Ellen Dannin writes: >Just as it's wrong to assume that an Indian is an
Indian with no
variations, it is also wrong to assume that all there is to the
Judaeo-Christian tradition can be summed up in one sentence of Genesis.<
right!
both American Indian societies and biblical-era Levantine societies varied
a lot between each other. When a society is organized for producing
use-values rather than exchange-value and is substantially isolated from
other such societies, there is a lot of room for variation. In the Amazon,
there have been tribes that have been characterized as "extremely nice" by
outsiders (whites) just over a mountain or across a wide river from those
characterized as "extremely fierce."
With the development of the classical empires (Aztecs, Egyptians, Romans,
etc., etc.) a certain uniformity (or law, etc.) is imposed on the subject
populations and the same time that improved transportation and
communication (for the purpose of uniting the empire) encourages homogeneity.
With the development of the world market and capitalism as an accumulation
machine, uniformity becomes the dominant theme to an extent that is
qualitatively greater than for the classical empires. Most classical
empires, for example, instituted pre-existing tribal organizations as part
of the tributary organization, imposing collective responsibility of the
tribe as a whole for the sins of the individual members (where of course
"sin" is defined by those in power). This helped preserve the old tribes,
in a distorted way. Something like this occurred with the bantustans in S.
Africa, too. But with a fuller development of capitalism, the drive toward
uniformity strengthens. Now English is on its way to becoming the world
language (if it isn't already), while more and more of the subject states
are subject to exactly the same cookie-cutter impositions of the IMF/World
Bank, no matter what the local conditions are.
I think that it's correct that the world is moving in the direction where a
capitalist is a capitalist, a capitalist country is a capitalist country,
etc. and we can ignore variations. Even many or most of the imperial
privileges that US workers were able to benefit from are disappearing as
the US is becoming a dependent country like all the others.
All of this is talking about _tendencies_, of course. The real world, as we
know it right now, still involves tremendous amounts of variation that
cannot be ignored. The people in the US are still relatively privileged,
even if the privileges are fading.
(My last post for the day -- due to a New Year's resolution.)
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let
people talk.)
-- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
