[Edited Message Follows] Please excuse the rather glaring date mistake--I wrote those lines when preparing for a colonoscopy and there was evidently some leakage.
The actual discussion of the 1619 project has AFAIK a fair number of key points, some of which turn on points of history whereof I have to remain silent. At the very least it seems to me that we are challenged in going beyond narrow Eurocentric traditions, to rethink the value of the ideology--chattel property of every Ku Kluxer and cracker-barrel crackpot in the USA--of "individual liberty." This operation must necessarily also challenge familiar US left-wing perspectives, which usually include a hefty dose of raw romantic individualism along with whatever socialist honey they may employ to disguise the flavor. As far as "liberty" is concerned, the term has appeared and been misused in the revolutionary context since Roman times (assuming we can still refer a historical timeline running through ancient Rome). Spartacus used the Latin term as did his diametrical opposite in most respects Sergius Catilina, who rebelled against the Roman Republic in Cicero's time as a throttle on the liberties of the then-declining patrician class. Surely the forebears of "Anglo-Saxon" America can have been no less ambiguous in their use of the term. Samuel Johnson, who--except for his intelligence--was the archetypal British Tory, spoke with scorn in his pamphlet "Taxation No Tyranny" (1775) of the would-be colonial planter g e ntry: “We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” For all his monolithic perversity, Johnson has a point. The "liberties" referred to of course included the unquestionable superiority of real Englishmen from England over mere colonials. We tend to forget that among the English gentry and their apologists until quite recently, rank hypocrisy was no vice but a positive and active system of pure morality. This had to rankle. In this sense at least there can be little doubt that at least for a substantial number of those supporting the Floundering Bothers the point of revolution was to defend slavery, if in no other way than by throwing off what to them had become the foreign yoke of British governance and taxation--and the hypocritical tendency of English ruling class to look down on the "drivers of negroes" as not only far less wealthy but less aristocratic or less worthy of admiration than the great English families of the day. I pass over the anxiety that must have been caused by slave revolts in the new world; not only in what would become the US but in Haiti leading up to the successful revolution of 1791. There was also Lord Dunsmore's proclamation of liberty for slaves in Virginia in exchange for their support of the British cause. It doesn't take a 1619 Project to see the potential effect of these well-known factors. As for us, can we adopt a democratic perspective without genuflecting at least to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as well as Madison and Jefferson (and Hamilton, who tolerated slavery even in denouncing it--while laying the foundations of modern US capitalism)? The challenge is perhaps to understand at once the systemic character of the American ideology of race, which relies for its power to convince on the illusion of naturalness apart from social or economic factors. This makes racism an ideal vehicle for the theodicy of capitalism, but not a function of it. As Louis Proyect has pointed out, It's entirely possible to have racism, sexism, and Eurocentricity under the form of some really existing socialism. It's happened before. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8385): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8385 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82563203/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
