Valis quoting Russell Means: > I think there's a problem with language here. Christians, > capitalists, Marxists, all of them have been revolutionary > in their own minds. But none of them really mean revolution. > What they really mean is a _continuation_. They really do > what they do in order that European culture can continue to > exist and develop according to its needs. Like germs, > European culture goes through occasional convulsions, > even divisions within itself, in order to go on living > and growing. This isn't a revolution we're talking about, > but a means to continuing what already exists. > An amoeba is still an amoeba after it reproduces. But maybe > comparing European culture to an amoeba isn't really fair > to the amoeba. Maybe cancer cells are a more accurate > comparison because European culture has historically > destroyed everything around it; and it will eventually > destroy itself. An interesting observation. In essence, Means's critique of Marxism is essentially the same as Andre G. Frank's. Ricardo's excellent series of posts should not be lost sight of in the torrent of posts on Aztecs, etc., since they address the same problematic: Marx's attitude toward capitalism. Once again, I can only urge people to read Marx's correspondence with Zasulich, Danielson and other Russian populists, either in the collected M&E or in Teodor Shanin's superlative "Late Marx", published by MR. There is little question that Marx had turned his back on capitalism by the 1870s. Perhaps this got lost in the shuffle, but Stanley Diamond quotes from E.J. Hobsbawm's preface to Marx's "Precapitalist Economic Formations" to make the same point: "It is certain that Marx's own historical interests after the publication of Capital (around 1867) were overwhelmingly concerned with [primitive communalism; and, further, a reason for] Marx's increasing preoccupation with primitive communalism [was] his growing hatred and contempt for capitalist society.... It seems probable that he, who had earlier welcomed the impact of Western capitalism as an inhuman but historically progressive force on stagnant precapitalist economies, found himself increasingly appalled by this inhumanity. We know that he had always admired the positive social values embodied, in however backward a form' in the primitive community, and it is certain that after 1857-8... he increasingly stressed the viability of the primitive commune, its powers of resistance to historical disintegration and even--though perhaps only in the context of the Narodniki--discussed its capacity to develop into a higher form of economy without prior destruction." Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
