We live in a world in which the rise and fall of the stock of China Petroleum, Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith attract the spotlight. Until its on to the next thing. Cash is king in this whirl and lives are for sale for other people’s amusement. The Internet apparently only magnifies the effect of CNN and the rest of the sensationalist media.
According to reports, most people use the Internet to find information about their most personal concerns, to chat at a distance, to find deals, to read gossip or to view pornography. Politically you can find just about the full spectrum on line so much so that one perspective more or less neutralizes another. This just adds to the ongoing confusion.
Nonetheless, one can’t help believing that the Internet over time might make a difference. YouTube had a fifteen minute segment which included an interesting Spanish political conversation between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Castro’s voice sounded weak and it only confirmed the sense that he won’t be able to resume his duties. But what impressed was that people all over the world could find this interchange between two thoughtful leaders about progressive political initiatives in Latin America directly at their fingertips on the Internet.
Indeed, the other day I found on a series called Conversations with History from the U of California (Berkeley) which included an hour long exchange with David Harvey. There was Harvey as large as life, genial, relaxed, open, civilized, conversing for sixty minutes uninterrupted about the evolution of his thought and his life as though he was sitting in your living room. It was amusing to hear the interviewer, an American professor, hesitate, stumble with embarrassment as he asked Harvey about such ideas as value, accumulation by dispossession and imperialism. Marxism embarrasses American academics. Nonetheless, the clarity and simplicity of Harvey’s responses were deeply illuminating. Watching this conversation available not just to a few students but to the world at large I thrilled as I watched at the prospects for enlightenment which seemed to open up.
Speaking of enlightenment and the Internet I can’t help mentioning the World Socialist Web Site. Some of my friends including those close to Trotskyism dismiss this group as impossibly sectarian. I myself have wondered how this ultra-internationalist group would respond to endogenous cultural and economic initiatives in a post-socialist world. On the other hand, is there anything to compare with the film, theatre and art reviews that appear on this site? The reviews of art exhibits worldwide which combine materialist text with splendid visuals are breathtaking. Moreover, can one sufficiently praise the economic and financial analysis provided by Nick Beams? His articles are an education in themselves. Best of all is this site’s consistent commitment not simply to Marxist internationalism but to Enlightenment rationalism in the face of the folly and unreason of our times. These folks really believe in the power of reason. It is amazing to read the letters to the editors published and the editorial responses. The confusions and misapprehensions that sometimes are forthcoming in these letters are mind boggling but quite informative. The editors always respond with patient but firm reason based on Marxist principles trying to straighten people out. Its almost like watching therapy.
Henry Heller is professor of history at the University of Manitoba and a member of Canadian Dimension's editorial collective. He is author of The Cold War and Imperialism: A Global History, 1945-2005 (Monthly Review Press, 2006) and The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815 (Berghahn Books, 2006). Read other posts by Henry Heller.
