Mythologising Native Americans
My problem with Shiva is her gender essentialism, her romanticism about India's pre-colonial past, her hypocrisy in leading a very cosmopolitan life while recommending that everyone else stay at home, and a very un-nuanced rejection of technology. Just because Monsanto is using biotech to screw peasants around the world doesn't mean that biotech itself is always and everywhere a sinister plot by white imperialist men. Doug There is just as much--if not more--that can be learned from Vandana Shiva, Jerry Mander and Kirkpatrick Sale as can be learned from Judith Butler. Like it or not, these people are a corrective to the "rural idiocy" thesis that is contained in the Communist Manifesto and that you have alluded to many times favorably. This is what Marx and Engels say: "The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." This must be rethought. It has tended to distort our perception of the population shifts from Chiapas or Puebla, for example, to Mexico City. Do we believe that there is something "idiotic" about the way that Chiapas Indians live? Is this what Marx and Engels were saying? Mander, Shiva and Sale have taken a close look at how such peoples live and come to the conclusion that the city is much more idiotic. I kind of go along with them. Where I part company is in the belief that the answer is some kind of Khmer Rouge reverse population shift. I will have much more to say about this in a few weeks, but this "rural idiocy" thesis has to be confronted and purged from our vocabulary. The ecological crisis of the 21st century is a product of exactly those demographic shifts that Marx and Engels were celebrating. Resolution of the crisis will have to be found in "rural wisdom" itself. People who depend upon and live close to nature have a much better perception of the types of measures that are needed. People like Rigobertu Menchu and American Indian shamans have to be listened to. The value-system of communalist peoples is much closer to the communist value system that we seek. The problem is the transition to the material conditions which will allow such a revolution in values to take place. Shiva, Mander and Sale have no concept of such a transition. Mostly what they propose is utopian retreat from the class struggle. My thoughts on these questions are still not as clear as I'd like them to be, but after reading Mander carefully, I suspect they will be. Louis Proyect
Re: Moral appeasement of capitalism
Quoth Mark Jones, in part: Such a post-capitalist world will be in the truest sense sustainable: a post-scientific, post-industrial world, a world of social stasis as the true precondition for HUMAN development and for the regeneration of now-failing ecosystems, a world in which time will be lived differently, not as a crushing Newtonian externality, the essence of the terrifying burden which capitalist 'growth' places on us and all of nature: but as subjective, experienced time which has no telos other than the flowering of what is within, the disclosing of the potentialities of all the forms of life through the dialectics of their own development. Perhaps Marx was an Aristotelian after all, at least in his sense of Time. Everyone entertains some private opinion of Jeremy Rifkin. "Time wars: the primary conflict in human history" (1987) may have been the most interesting and least tendentious of the books he cranked out almost yearly after doing his thing in the People's Bicentennial Commission. The first Indian scout to glimpse European body language probably knew that the irrevocable battle for a continent had already begun. Run across the radio dial from traditional to Western pop in Casablanca, Tokyo or anywhere between to understand the essence of imperialism. Where the cross preceded the flag five centuries ago, today the rock band and the tour t-shirt precede everything. Stark crazies like the Taleban have obviously overdone the reaction, but suppose we were to experience our culture's kinetic frenzy without the benefit of all prior conditioning; what would _our_ reaction be? valis
Re: Village idiocy revisited
Quoth Wojtek, in conclusion: The Bushmen had no way of knowing that anthropologists could replenish their water supply in a very short period of time; they thought that the few canisters on the expedition's truck was all the water they got. Yet, the first to receive water were those who needed it the most, the weakest and the sick - children, elderly and animals. That nicely contrasts with "civilised" Americans shooting each other at the gas pumps during the 1970s oil crisis. No particular irony there: In the late capitalist environment Americans - unlike the Bushmen - were actually hunting and gathering each other. Oil scarcity only made this relationship a bit more explicit. valis
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Louise Erdrich. Great author. Wonderful insights. Love Medicine is the second title. Sid I liked "Bingo Palace". I can't remember the woman's name who wrote it, she also wrote Heart Medicine? (or Love Medicine?) or something like that and "Beets... something" I know it's very current, were you looking for olden days stories? I'll dig you up a better reference if you don't mind reading about living people. Ellen Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Re: royalty
Doug muses: So tickets went on sale for Diana's gravesite, at the equivalent of US$15. [$8 for minors] Proceeds will benefit her memorial charity. She married into one of the most pointlessly rich families in the world, and yet her frenzied mourners are going to fund her legacy. Get over it, Doug; she divorced, they're British, and some very massive national singularity is at work there. valis
Re: Marx on Native Americans
I liked "Bingo Palace". I can't remember the woman's name who wrote it, she also wrote Heart Medicine? (or Love Medicine?) or something like that and "Beets... something" I know it's very current, were you looking for olden days stories? I'll dig you up a better reference if you don't mind reading about living people. Ellen Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
How Indians Became Sick and Died
I picked up David E. Stannard's "American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World" at lunch from the ever-rewarding Labyrinth Bookstore. He makes some interesting points about the circumstances in which epidemics caused the deaths of upwards of 90% of the Indian populations. It must be understood that certain diseases like TB are intimately connected with the way people are crowded together in poverty. This certainly was the case for many of the Indians in North America who were first subjugated, then confined in closed prison-like surroundings and then became ill from these living conditions. Diseases did not mysteriously seek them out from long-distance. Stannard cites one example: "Recently, an analysis has been conducted on data from more than 11,000 Chumash Indians who passed through the missions of Santa Barbara, La Purisima, and Santa Inies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Perhaps the most complete data set and detailed study ever done on a single mission Indian group's vital statistics, this analysis shows that 36 percent of those Chumash children who were not two years old when they entered the mission died in less than twelve months. Two-thirds died before reaching the age of five. Three of four died before attaining puberty. At the same time, adolescent and young adult female deaths exceeded those of males by almost two to one, while female fertility rates steadily spiraled downward. Similar patterns--slightly better in some categories, slightly worse in others--have been uncovered in another study of 14,000 mission Indians in eight different Franciscan missions. [These missions functioned more as prisons than anything else. Indians were converted at gunpoint.] "In short, the missions were furnaces of death that sustained their Indian population levels for as long as they did only by driving more and more natives into their confines to compensate for the huge numbers who were being killed once they got there. This was a pattern that held throughout California and on out across the southwest. Thus, for example, one survey of life and death in an early Arizona mission has turned up statistics showing that at one time an astonishing 93 percent of the children born within its walls died before reaching the age of 10--and yet the mission's total population did not drastically decline. "There were various ways in which the mission Indians died. The most common causes were the European-introduced diseases---which spread like wildfire in such cramped quarters--and malnutrition. The personal living for Indians in the missions averaged about seven feet by two feet per person for unmarried captives, who were locked at night into sex-segregated common rooms that contained a single open pit for a toilet. It was perhaps a bit more space than was allowed a captive African in the hold of a slave ship sailing the Middle Passage. Married Indians and their children, on the other hand, were permitted to sleep together--in what Russian visitor V.M. Golovnin described in 1818 as 'specially constructed cattle-pens.' He explained: I cannot think of a better term for these dwellings that consist of a long row of structures not more than one *sagene* [seven feet] and 1 1/2-2 *sagenes* wide, without floor or ceiling, each divided into sections by partititions, also no longer than two *sagenes*, with a correspondingly small door and a tiny window in each--can one possibly call it anything but a barnyard for domestic cattle and fowl? Each of these small sections is occupied by an entire family; cleanliness and tidiness is out of the question: a thrifty peasant usually has a better-kept cattle-pen. "Under such conditions Spanish-introduced diseases ran wild: measles, smallpox, typhoid, and influenza epidemics occurred and re-occurred, while syphillis and turboculosis became, as Sherburne F. Cook once said, 'totalitarian' diseases: virtually all the Indians were afflicted by them." Louis Proyect
Re: Marx on Native Americans
On Mon, January 5, 1998 at 13:23:13 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? You might try: Alvin M. Josephy, Jr (ed.). *America In 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival of Columbus*. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Bill
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug, You might want to look at: Klein, Laura Lilian Ackerman (eds.) Women and Power in Native North America (1995 Norman, OK) Bernstein, David J. Prehistoric Subsistence on the Southern New England Coast (1993 San Diego) Simmons, Wm. S. The Narragansett (1989 NY) Sharer, Robert The Ancient Maya (5th ed. 1994) Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1969) Gerald Sider who is an anthropologist at CUNY Grad Center has written an interesting book about the Lumbee Indians who were/are attempting to be recognized as an official tribe by the US government. It is: Sider, Gerald Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Southern U.S. (1993 NY) The University of Oklahoma publishes quite a bit about the Indians of North and Meso-America. They probably have a web page. Good luck, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Scholarship opportunity
Enclosed is a posting re. scholarship opportunity for foreign scholars working on urban issues. If interested, please respond directly to Naomi Feigenbaum [EMAIL PROTECTED], the program coordinator (do not respond to me). Regards, wojtek sokolowski Return-path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 11:53:33 -0500 From: Naomi Feigenbaum [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: urban electronic posting X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voijtek, Here is the text. -Naomi *** Johns Hopkins International Fellows In Urban Studies Program *** The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies is pleased to invite applications for its International Fellows in Urban Studies Program. This program will permit advanced study at the Institute for Policy Studies of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., for a semester (four months) or a full academic year (nine months), for persons who are involved in or studying urban issues outside the United States. Positions in the program are available at Senior and Junior levels of appointment, which are described separately below. The Program also sponsors a Fellows' conference each year in a host country overseas to encourage continuing interchange among Fellows and to foster cross-national understanding of urban issues at the international level. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - General Eligibility _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ Candidates must have demonstrated a high degree of experience and professional competence in urban studies research. Candidates are expected to have attained a university diploma equivalent to the American Bachelor of Arts or Science degree and to be capable of carrying out independent research and inquiry. A high degree of English fluency is required as demonstrated by a score of 600 or higher on the TOEFL exam. There are no restrictions as to nationality (except that U.S. citizens are excluded from eligibility). Fellows are required to attend the annual International Fellows in Urban Studies Conference prior to their fellowship year and are strongly encouraged to participate in subsequent annual conferences. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ Junior Fellows __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ __ _ Positions as Junior Fellows are available to graduate students and young professionals below the age of 35 who are involved in urban studies research. Junior Fellow positions cover a period of nine months (two academic semesters) beginning in September of each year. Junior Fellows typically select one graduate course each semester from the course offerings of Johns Hopkins. The course selections do not constitute a University degree program. In addition, Junior Fellows conduct a research project related to their specific interests in cooperation with faculty or staff of the University. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ __ _ Senior Fellows _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ __ __ _ _ Positions as Senior Fellows are open to individuals age 30 and over who are involved in urban studies research. Senior Fellows spend a period of four months (one academic semester) at Hopkins commencing in either September or late January. Senior Fellows are expected to contribute to the research and education programs of the Institute for Policy Studies. This will normally involve conducting a specific research project on some aspect of urban studies and preparing technical assistance materials for use by policy makers or urban specialists in their home countries. Senior Fellow responsibilities may also involve supporting the ongoing activities of the Institute for Policy Studies by teaching a scheduled University course, by presenting lectures and seminars to the University community, and the like. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Areas of Study and General Activities _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ _ __ _ __ _ With limited supervision, Fellows are expected to complete an individual research project. Competitive applications should relate to the broad topic of declining older industrial cities. Baltimore's population has declined from a high of more than 900,000 people to about 636,000. The city lost 50,000 persons in just the first five years of the 1990s. The decline in population is emblematic of the many problems the city is facing including poor quality schools; an unskilled work force; abandoned and vacant properties; serious fiscal imbalance; and high rates of crime. Fellows are invited to participate in all research seminars and public education forums of the Institute for Policy Studies. The
Re: Mythologising Native Americans
Pardon my intervention in this fascinating discussion, but weren't Marx and Engels referring to "rural idiocy" in the context of rural life in the transition from feudalism to capitalism in which the rural population was imprisoned by superstition, ignorance, and technical backwardness in subservience to a landed gentry? Second question: Is our objection as critics of capitalism (and dare I say, proponents of socialism) to urbanization per se or to capitalism and its consequences under circumstances of urbanization? Should we celebrate (romanticize) rural life for its own sake, ignoring the intellectually and culturally stultifying charateristics of rural life under conditions of capitalism and it predecessors? Third question: Would not it be possible to construct a socialist alternative that integrates the most uplifting elements of both urban and rural existence, bringing the cultural and technical advantages of urbanization to rural life while bringing ecological sustainability and rational planning to the lives of urban inhabitants? Last question: For those who are tempted to romanticize the lives of Amazonian indians or the simplicity of rural life, how many currently have adopted anything approaching that kind of lifestyle? How many have actually lived for an extended period in rural areas? How many would forfeit their privileges in urban universities in favor of that life style? How many would even be on this list if they had assiduously pursued that lifestyle over the last 10-20 years? In solidarity, Michael E. At 11:20 AM 1/5/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: This is what Marx and Engels say: "The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life." This must be rethought. It has tended to distort our perception of the population shifts from Chiapas or Puebla, for example, to Mexico City. Do we believe that there is something "idiotic" about the way that Chiapas Indians live? Is this what Marx and Engels were saying? Mander, Shiva and Sale have taken a close look at how such peoples live and come to the conclusion that the city is much more idiotic. I kind of go along with them. Where I part company is in the belief that the answer is some kind of Khmer Rouge reverse population shift. I will have much more to say about this in a few weeks, but this "rural idiocy" thesis has to be confronted and purged from our vocabulary. The ecological crisis of the 21st century is a product of exactly those demographic shifts that Marx and Engels were celebrating. Resolution of the crisis will have to be found in "rural wisdom" itself. People who depend upon and live close to nature have a much better perception of the types of measures that are needed. People like Rigobertu Menchu and American Indian shamans have to be listened to. The value-system of communalist peoples is much closer to the communist value system that we seek. The problem is the transition to the material conditions which will allow such a revolution in values to take place. Shiva, Mander and Sale have no concept of such a transition. Mostly what they propose is utopian retreat from the class struggle. My thoughts on these questions are still not as clear as I'd like them to be, but after reading Mander carefully, I suspect they will be. Louis Proyect
Re: Mythologising Native Americans
Michael Eisenscher: Pardon my intervention in this fascinating discussion, but weren't Marx and Engels referring to "rural idiocy" in the context of rural life in the transition from feudalism to capitalism in which the rural population was imprisoned by superstition, ignorance, and technical backwardness in subservience to a landed gentry? Yes, this is correct which is all the more reason not to apply this formula without respect to time and place. It is deeply problematic to use it to describe, for example, the exodus of Mayan Indians to Guatemala City, or Quechuas to Lima, over the past 150 years, especially those who were fortunate to be living on arable land. They paid no tribute to a baron nor needed defense from maurauding bandits. They got the same kick in the teeth that the peasant of the British Isles got, but never received the "benefit" of being able to go to work in a textile mill and look through shop windows at all of the shiny goods they were producing. Latin American Indians have never been absorbed into the capitalist mainstream. They have occupied marginal positions as street vendors, etc. They are the social base for the Sendero Luminoso and it easy to understand why. The schema of the Communist Manifesto of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Western Europe has very little application to Latin America. You have to read Andre Gunnar Frank et al to fully understand the class dynamics of Latin America. Finally on the question of "superstition". What is this? Is it the Popul Vuh, the holy book of the Guatemalan Indians? I will probably post some passages from this at some point. Or is it the television shows that most people escape into like X-Files, etc. The statistics on UFO belief in the USA would make Guatemalan Indians chuckle. Second question: Is our objection as critics of capitalism (and dare I say, proponents of socialism) to urbanization per se or to capitalism and its consequences under circumstances of urbanization? Should we celebrate (romanticize) rural life for its own sake, ignoring the intellectually and culturally stultifying charateristics of rural life under conditions of capitalism and it predecessors? Michael, these are precisely the types of questions that get us off-track. They are posed as a series of abstractions, whereas historical materialism has to deal with specific class relations. Of course, it would be nice if everybody could live a couple of blocks from the Fairway grocery and Zabar's like Doug Henwood, but this is not feasible. This type of pleasant urban life is intimately related to and a function of the hell that is Mexico City. The corncupia of produce that greets you when you walk into the Fairway comes from third-world countries that are being systematically plundered by the USA. The flowers, mangoes and tomatoes very likely come from Mexico and the swarthy man of Indian descent standing guard over them is likely from the state of Puebla, which has been turned into a vast export agriculture plant for US consumption. Third question: Would not it be possible to construct a socialist alternative that integrates the most uplifting elements of both urban and rural existence, bringing the cultural and technical advantages of urbanization to rural life while bringing ecological sustainability and rational planning to the lives of urban inhabitants? That's the topic of my final post. The answer is yes, thank your lucky stars. Ditch your gas-guzzler but everything else will be quite lovely. I promise. Last question: For those who are tempted to romanticize the lives of Amazonian indians or the simplicity of rural life, how many currently have adopted anything approaching that kind of lifestyle? How many have actually lived for an extended period in rural areas? How many would forfeit their privileges in urban universities in favor of that life style? How many would even be on this list if they had assiduously pursued that lifestyle over the last 10-20 years? This is just the wrong tack to take. It rapidly degenerates into the sort of hairshirt attitude that typified the 1960s. The fight is not over who is a fake because they refuse to go live in a teepee. It is rather over the right of self-determination for people who want to live according to their own customs. It really doesn't matter if Vandana Shiva takes a jet plane to travel four corners of the world to denounce the Narmada Dam and similar projects. This is besides the point. The poor villagers who will lose everything need champions for their cause. The choice for these villagers is not between subsistence farming and a co-op three blocks from Zabars. It is between subsistence farming and begging on the streets. Louis Proyect
Re: Marx on Native Americans -Reply
There was a book in the late 70s or early 80s called KEEPERS OF THE GAME by an anthropologist (Calvin ???) whose last name I cannot remember. He makes a very interesting and HIGHLY controversial argument about how the tribes in the northeast and northwest (that is, what we now refer to as the Midwest) had no "scientific" way to explain the diseases brought by the Europeans (Dutch, French, English, others) were striking down their populations. They reasoned that their gods were angry at them and they sought revenge against animals whom they thought were the channels for disease. This confluence of interpretations coincided with the extinction and near extinction of many species (e.g., beaver, mink) through their increased hunting for the fur trade. We're probably talking mid- to late-18th century in North America. This book was really controversial. It is well-argued and documented, but there are some leaps that the author had to explain and document. I don't remember what consensus emerged from the brouhaha. One major objection was that it really takes the gloss off of the image of Native Americans as somehow more spiritual and loving stewards of the natural world. It was, after all, as the book shows, Indian warriors and hunters who showed the European fur traders where the habitats of these animals were and helped kill them. In California, disease (venereal, and small pox among them) was also believed to cause an 80 percent drop in the populations of the California tribes in the 50 years subsequent to the arrival of the Spaniards in the late 18th Century. That stat is my recollection; it was incredible the impact of disease here though. My (recalled) source on that is Sherburne Cooke's book on the California Indians from the 1940s. This was also true of Cortez' conquest of Aztec Tenochtitlan too, and Pizarro's conquest of the Incas. The native peoples on both continents had no immune defenses against the critters the Europeans brought. Same with Hawai'i when contacted in the late 18th Century by Captain Cook, particularly with sexually transmitted diseases. The list is a long, sad one.
Re: M-I: Mythologising Native Americans
Louis Proyect wrote: This is the 150th anniversery of the Communist Manifesto. Mike Albert's attack on the Manifesto has been circulating on the Internet and is the subject of an intense debate on Marxism-International between Doug Henwood and Chris Warren, a dogmatist from Australia. The irony is that Doug is calling for an end to dogma and an engagement with feminism and other issues that Marxism has historically not engaged with successfully while he still shows signs of adhering to his own "productivist" understanding of Marxism. Doug stubbornly defends Judith Butler's pomo feminism while openly reviling Vandana Shiva. In essence, however, both Butler and Shiva are making critiques of Marxism's that reject the very unidimensionality that all of us--except Heartfield--find so repugnant. My "stubborn defense" of Butler amounts to taking her seriously and learning from her. I find her lack of interest in political economy and class deeply frustrating, since any investigation of how subjects are produced and reproduced has to take these into consideration. This is a blindness at least as significant as classical Marxism's towards gender - though Butler is about 400 times smarter and more interesting than Chris Warren. My problem with Shiva is her gender essentialism, her romanticism about India's pre-colonial past, her hypocrisy in leading a very cosmopolitan life while recommending that everyone else stay at home, and a very un-nuanced rejection of technology. Just because Monsanto is using biotech to screw peasants around the world doesn't mean that biotech itself is always and everywhere a sinister plot by white imperialist men. Doug
royalty
So tickets went on sale for Diana's gravesite, at the equivalent of US$15. Proceeds will benefit her memorial charity. She married into one of the most pointlessly rich families in the world, and yet her frenzied mourners are going to fund her legacy. Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
See the book edited by Annette James, "The State of Native America". It was published by South End press in 1992 or 1993. there ar many excellent articles dealing with land, fishing rights, water, governance, and resistance. On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Re: M-I: Mythologising Native Americans
The unlikely question of whether the north American tribes or the Zemstvos represent missed opportunity is surely a laughably academic one - unless of course Proyect is suggesting that we go back to that stage, before going forward again to socialism: the most extreme version of the theory of 'stages of development' one could imagine. Fraternally -- James Heartfield Actually my interest in these questions precedes and transcends Heartfield's Marxist-tinged libertarian intervention on the Internet. They were provoked by a Conference on Globalization at the Riverside Church several years ago which featured Jerry Mander, Kirkpatrick Sale and Vandana Shiva as keynote speakers. They all advocated bioregionalism with American Indians, Quakers, subsistence farmers, etc. as models. All 3 keynote speakers were deeply hostile to technology and Sale has defended the Unabomber recently. In his public lectures, he starts off by smashing a personal computer. I challenged Sale in the discussion period at this conference. I said that it is one thing to defend the people living in the Amazon rainforest--and unlike LM, we should--but it is another thing to tell the millions of people living in the 'favelas' of Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo to go live there themselves. That is the logic of Sale's position and it is demented. I hadn't thought much about these questions until Heartfield showed up on the Marxism-Thaxis mailing-list and began defending some really nutty positions in highly polished prose filled with quotes from Marx. What's up with that, I said to myself. So I browsed through his group's archives and discovered an obnoxious attack on Survival International. This human rights group had come to the defense of the Yanomami people who were facing genocide. Now Heartfield is too clever to come out and say that the Yanomami should just disappear, it is much more Machiavellian to simply heap abuse on the front-line defenders of the South American Indians. My plans are to put a stake through the heart of this "productivist" version of Marxism that could permit apologetics on behalf of genocide. It is not just Heartfield's gang. The American RCP had a debate with Russell Means and Ward Churchill at the Pine Ridge reservation that is contained in Churchill's collection "Marxism and Native Americans" that Robin Hahnel referred to. It makes all the same arguments but with a Maoist rather than a left-libertarian inflection. This is the 150th anniversery of the Communist Manifesto. Mike Albert's attack on the Manifesto has been circulating on the Internet and is the subject of an intense debate on Marxism-International between Doug Henwood and Chris Warren, a dogmatist from Australia. The irony is that Doug is calling for an end to dogma and an engagement with feminism and other issues that Marxism has historically not engaged with successfully while he still shows signs of adhering to his own "productivist" understanding of Marxism. Doug stubbornly defends Judith Butler's pomo feminism while openly reviling Vandana Shiva. In essence, however, both Butler and Shiva are making critiques of Marxism's that reject the very unidimensionality that all of us--except Heartfield--find so repugnant. Old intellectual habits are hard to break. Marx was even older than me--believe it or not--when he came to the conclusion that the Russian populists were right and that he was wrong. In the Second Edition of Capital, he had derided them. After reading them with an open mind, he turned around and said that the accumulation model of V. 1 of Capital was not universal. It's too bad that he wasn't immortal, isn't it. He could be called upon to arbitrate all these disputes. Well, he may have died but it is incumbent upon us--or at least those of us who consider ourselves Marxist--to follow his example. Never stop criticizing our own ideas, never stop looking at the material conditions of life, never stop identifying with the oppressed. In my postings on the American Indians, I plan to try to come up with a synthesis of the critique advanced by the "indigenists" and Marxism itself. As I have already stated, my guidelines will be the work of Marx on the Russian questions and Mariategui on the Peruvian class/indigenous peoples struggles. This is the agenda: 1) Wounded Knee: how the struggle to re-ratify an 1868 treaty shook American capitalism 2) Russell Means, Ward Churchill versus Maoist dogmatism 3) American Indians and energy reserves 4) American Indians and ecology 5) A critique of Jerry Mander 6) Mariategui's Marxism 7) A Communist Manifesto for the next millenium Louis Proyect
Re: Mythologising Native Americans
Michael Eisenscher wrote: Last question: For those who are tempted to romanticize the lives of Amazonian indians or the simplicity of rural life, how many currently have adopted anything approaching that kind of lifestyle? From Yahoo! 411: Jerry Anica ManderBolinas,CA 94924 Kirkpat Faith Sale113 W 11th St #1, New York,NY 10011-8325 Doug
Village idiocy revisited
Yet another anecdote to consider when comparing cognitive ability of rural vs urban folks. Some time ago I saw a documentary about the !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari desert - the only known surving hunting and gathering tribe on Earth. The fact that their culture survived almost intact until recently is due largely to their inhospitable habitat - due to the the lack of water few other peoples would live where the !Kung did. The !Kung were able to survive thanks to their amazing cognitive ability that allowed them to memorize the location of individuals plants whose roots stored water, and return to that place and dig out the root even though after the upper part of the plant was long gone. To function, the !Kung had to continuously survey the desert in search of water-storing plants. However, when the government, in an attempt to help them, installed a Diesel-powered pump bringing water to the surface, the !Kung stopped surveying the desert and settled around the contraption that provided them with unlimited supply of water. That is, until the Diesel motor broke and the pump stopped pumping. By that time, however, the !Kung lost the ability to locate water-storing plants, and only coincidence (the arrival of the anthropological expedition that made the documentary) saved them from certain death. In that sense, technological progress dulled the cognitive capacity of the !Kung. The documentary, BTW, shows another interesting feature of the !Kung society -- the distribution of resources under conditions of extreme scarcity. The Bushmen had no way of knowing that anthropologists could replenish their water supply in a very short period of time; they thought that the few canisters on the expedition's truck was all the water they got. Yet, the first to receive water were those who needed it the most, the weakest and the sick - children, elderly and animals. That nicely contrasts with "civilised" Americans shooting each other at the gas pumps during the 1970s oil crisis. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: Mythologising native Americans
Heartfield: What I was saying was that the 100 000 Pennsylvania Dutch who squatted land in the eighteenth century after escaping indentured servitude could not be described as capitalists or landlords. There are many landless peasants who are invading the Yanomami Amazon rainforest homeland today. They are not capitalists, but the land they are invading belongs to somebody else. That was also true of 19th century America. The only way one can excuse such land-theft is on the basis of some kind of mad marriage between Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. The Indians were one rung lower on the evolutionary scale, like dinosaurs, and had to make way for a fitter species. Unfortunately, there are aspects of Marx's writings that support this interpretation--I suppose that LM keeps a database of them for handy reference--but this does not make it right. The Boer farmers were fleeing British oppression in South Africa but this did not give them the right to throw black people off their tribal lands and herd them into Bantustans. The South African apartheid state and the USA have an identical racist history as settler states. The reason that South Africa loomed more evil in the 1970s and 80s was because there were 9 blacks for every one white and the injustice was hard to ignore. In the USA, there are less than a million Indians--thanks to the cavalry and smallpox--therefore, sweeping them under the rug requires less effort. But make no mistake, the Black Hills of the Dakotas belong to the Lakota people and not the mining companies who are despoiling them. As a rule of thumb, I would expect justice for American Indians not to take the shape of evicting millions of ordinary people from highly populated areas that used to belong to the Indians. Who in god's name would want to reclaim Cleveland, Ohio any how. In a discussion with a puerile white student in Cleveland, Ward Churchill found himself trying to justify the land-claims of Indians. The student argued, "We knew what to do with the land--unlike you Indians--so we deserve it." Churchill drily replied, "Yes, after you got done with it, the Cayuhoga River caught fire whenever you threw a match into it--no Indians could ever manage this." Let the white people keep Cleveland, etc. but there are millions and millions of acres of this country that are like Canada's. They remain unspoiled, underpopulated and relatively pristine except for the mining, oil and timber companies who are "developing" them commercially. I suspect that the 1868 Laramie treaty that turned control of the Black Hills to the Lakota is a prime example of what a socialist America would move rapidly to re-ratify. Every god-damned uranium mining company would be shut down for good and these sacred hills would be returned to the Lakotas. So no, I don't want to see America depopulated and handed back to the native Americans. I would rather see all of its occupants enjoy equal rights, with land, like any other means of production in common ownership. Nice rhetoric. However, the left should support concrete demands such as that raised by the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee that the 1868 Laramie treaty be respected. It is this demand coupled with respect for fishing rights in various places from Minnesota to Washington State, etc. that genuine socialist politics is grounded in. Your support of equal rights, etc. sounds like the sort of cheap campaign pledges made by a typical bourgeois candidate. Louis Proyect
Blair continues attack on welfare recipients
[The # sign below represents British pounds.] The GuardianMonday January 5, 1998 BENEFIT CUTS REAP £3.2BN EVEN BEFORE WELFARE REVIEW By David Hencke Westminster Correspondent Benefit cuts totalling £3.2 billion are to be imposed by Tony Blair's government over the next two years before the Prime Minister has even started implementing Labour's welfare state review, according to figures produced by the House of Commons library. The findings show in detail the effect of the Government's decisions not to restore recent Tory benefit cuts and to continue to pursue the Conservatives' policies by imposing more cuts later this year on an annual welfare bill which stands at more than £90 billion. The biggest 'windfall' for ministers comes from cutting benefits to the disabled by keeping to the policies of Peter Lilley, the Tory former social security secretary, who replaced invalidity benefit with incapacity benefit. Here an expected £2.5 billion expenditure savings by 2001 would allow Gordon Brown to introduce a tax-cutting budget to woo electors. The cuts are before ministers consider huge savings that could be made by limiting the new disability living allowance or taxing benefits for better-off disabled people. Ministers will also save over £700 million by not restoring Tory cuts affecting the children of lone parents, the unemployed, war pensioners and even £3 million from the destitute, who need to apply for loans to get basics. Two measures to help the poor have been introduced at a cost of £600 million: the £400 million help for winter fuel bills for the next two years; and help for lone parents and families in low-paid work to set childcare costs against claims for family credit, council tax benefit and housing benefit. Even so, the Government is on course for a net saving of more than £2 billion. The figures were obtained by Ann Clwyd, Labour MP for Cynon Valley, after a Labour Party parliamentary liaison committee meeting failed to persuade Mr Blair to change his mind on lone parent benefit cuts. She said: "I have been shocked by the scale of the cuts. Some of them - like taking away industrial injury benefits from retired miners and factory workers - are really mean and I expected a Labour government to reverse them, not continue to follow Tory policies." "I think these figures will bring home to people the scale of the economies. They are likely to lead to the stiffening of resolve among the 47 Labour MPs who have already refused to support the lone parent benefit cuts." Alice Mahon, Labour MP for Halifax, who resigned as parliamentary private secretary to Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, over the lone parent benefit cuts, said: "This is totally unacceptable. These are Tory cuts being implemented by a Labour government and will be bitterly resented and fought not only by Labour MPs but by many members of the Labour Party." She said they would oppose measures such as cuts in backdating benefits that were still to be put before the Commons by Harriet Harman, the Social Security Secretary. The analysis also discloses that Labour has overshot Conservative spending targets because if rising inflation. Ministers have had to spend an extra 600 million above Tory targets to compensate pensioners, children, the disabled and the short-term unemployed. Higher inflation triggered a 3.6 per cent rise in benefits for these groups, instead of a planned 2.5 per cent rise. The long-term unemployed, who receive housing benefit as well, got a 2.4 per cent rise instead of the planned 2.25 per cent. According to the research, Labour has only overturned one proposed Tory benefit cut - the plan to force the single homeless to share accommodation which John Major planned to extend to 25- to 59-year- olds. Labour also exempted severely disabled people aged 18 to 24. David Brindle adds: "The Government's welfare policies are today endorsed by the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs." The institute says Labour is showing courage, lacked by Tory administrations, to break a remorselessly rising trend of benefit dependency. In 1951, the IEA calculates, about 4 per cent of the population relied on national assistance - the means-tested precursor of income support. By 1996, almost 17 per cent of the population was receiving income support. Taking account of housing benefit, council tax benefit, incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance, as much as 30 per cent of the population is said to live on benefits. Up to two 2 million more people could fall into poverty in the next five years unless Labour restores the link broken by the Tories between social security benefits and
Mythologising native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The slave-plantation system was not only integrated into the world circuits of proto-capitalism and then early industrial capitalism, it was at the heart of so-called 'primitive accumulation'. There is a wealth of research by now which shows that slavery was not some subordinate mode of production but was often the best-organised most highly-capitalised branch of capitalism. Well, I don't want to get into a semantic debate about what is and what is not capitaism, but I was guided first by Marx on the Civil War, who characterises it as a war between two systems, and second by Jairus Banaji (Capital and Class #3, 'modes of production debate in a materialist conception of history) who characterises the plantation system as 'capitalist enterprises of patriarchal and feudal character, producing absolute surplus value on the basis of slave labour and a monopoly in land'. The point here is that by no means could exploitation on the basis of unfree labour be considered as typical of capitalism, unless the meaning of capital is to be expanded beyond all usefulness. I can happily agree that slavery played a key role for capitalism, as the importance of slave grown cotton for the English cotton spinners shows. However, it seems doubtful that the plantations were the best-organised most highly-capitalised branch of capitalism Since the low value of workers militated against their replacement by machinery, and the open coercion of slave labour militated against skilled work that is associated with machinery, and indeed against good organisation. Heartfield: But the second dynamic West, principally in the North West, was far from being reactionary or indeed capitalistically inspired. Indeed the settlers in the North West who were driving the frontier on, were immigrants from Europe who were fleeing reaction in Europe, as well as the power of the capitalist class on the Eastern seaboard. This is just as silly. Where on earth did these immigrants come from? From what were they fleeing? At this time, before 1850, they were primarily English, Scottish or north European, and the Irish were beginning to arrive. Why? Ever hear of the Enclosure Movement, the Highland Clearances, the potato Famine, James? Do yoususpect these events were in some way connected to the rise of industrial capitalism? Even before that, emigration from Europe was drivenm by the market forces of proto-capitalism and the growth of the reserve army of labour. I'm really not sure what your point is. I certainly never meant to say that these immigrants were not fleeing from European capitalism. What I was saying was that the 100 000 Pennsylvania Dutch who squatted land in the eighteenth century after escaping indentured servitude could not be described as capitalists or landlords. Nor could the one million Germans who colonised the mid West between 1830 and 1850. Many of these were fleeing the defeat of the German revolution, and they took with them a love of liberty and a fierce spirit of independence: they were no capitalist stooges. These settlers were independent farmers who had gone West to avoid the monopoly power of the Eastern elite. Read: they were driven west thru a porous frontier to avoid being proletarianised. Yes they were persecuted, but they were not simply 'driven'. That is to deny the positive spirit of the settler movement and to reduce these real historical actors to hopeless patsies, which they were not. This is progressive in the same way that everything in capitalism is progressive according to Heartfield: the truth is that large numbers of people were being hounded from one end of the world to the other, and forced to commit atrocities against each other, in the service of and at the mercy of gigantic unfolding forces of world capitalism. There is something Orwellian about Heartfield's inversions. What is Orwellian is the way that you turn opponents of the East Coast establishment into mindless automatons of capitalism. When the US government ceded territories to Indian tribes in the many broken treaties, it was not a sop to those native Americans, it was a deliberate attempt to frustrate the Eastward expansion and its populist influence on US politics. Yes, the Eastern patricians wanted to depress the value of labour-power and had 2 ways to do it: close the frontier in the east or close the frontier in the west, which is what they did in the end. Well I suppose I should be grateful that you understand the relationship between land monopoly and wages. Ground up in the class struggle between proletarians and capitalists in the East, the Indian Nations were faced with one future only: annihilation, either by new incomers AGAINST their easternm masters, or by incomers AT THE BEHEST of eastern capital once it became clear that there were more profits possible from opening the forntier than closing it. For all the rhetorical
Re: Mythologising Native Americans
At 10:09 AM 1/5/98 -0800, Michael Eisenscher wrote, in response to Louis Proyect questioning the accuracy of the "rural idiocy" phrase: Second question: Is our objection as critics of capitalism (and dare I say, proponents of socialism) to urbanization per se or to capitalism and its consequences under circumstances of urbanization? Should we celebrate (romanticize) rural life for its own sake, ignoring the intellectually and culturally stultifying charateristics of rural life under conditions of capitalism and it predecessors? The perception of "rural idiocy" is probably an urban myth. The Russian economist A.V. Chayanov (_The Theory of Peasant Economy_, Madison: The U. of Wisconsin Press, 1986) condicted empirical studies of Russian peasantry before the Revolution and concluded that their system was more sustananle than that proposed by Stalin's reformers. A big part of that sustainability was the autonomous control of the means of production and work by the producers (the peasant household) - which allowed great flexibility in adjusting to outside conditions. From that standpoint, the peasant farmer can be described as a decision-making entrepreneur - by contrast to most urban-style employment (blue and white collar alike) which is largely mindless following the rules. The superstition and stupidity of peasantry might be the product of literary fiction fed to Western urban audiences (cf. _The Painted Bird_ by J. Kosinski). Ethnographic accounts of pre-industrial societies show otherwise. For example, Malinowski's ethnographic work on Triobriand Island clearly shows that magic has definite function -- as a ritualistic control of the environmemnt that beyond control given the level of technology. Malinowski contrasts lagoon fishing (a fairly predictable and controllable operation) and deep-sea fishing (highly risky and unpredictable) and notes that while the latter is surrounded by a host of magic rituals, such rituals are absent from lagoon fishing. he concludes that magic serves as a symbolic substitute for technology. Claude Levi-Strauss (_The Savage Mind_) argues that the "primitive" people were capable of producing classification systems as sophisticated as those found in "advanced" sciences - yet based on a different logic that that found in European thought. Noam Chomsky argues along similar lines pointing that the universal human ability to master a language, the most complex system of expression known, suggests that all people have essentially the same cognitive capacity, regardless of their social class or origins. Of course, modern urban organizations do precisely the same thing -- magic rituals (aka emergency plans, risk management, etc.) to deal with situations the management cannot predict or fully control. This is what Dilbert cartoons are all about, although my favorite example is the continegncy plan prepared by the US Postal Service how to deliver mail after a nuclear attack on the US. The bottom line is that "idiocy" lies not in urban or rural society per se, but in the relative level of decision-making autonomy people have in their everyday lives. By this criterion, the TV-driven American society with taylorised workplaces relegating the solution of minute everday life problems to some form of authority - might be the highest form of idiocy yet known. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233
Re: cm150-l-digest V1 #3
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 22:55:28 -0500 (EST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Communist Manifesto After 150 Years Dear Renee Pendergrass, ?? Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 16:19:20 + From: Lew [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Manifesto I suppose it would be nice if a contributor's primary addressee, when not exactly a household name, were more precisely identified. That goes double for someone like "Lew," from whom we are taking much textual criticism on faith. (OTOH, who am I to talk about murky IDs?) valis "A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication." -- Frantz Fanon
Peoples' Global Action founding conference
This was originally posted by Sid on December 1st, so maybe it's time for a re-run. (Since, as is mentioned at the conclusion, the Swiss visa procedure may be the world's most difficult, the question of the choice of Geneva may long outlive some of the resolutions and plans this conclave produces.) valis **Please help us to distribute this message** From the 23 to the 25 of February 1998, 600 representatives of peoples movements will meet in Geneva to establish a platform for worldwide action against trade liberalisation: the Peoples' Global Action against "Free" Trade and the WTO (PGA). The PGA will work as a tool for coordination, exchange of information and mutual support for the struggles of all those hit by neoliberal globalisation. It calls for non-violent civil disobedience and the construction of local alternatives by local people, as answers to the action of multilateral institutions, governments and corporations. The first big-scale action in the calendar of the PGA will be a wave of decentralised mobilisations and protests all over the world parallel to the Second Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which shall take place on 18-20 May 1998. The meeting in February will be the founding conference of the PGA, since it will lay down the basis of the alliance in the form of a manifesto. It is being convened by a committee formed by some of the most representative peoples' movements of all continents, including peasant movements (like the Brazilian Movimento Sem Terra, the Indian KRRS and the Peasant Movement of the Philippines), indigenous peoples (like the Mexican Zapatistas, the Nigerian Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the Indigenous Women's Network of North America and the Pacific and FIA, a Maori organisation from Aotearoa), unions (like the Central Sandinista de Trabajadores from Nicaragua) and women's organisations (like Mama 86, an organisation of Ukranian women affected by the Chernobyl disaster, and the above mentioned Indigenous Women's Network). Other events will take place around the first PGA conference. From the 18 to the 21 of February, there will be several information and discussion roundtables on topics such as gender, food production, culture, economics, etc., prepared by organisations participating in the conference. On February 22 there will be a one-day intensive seminar on the WTO, the MAI and trade liberalisation. On February 26 there will be a number of coordination and planning sessions in small groups, divided according to the topics treated in the roundtables. Finally, on February 27 there will be a European meeting to launch a Europe-wide movement of civil disobedience against "free" trade. If you want more information about the PGA and its first conference, please visit the web page http://www.agp.org or send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] IMPORTANT: If you are interested in this conference and come from Africa, Asia, Latin America or Central and Eastern Europe, please get in touch with the conference secretariat RIGHT NOW, even if you are not sure about your participation. The Swiss visa procedure is probably the most difficult one in the whole world. There will be limited funds to support the travel expenses of some delegates; you will receive more information about this at the beginning of 1998, but you should anyhow send your application now. Play Fair Europe! e.V. Tel: +49-241-80 37 92 Turmstr. 3 Fax: +49-241-88 88 394 52072 Aachen, Germany email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Next Battle: MAI (Progressive Populist)
___ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST: A MONTHLY JOURNAL FROM THE HEARTLAND January 1998 -- Volume 4, Number 1 ___ EDITORIAL The Next Battle: MAI The good news is that the move to stop "Fast Track" for international freebooters in the House of Representatives has gotten the attention of the Washington elites. The bad news is that the corporate lobby not only will make another run at the House to pass Fast Track this spring, but it will seek to belittle us, divert our attention and neutralize our leaders before the next big battle, over the Multilateral Agreement on Investments. Already we are being dismissed by the State Department as "the flat earth and black helicopter crowd." The government has deposed Teamsters President Ron Carey and is gunning for AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Secretary Richard Trumka, who helped mobilize the anti-Fast Track insurgency; and Congress is aiming to defund unions and other progressive groups that might organize a populist movement. What is at stake with MAI? Ronnie Dugger, co-chair of the Alliance for Democracy, which has made fighting the treaty its top priority, raised the alarm at a public forum in Austin on December 3: "This secretly concocted MAI treaty is all-out war by the transnational corporations on democracy itself. It is the second Cold War." The treaty would protect the rights of international investors, but it also would make it easier to shift production to low-wage countries, without setting standards for fair treatment of employees, environmental protection or anti-competitive practices. It would accelerate the "race to the bottom," as nations would be pressured to lower living standards and weaken environmental safeguards in order to attract capital. Most importantly, the treaty would allow corporations to sue governments if they believe a national, state or local law violates the MAI or poses a barrier to investment. And the corporations could bypass regular U.S. courts and take their complaints to international tribunals or arbitration according to rules set by the International Chamber of Commerce. "We should never give up our right to pass national laws, state laws or local laws in our own interest, but if and when this treaty is adopted, that is exactly what we shall be doing," Dugger said. "GATT, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization [are] steps along the road. MAI is the shoe dropping." Over the past two years the treaty has been drawn up secretly in the basement of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group that represents 27 of the richest nations and two Third World nations - South Korea and Mexico. Yet it was only in January 1997, when a preliminary draft of the document was leaked to the Third World Network, that MAI became semi-public. I say semi-public because although it got some notice in publications such as The Nation, in these pages and on the Internet, it had received scant mention in the corporate-controlled big-city dailies through November. It was ignored during the debate on what sort of trade agreements might get "Fast Track" treatment by Congress. After the Fast Track retreat from the House, Peter Beinart analyzed MAI in the December 15 New Republic as "The Next NAFTA" and R.C. Longworth wrote of MAI in the Chicago Tribune of December 4. Beinart noted that the story has gone "wholly unnoticed in the elite press." Longworth also noted the lack of attention it has received, and observed, "This obscurity seems deliberate." He noted that the Clinton Administration has done nothing to promote public interest. Apparently, if they didn't issue a press release, neither the New York Times, the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times, much less the network news, were interested. We really hate to sound like conspiracy theorists, but there is very little in the conduct and reporting of these treaty negotiations to inspire confidence that U.S. trade officials or media moguls are acting in the best interests of the American people. For more information on MAI, as well as a draft of the treaty, see the Public Citizen web site at [www.citizen.org] or contact the Preamble Center for Public Policy, 1737 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; phone 202-265-3263. For the text of Dugger's remarks, see the Progressive Populist web site at [www.eden.com/~reporter] As for the backlash to the wreck of Fast Track, we don't think it is too much to say the government is retaliating against unions for the more aggressive advocacy of working people's issues. Republicans are sponsoring legislation in Congress and in the states to require unions to get written approval from individual members every year before that member's dues could be used for political purposes. The disqualification of Ron Carey as Teamsters president for
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug Henwood wrote: Can anyone recommend anything good to read on Native Americans/Indians? I found Ronald Wright's _Stolen Continents_ a real education. His account of the Spanish conquest is incredible. If I remember correctly, Wright estimates that 9/10s of the Indian population died from new diseases before the actual military conquest occurred. New research on the (much later) contact here along the Fraser River in B.C. also suggests that 9 out of 10 died in smallpox epidemics (previous research had estimated death rates of about 25%). Such estimates have real political importance, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision that Indians DO have title to much of the land mass of Canada (including most of BC), and establishing continuous occupation and use as one of the criteria for proving title. I look forward to more discussion of the alliances between Indians and the French and British and Americans against each other. Any effort to paint Indians as reactionary for lining up with the British against the Americans is surely out of line. I happened to go to a high school named after the Indian leader Tecumseh, who provided the majority of the actual fighting forces on the British side in the war of 1812, but who was abandoned in battle and killed, and the British promises to provide land for his fighters were, of course, never honored. But they didn't tell us about that in high school! Canadian marxist historian Stanley Ryerson quotes an 18th century historian about the Iroqois strategy: "to hold the scale evenly balanced betwen the two [white] nations, whose mututal jealosy the Iroqois sought by both and ensured their safety". Similarly, he quotes a New York official of the alliances in the earlier French period: "To preserve a balance between us and the French is the great ruling principle of modern Indian politics." Bill Burgess
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Received: from MAILQUEUE by OOI (Mercury 1.21); 5 Jan 98 10:27:35 +800 Return-path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5 Jan 98 10:27:25 +800 Received: from host (localhost [127.0.0.1]) Mon, 5 Jan 1998 10:26:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail1.panix.com (mail1.panix.com [198.7.0.32]) for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 10:22:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from [166.84.250.86] (dhenwood.dialup.access.net [166.84.250.86]) for [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:22:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: l03102815b0d6d5525bb8@[166.84.250.86] Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 13:23:13 -0500 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Marx on Native Americans In-Reply-To: Pine.SUN.3.95.980105090811.358C-10@merlin References: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug Perhaps take a look at Jack Weatherford's "Native Roots" and "Indian Givers". Jim *---* * "Who controls the past, * * James Craven controls the future. * * Dept of Economics Who controls the present,* * Clark College controls the past." (George Orwell)* * 1800 E. Mc Loughlin Blvd.* * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 (360) 992-2283 FAX: (360)992-2863* * [EMAIL PROTECTED]* * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Re: utopias
As a precautionary note, I should say that when I envision a worthwhile society, I generally think in terms of free people forming voluntary associations (though that is perhaps a muddy phrase). Thus, I tend to think of: in what manner(s) will people feel like organizing in? Neither Mike Albert nor I ever intended our "model" of a participatory economy to be a blue print that people should be forced to impliment exactly -- or be whipped with a wet noodle. We always intended it as a substantive contribution to the thinking process about exactly what kinds of organizations would we, or any sensible people, want to form, and how should they work. So, any economy in such a free society would have to be "good" enough to gain participation. Thus, exploitative relations would not exist, as no one would stand for it. This strikes me as overly simplistic... Many who did not intend to enter into exploitative arrangements have found themselves ensnared nonetheless. You seem to be implying that moves toward Parecon would not lead to such "ensnarement". But how would Parecon come into existence, if not by mass politicization and education? Indeed, the same kind of developments that preceeded the Spanish revolution, I should think. Now, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that (explicitly) working toward Parecon WILL help avoid such "ensnarement", whereas a less specific goal such as "democracy" or "no exploitation" would not avoid this sad outcome. In effect, I suppose you are saying that while some "who did not intend to enter into exploitative arrangements have found themselves ensnared nonetheless", those who work toward Parecon will NOT find themselves ensnared. Further, then, this must be due to the fact that Pareconners recognize those ensnaring hazards, or by virtue of their strategy avoid them altogether. Of course, Pareconners are not alone in this ability to recognize lurking exploitation, as anarchist (and other) struggles in Russia and elsewhere indicate. The point that I'm making is that, yes, of course revolutionary movements should seek to identify and eliminate these unacceptable seeds of exploitation such as markets and hierarchical workplaces. Yet, even fully-informed anarcho-pareconners might still avoid certain aspects of a full-blown Parecon for cultural or other reasons. That's it. That's my point- not a very big one, but it did suffice to get Mike Albert to request that I come up with an alternative to Parecon if I thought it had so many flaws. I think he missed my point; I don't pretend to know what alternatives people would invent in te course of a revolution, though I admire the Parecon effort. To be even more long-winded, I would pose the analogy of anarchist justice systems. Some anarchists say that the only form of societal control should be reasoning with deviants to convince them not to rape or murder or maim. Goodman, among others, has suggested more sophisticated, yet still stateless and democratic, methods. He suggests that existing anarchist institutions (economic and cultural, etc.) serve as forums to punish transgressors e.g. denying membership, on the basis that its members don't want to associate with a rapist. The parallels to Parecon are notable, I think. Both anticipate a problem and offer a democratic solution, based on common sense really. And both may or may not be adopted by a libertarian socialist society- they may find other ways to deal with economic and criminal problems that we haven't thought of. I would say the same thing to Goodman as I do to you and Mike: sounds good to me, I'm all for it. But I won't bet that things will turn out that way. Regards, Dave Markland Winnipeg, Canada
Synchronicity from/with India
=== Surely the stars are smiling, or at least lurking along with me. valis Date: Sat, 27 Dec 1997 11:53:30 -0500 (GMT) From: "Dr. Gail Omvedt Faculty-Sociology" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear friends, We are holding a seminar at the University of Pune in February on "Ecology, Survival and First Nations." Due to minimal funding we have been unable to finance any foreign air travel, and so have to make do with resources here. We could use any material (recent papers, summaries, class notes) any of you might have on the development and significance of the concept of "First Nations" in North America. Just please forward it to this address. With many thanks, Gail Omvedt
Re: M-I: Blaut on Indian death
At 07:26 PM 1/4/98 -0500, you wrote: Doug: This claim is NOT controversial in the literature. The best known popular account is Alfred Crosby's THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE. Also see McNeill's PLAGUES AND PEOPLE. The classic sources are monographs and papers by Woodrow Borah et al. This fact -- of the crucial importance of disease in the conquest of the Americas -- was not really known until maybe 20 years ago. However, this does not obscure the bloody deeds of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Jim Blaut It is very important to realize that some people raise the issue of disease-caused deaths precisely to "obscure the bloody deeds." I have in mind specifically a long review of Kirkpatrick Sale's "Conquest of Paradise" that Columbia University historian Simon Schama wrote for the New York Review of Books. The review, like much of Heartfield's stuff, was apologetics for these "bloody deeds" that Jim Blaut is referring to. Schama makes two points essentially: 1) Disease killed most of the indigenous peoples, not the sword. 2) Genocide was carried out by the strong tribes against the weak tribes long before Columbus. Hence, the crimes of the Europeans is made to appear more like misdemeanors. I plan to track down this rancid essay before this thread is done. It is a fountainhead for all of the excuses for genocide from the bourgeosie, and complements Heartfield's "Marxist" excuses. Louis Proyect Addendum: Bourgeois economics assumes GIVEN distributions of income/wealth and GIVEN distributions of property ownership simply because the very same principles and laws that legitimate those GIVENS call into question those GIVENS. This is but one of the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism. For example, if I aquire property through a "free exchange" but later the contract can be shown to be unconscionable, under bougeois law, that contract--and therefore my ownership--can be declared null and void. I suspect that Proudhon was more sophisticated than he was given credit for when he declared "property is theft." The apologists of capitalism are well aware of this and other contradictions and attempt to get around it by saying "Well the Indians were primitive communalists who had no concept of private property or private ownership of land "therefore" how can one expropriate, steal from or rob private property from those who had no concept of private property? The apology for plunder goes further with this bullshit about which was more responsible for mass deaths of Indians: diseases or forced expropriations and murders? Whether diseases were introduced by accident, by conscious design or the byproduct of other forms of genocide, it is absolutely clear that a succession of U.S. regimes had deliberate, conscious and calculated policies for the wholesale destruction of Indians and violent expropriation of Indian ancestral lands. The plight of Indians is especially troublesome for bourgeois society because by virtue of those very same principles of private property and bourgeois law that are held sacred and legitimate existing GIVEN property ownership structures, the conclusion that Indian lands were violently stolen is inexorable. We can also add the whole missionary/boarding school systems as instruments not only for conversion and paradigm manipulation/control, but also as systems for continuing the robbing of Indian lands. My mother, a member of the Big Bear Clan of the Piegan (Pikuni) Tribe of the Blackfeet Nation was taken from Fort Hall, Idaho and raised as a Jew. Those who took my mother (and saved her from the Mormons) took not only her history and roots (luckily in my mother's case the Mormons who took children, as geneology freaks documented their backgrounds for their files in Salt Lake City even for the adopted-out the children who were found too difficult to convert), but also any claims to ancestral lands when they were broken up and parceled out to individual Indians. The point is that the history is clear and there were various methods/instruments for accomplising a long history of cultural, spiritual, racial, national and tribal destruction that continues to the present day. Arguing about which method was most used is like differentiating Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Communists on the basis of whether they were starved, gassed, shot, hanged or whatever. The situation of Indians, like the situation of African-Americans (Blacks?) and other oppressed groups represent for capitalism and U.S. society an ongoing problem of extreme congnitive dissonance. For those who celebrate the supreme "morality", "decency", "democracy", "efficiency", "spread effects" etc of U.S. capitalism and U.S. society, they have, in their face, constantly, the realities and histories of Indians, African-Americans, Workers and other oppressed whose oppression and expropriation built and shaped the past and present GIVENS assumed so easily and
Re: M-I: Blaut on Indian death
At 07:26 PM 1/4/98 -0500, you wrote: Doug: This claim is NOT controversial in the literature. The best known popular account is Alfred Crosby's THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE. Also see McNeill's PLAGUES AND PEOPLE. The classic sources are monographs and papers by Woodrow Borah et al. This fact -- of the crucial importance of disease in the conquest of the Americas -- was not really known until maybe 20 years ago. However, this does not obscure the bloody deeds of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Jim Blaut It is very important to realize that some people raise the issue of disease-caused deaths precisely to "obscure the bloody deeds." I have in mind specifically a long review of Kirkpatrick Sale's "Conquest of Paradise" that Columbia University historian Simon Schama wrote for the New York Review of Books. The review, like much of Heartfield's stuff, was apologetics for these "bloody deeds" that Jim Blaut is referring to. Schama makes two points essentially: 1) Disease killed most of the indigenous peoples, not the sword. 2) Genocide was carried out by the strong tribes against the weak tribes long before Columbus. Hence, the crimes of the Europeans is made to appear more like misdemeanors. I plan to track down this rancid essay before this thread is done. It is a fountainhead for all of the excuses for genocide from the bourgeosie, and complements Heartfield's "Marxist" excuses. Louis Proyect
