[DEBATE] : Re: Re De Soto on why the poor get poorer

[Dominic Tweedie]

There's a good debunking of de Soto at
http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/2004%2C+Royston%2C+Barking+dogs+and+bui
lding+bridges or search for "Barking Dogs and Building Bridges by Lauren
Royston (2004).

The point for me this time round is not so much that se Soto is a charlatan,
which is well known, but that the packaging of Phumzile and the invention of
Phumzilism involves stitching together a whole eclectic rag-bag to attract
the attention of different kinds of people.

This is consistent with Marx's remark in "Class Struggles in France" about
Louis Bonaparte, to the effect that he could be anything for anybody
precisely because in himself he was nothing.

That to me is the essence of Bonapartism. Given a somewhat balanced class
conflict, it becomes the necessary prerequisite for the playing of one class
off against another. At the centre there must be a cipher, a null point.
Hence the choice of Phumzileeza. It is not so much that she has no
constituency, as somebody recently pointed out. It is more that she has no
politics, either. She is a tailor's dummy of a politician. She can be
dressed up as anything at any moment in time.

The only difficulty may be that when she has to face a situation without a
script, all she will be able to say in answer to questions is "Asgis?"





-----Original Message-----
From: debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org
[mailto:debate-bounces at lists.kabissa.org]On Behalf Of Sean Jacobs
Sent: 10 February 2006 01:39 AM
To: debate at lists.kabissa.org
Subject: [DEBATE] : Re De Soto on why the poor get poorer

>    1.  Why poor get poorer according to de Soto and P M-N, B Rep
>       (Dominic Tweedie)
Timothy Mitchell at NYU
(http://www.nyu.edu/fas/Faculty/MitchellTimothy.html) recently wrote a
decent critique of de Soto's halfbaked ideas.
... I should have added I can forward the paper to anyone interested. --
Sean


--
>From Sean Jacobs
tintinyana at gmail.com

"Only intellectuals love poverty. Poor people love luxury" (from a
Brazilian samba)
_______________________________________________
DEBATE mailing list
DEBATE at lists.kabissa.org
http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate