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/275/ Our Reply to Critics: Review of Reviews (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-19 06:00:05
Edited:
2022-07-19 12:53:16
Imported:
2024-07
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[Patreon Exclusive]

On reviews of our book, The End of the End of History

A year since the book came out, and two years since we finished writing it, we take a look at published reviews the book has received and respond to them.

Questions addressed include: have we overstated our case? Do we ignore the importance of the 1970s in favour of the 1990s? Might war matter more than class struggle? Is it useful to understood History in the metaphysical/Hegelian sense? Should we be less modernist and dispense with the politics inherited from 1848-1980s? And are we too critical of left-populism?

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dshamz_

I agree with not elevating the war in Sri Lanka to a world historical level, but I do think it’s an interesting case nevertheless. I happen to know a bit about it due to the substantial Tamil diasporic population here in Toronto, and I would say the ultimate defeat of the LTTE - once a dynamic and robust national liberation movement - in some ways signalled Sri Lanka’s final move into an ‘end of history’ phase. Certainly for many of Tamils also, the Tigers are viewed as heroic leaders of a just struggle for national rights, and their defeat saw many petit bourgeois elements in the diaspora freed to finally fully integrate into the capitalist economies of their respective countries and pursue their own individual interests. The LTTE’s gun was removed from their heads and leadership of the community has degenerated further as a result - their own end of history moment. The irony is that, almost as if in a sped-up version of the last several decades, the ‘normalization’ of relations throughout the country in the wake of the brutal crushing of the national aspirations of the Tamil people which was accompanied by the abandonment of the veneer of progressiveness and the full-tilt slid into Buddhist-Sinhala ethno-religious chauvinism, has quickly given way to a massive national economic and political crisis, for which a resolution remains elusive. This is all overlaid on to the fact that Sri Lanka was one of the first countries to adopt a full scale neoliberal restructuring plan pushed by the international financial institutions. Again, maybe not as world-historical as Russia invading Ukraine, but an important case in its own right. Oh and absolutely do not be less modernist 😎

dshamz_

In the conversation about the PMC, I think that George’s intervention about their political function being to disorganize the working class for the ruling class is bang on, and is a current that runs through your podcast but that isn’t often said explicitly which I think confuses some listeners at times (I include myself lol).