Jeff wrote: Rather it is the unthinking reference to "rights" and even "self-determination," neither of which would apply universally to humans. In Marxist literature "self-determination" generally refers to a nationality or geographically defined population establishing its own national state, which obviously wouldn't apply to any species incapable of such a level of organization only reached by humans in the last few thousand years.
I see two potential issues here. First, you conflate self-determination with rights and nationalism, stating specifically that people who have not "evolved" to this more complex level of social organization and the corresponding division of labor, actually have no rights. This seems to accept the existence of unilinear evolution (problematic in ts own right as anything more than ideology) as some kind of yardstick. This ignores the more nuanced approach known as multilinear evolution, and it also ignores examples of cultural complexity above and beyond division of labor and social differentiation. Finally, are you saying indigenous people in tribal settings have no rights? The Bolivian and Ecuadorian constitutions would disagree. Greg ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
