In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Andrew Wayne Austin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
quoting me as saying
>>Otherwise the injunction against genocide would be an injunction to hold
>>all cultural change in absolute abeyance.
Andy writes
>
>The point is absurd. All cultures change. But there is a world of
>difference between cultural change, on the one hand, and cultural
>liquidation/erasure, on the other.
This is a long way from Marxism. Don't we want to liquidate the culture
of Capitalism? Doesn't living mean dying, in Engels' choice phrase. Only
something that is already dead carries on for ever. What is truly
living/dynamic must supercede itself.
>>What about voluntary assimilation? Would that count as genocide?
>
>How does a culture voluntarily decide to liquidate itself and be absorbed
>into a larger culture? Can Jim show me where and when a culture
>voluntarily erased itself, where a people turned their back on their
>customs and traditions willingly and assimilated consciously and peaceful
>into a dominant culture? Who would make that decision? It is another
>absurd point.
But Andy avoided the very examples that I gave him. British Christianity
(even in Marx's day it was evident) simply exhausted itself. The English
Christians willingly abandoned their customs and traditions, and good
for them. I can think of many other traditions and customs that were
given up willingly, and for the better. EP Thompson records that the
last case of a wife auction took place in England in 1910, though the
custom was well entrenched in the seventeenth century. The extension of
divorce laws made it redundant.
American Jews were willingly assimilated into the dominant culture in
the immediate post-war period. With the relaxation of anti-Semitism in
the US, Jews became part of the mainstream and readily married out,
letting their religious observance lapse. My father-in-law has happily
turned his back on Judaism, as my Grandfather happily raised his
daughters as atheists. In my lifetime, younger Asian immigrants in
Britain have chosen to abandon arranged marriages. England football fans
have abandoned the Union Jack in favour of the Cross of St George, out
of deference to Scottish Nationalism. Yorkshire miners abandoned many of
their chauvinistic attitudes towards women when these became a barrier
to their common struggle in the year-long strike fifteen years ago.
Cultures come and go. Nothing is outside of history. It is a basic
refusal of Marx's method of historical materialism to treat culture as
if it were not specific to a given set of material conditions and
possibilities. The development of industrial technique has made child
labour redundant in Britain. Should we mourn the passing of the culture
of renting out children to labour agents? Improvements in health have
reduced family size. Should we regret the passing of the five and seven
child families of Victorian England? The welfare state has made the old
extended family network redundant. Should we abolish welfare to bring it
back?
--
Jim heartfield
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