Thursday, May 03, 2012

Neo-Marxism and The Gaza Strip

Below you can read a note by the NYT on the hunger strikes going on in Israel. Even 3,200 prisoners can eventually join the struggle. The battle is simple: State your objective, and refuse to eat. If 3,200 people die,  the authority will have to explain why so many lives are not enough to change the stated policy.

From what I know, the issue here is that after World World II, some  Jewish people left Europe, and Europeans exiled ( this is rhetorical, they were not exiled there, read the comments) them to the Promised Land of Palestine. They changed the name of the land to Israel, and claimed that their religious texts clearly indicated that what was then Palestine, was really, their land, and should be called Israel. If some Jewish people lived in Arab lands (read comments below) before, maybe they can do it again in modern times. I hope so.

Confusing?

Is that a justification to let 3,200 people starve to death?

I do not know the answer to that question, and I am not in a position to let this prisoners go or stay. What I do in this note is state something I just learned.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson just published a book: Why Nations Fail.

The authors do not identify themselves as Neo-Marxist, but I explain here why I do.

Karl Marx in the Eighteenth Century wrote, that one needs to understand economics to understand, not only Why Nations Fail, but many other important social and historical questions. We only know the facts, but we need to know why they happened instead of something else.

   Two crucial concepts are invented by these two scholars. Inclusive and Extractive.

Inclusive and Extractive Institutions could be political or economical, the first type includes most of the population, the second set of Institutions or rules, states that a person can appropriate the products of the work of others. This work can be extracted from other people, in the same way that the owner of a goat is allowed to get the goat's milk for his own benefit, without regard of the kid goats.

I call this Neo-Marxism.

The rulers of Israel put some of the Palestinians previously living in the land then called Palestine, and now called Israel, in the Gaza Strip, as if they were goats.

The goats now, rather die, than live under Israeli rules.

You can read Monsieur Seguin's Last Kid Goat, by Alphonse Daudet, in his book "Letters from my Windmill".

2 comments:

Eduardo Cantoral said...

There is a myth, that Jews survivors found in the Bible that there was a place name Palestine where they could go and re claim the land and force the arabs out of the land. What is a true fact is that there 800,000 Mizrachim, living in arab cities for thounsads of years long time, long time before Mahommed succesors's imperial caliphal armies spread in the arbian penisula in the 7th century. Between 1947-1952 750,000 mizrachim Jews were expelled from arabic countries and they re settled in Israel.

Eduardo Cantoral said...

The comments are from a dear friend.

I will try to answer as well as I can.

Twitter Updates

Search This Blog

Total Pageviews