SolidarityEconomy.net

There is a story told in the United States about a young man who has lost his way on the back roads of rural Kentucky. He pulls his car into the driveway of a small farmhouse and asks the farmer sitting on the porch, “What is the best way to get to Chicago?” The farmer draws on his pipe, then replies laconically, “I’m sorry, son, but you can’t there from here.”

Think of China as Chicago and any underdeveloped non-socialist country today as rural Kentucky. I will argue that you can’t get to China from any of those countries. It is futile to look for policies derived from the Chinese experience that might allow other poor countries to develop as China has developed.

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Since George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, the Christian right in the U.S. has come under new scrutiny, here and around the world. Some, of course, are celebrating the religious right’s rise to power; but a great many others are worried about the political direction the country has taken - on matters of war and peace, on the future of respect for liberty and diversity, and on prospects for equitable and sustainable development.

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