Friends, I don't see how it will be possible not to "depopulate" Mexico City and Managua. Both cities are absolutely unviable in terms of survival in any meaningful human sense. I wonder if a radical land reform would not attract millions of people to flee thes urban hell-holes. Are people forced to move to the cities now to be thought of as permanently urban people? If so, why? michael yates Doug Henwood wrote: > Michael Yates wrote: > > >But is it not true that Managua's population swelled to encompass a huge > >fraction of the population precisely because of the war in the countryside? I > >don't think we should understate the attachments of peasants to the land. > >Should we applaud the movement of millions of Chinese into the cities to do > >slave labor or be unemployed or should we mourn the death of the communes and > >the Maoist strategy of rural development? > > The WB says 53% of the population was urban in 1980. Of course the urban > population is swelled by dispossession (just like England a couple of > centuries ago), and in the case of Central America, by war. But they're > there in cities now. What would an appropriate policy be? Back to the land? > In China, the communes are gone, all broken up. Hundreds of millions of un- > and semiemployed people are in China's cities now. Should Mexico City and > Managua be depopulated? There's no question that great crimes have been > committed against peasants everywhere over the last few centuries; the > question is what to do about the world around us. I think the reason Lou > spends so much time in the 17th century is that he doesn't know what to do > about the 21st. > > I also keep thinking of Adorno's comment that the image of undistorted > nature arises only in distortion, as its opposite. > > Doug
