Conquest Continues where the ‘colonialist and exploitive’ view is expressed in lucid detail, and while I understand the view presented and can
recite it (to you or anyone), I find that it is tendentious, grounded and based in Marxian principles of analysis which I question. This means that I do not stand with and I do not support the outcomes of what I refer to as Marxian analysis.
The impetus for the revolutionary movements that developed in Africa — the anti-colonial movements, the movements to reclaim Africa from those who did arrive as colonists and did establish colonial systems — all seem to have been parts of movements inspired and informed by the Marxist ideology I describe. It is my personal view, and a view that I am developing and working on but do not have completely worked out, that these movements have strongly destructive elements. But I define ‘destruction’ differently than I suppose that you do or would. So I again recognize, or admit if you wish, that the overturning of the South African order was a liberal achievement and recognized as a ‘positive outcome’ and I have done enough research on contemporary South African cultural politics to see that, still, many people have this opinion and hold to it. Yet I also notice that in many different ways the country, the civilization of South Africa, or that was South Africa, is in a downward spiral. It seems only to be increasing and not abating or ‘getting better’. And this pushes me back into the ideas I have entertained about more strict hierarchies as being necessary. And I do mean exactly what you think I am merely alluding to.
What this means, in my view, is a reexamination of modern liberal tenets. A challenge of them as legitimate assertions. I mentioned some intellectuals who are strongly opposed to the liberal tenets I refer to. And I know that to broach such an idea is deeply contentious. However in my case I enter into such consideration not as an activist trying to change or influence culture, or any person’s opinion or viewpoint, but fundamentally as one interested in examining the operative tenets in greater detail and in a critical mood.
I am aware as well that what I am describing is going on independently of what I say or think about it. So I could, as an example, refer you to numerous people, South Africans or former South Africans, who speak from the perspectives I have referenced or alluded to. I am also aware of and can refer you to people who have an anti-liberal or counter-liberal position (or countervailing set of tenets) about the liberal tenets and assumptions that are now highly operative and ascendent in America itself (my own country, at least technically). And in relation to that I am aware, and frequently talk about, how there is now unfolding and going on various levels of *ideological warfare* within these areas or zones. I cannot say that I have an absolute fixed position because I often do not know what to finally decide, so I prefer to present ideas in a more neutral way and talk about positions that are extant from a somewhat removed position.
I cannot think of any way to be more direct and also polite with you, Harry, in resisting any sort of reaction to your insulting manner. I say that to develop the countervailing ideas I refer to is extremely difficult because we run up against ideological edifices that have been established for us and in us through cultural machinations (education, PR, propaganda, media). If I confront, of believe that I confront, such idea-structures that I often see operating in you I am aware (and I often say) that I am also dealing with the same edifices in my own self.
[Your use of terms like ‘bs’ and your assertion of bad-faith are way off the mark and very inappropriate. Along with *UTTER nonsense. “How can you keep a straight face”. That I only offer *crickets* when I make efforts to explain myself. “Disingenuous bs”. I also will mention that there is something really irritating about your use of the term ‘dude’. Your insinuation that I lack courage is also off the mark.]
In
Open Veins of Latin America (Eduardo Galeano, one of the most influential left-progressive thinkers who wrote the textbook for modern Latin American resistance) he developed the idea of funnel systems. All roads, all rail lines, all river and all transport systems led to the ports and the chief outposts wherefrom the materials and products were then carted off to Europe. That is the accepted colonial model. That colonies are transportation centers for bleeding the region. I do not simply discount the validity of this model. It certainly has its place.
But South Africa was established on a different model, or a modified model. Similar to the (N) American colonists South Africans came with the plan and the intentions not of setting up a colonial funnel outpost, for the transportation of goods back to Europe, but because they desired to live there, to build a civilization, to create a culture. Therefore to explain SA in terms of the eploitive funnel model is what I objected to. I did not say and do not say that a foreign people did not come and did not supplant others (though the southern horn has less populated than other regions); and I would not say that they did not ‘exploit’ the land, people and the circumstances in the region, but I do say that they desired to establish a ‘complete civilizational unit’ as their homeland, as their creation. So I draw a comparison to the N. American colonialists and a contrast with, say, the Central American and the South American colonial structures. These were established by men seeking wealth and riches through conquest and, as you say, exploitation, often to return with that wealth to Europe. The difference was (in those early days) that the American colonialists desired to create a civilization for themselves. I assume that you will get my point.