JOHAN GALTUNG (1) SR is not an abstract, general formula. Self-reliance is a part of an historiai process, at the same time the fight against a certain global and domestic structure and a way of building a new one. (2) SR cannot be led from above. Self-reliance must probably be initiated from above, but is meaningless without mass participation. Through collective self-rel iance necessary conditions may be created at the national level and through national self-reliance necessary conditions may be created at the local level, but it is only at the local level that self-reliance properly speaking can unfold itself as mass action. •(3) Self-reliance is not the same as national/local processing of raw materials. This is usually a necessary condition for one basic idea is to contract cycles and to use local factors. But national processing is entirely compatible with national capital ism and penetration of the national periphery from the national centers, just as local processing is compatible wlth local capitalism and all that implies in terms of division of labor between owners/labor-buyers/decision-makers and workers of all kinds both in terms of deciding what to produce, how to produce it and what to do with the surplus created. Moreover, capitalism as it is known today is expansionist by nature and will tend to overflow the bordelines of any self-reliant unit, turning other units into sources of factors and markets for capital and products all of which would be incompatible with the selfreliance of those units. (4) Self-reliance is not the same as producing for the satisfaction of the basic needs of those most in need. Those are excellent priorities, but they are also compatible with managerialism and clientelization. SR implies another subject/object relation, that the masses are more the master of their own needsatisfaction, not developing the "psychology of depending on the government for relief". 1 j (5) Self-reliance is not the same as self-sufficiency or autarchy. SR implies a redirection and recomposition of trade and " Berger, op. cit. p. 9 - the -quotatlon Is from a cable by Mao to some local headquarter in 1948. 58
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==