Re: Said on US-Iraq
In message Pine.GSO.3.95.980212050159.29227A-10@earth, valis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The period of imitation of the West, both in social norms and ideology, is over and widely discredited, which is why Islam is resurgent. This old-new cycle will have to play itself out first; if autarky becomes a serious part of the Islamic agenda, the cycle will be aggravated by force and threats of force from the West. I think this view grants more initiative to 'resurgent Islam' than it really enjoys. The 'autarkic' tendencies in modern islamic states and movements, are much more a consequence of the anti-arabic current in Western policy than they are a purely indigenous development. It should be remembered that the US covertly backed Islamic movements in Afghanistan and Palestine as an alternative to Communist influence. The fact that these have survived and flourished is much more to do with the diminished capacity of the left to articulate a sustained opposition to imperialism. Since 1979 Iran has been a more vocal critic of Western intervention than any other world power. It is hardly surprising that arabs clothe their hostility to the West in Islamic colours. Those arab leaders whose authority can be traced back to the left- nationalist movements of the sixties (however much they represent in fact a reversal of that movement), as in Algeria and Egypt, were severely destablised by their support for the operation desert Storm. Both countries have suffered from popular 'fundamentalist' oppositions. On the BBC this morning, Tim Llewelyn reports that there are more posters of Saddam Hussein on the West Bank than there are of Arafat. The older movements of the sixties are pretty much discredited. So-called 'Islamic fundamentalism' is a far from monolithic movement, that in large part simply expresses the disaffection of Arabs from the West. I don't know if the previous period could be described as 'imitation of the West', or that arabs today do not aspire to Western living standards and development. The point is more that whenever they come close to them, as Iraq did in the period prior to the Gulf war, the West bombs them back into what one UN report described as 'pre- industrial' conditions. What is particular sick in all of this, is that a nation that has been effectivly reduced to destitution, should be described as a 'threat' when it is a threat to no one, while the countries that are provoking a war in the Gulf, the US and Britain, are allowed to gather weapons of mass destruction without a challenge. fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: clarification-individualism
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Let's see. I buy a Nike or a Disney Product, made by a little girl for $.22 an hour in Haiti. John S. Mill would approve. I am not hurting these children. I sit back in my life of ease. That's ok. I am not hurting anyone. My company sends its toxic waste to Africa (certified by Larry Summers) or put it on some Native American lands after giving some money to a corrupt leader. But that's ok. I rely on the invisible hand, behind which all the victims are invisible. Am I only complict if I attack the victims directly, face-to-face? So you are saying that everyone that buys Nike or Disney goods is responsible for the exploitation of their workforce. Well, that lets the chief exec at Nike off the hook! Maybe your life is a life of ease, or maybe when you say 'my company' you mean the company you own rather than the company you work for. In that case you should feel guilty. But I don't own Nike, though I have owned a pair of Nike trainers. I don't think that buying trainers means that you are victimising or attacking the workforce. That's too easy an alibi for the people who are paying those wages. Let's put the blame where it lies, not indulge in a guilt- fest. As Freud said guilt is just self-indulgence. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Northern Ireland and Blair's US visit
This is for US subscribers, excepted from the Sinn Fein newsletter: - Urgent action required for H-Block 3 A sign-on letter is being circulated in Congress calling on President Clinton to grant bail to the H-Block 3 in San Francisco, three Irish political prisoners held without bail in California pending extradition to a British jail in the north of Ireland. Kevin Barry Artt, Pol Brennan and Terry Kirby need your help. Call your local member of Congress and ask him / her to sign on to the letter The letter is being circulated by the following Congresspeople Representative Jim Walsh, Chair, Congressional Friends of Ireland The Co-Chairs of the Ad-Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs: Representative Ben Gilman, Representative Peter King, Representative Richard Neal, Representative Tom Manton Tell Your Congressperson to contact one of the above offices about signing on to the letter in support of the H-Block 3 TELL THE WHITE HOUSE THAT YOU SUPPORT THE RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE CONGRESSIONAL LETTER President Bill Clinton The White House Tel: (202) 456-1414 -- Fax: (202) 456-2461 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] TIME IS CRITICAL THE PRESIDENT NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU BEFORE TONY BLAIR ARRIVES ON WEDNESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 1998 ___ Blair visit to DC marked by vigil and fast During the last month Nationalist communities in the north of Ireland have been terrorized by the stepped-up systematic killing spree by loyalist paramilitary gangs. In recent weeks, eight innocent people were killed, keeping with the loyalist motto "Any Catholic will do." Gerry Coleman, Director of the Political Education Department for Irish Northern Aid said "The sectarian slaughter of innocent people is nothing new. It is a product of an undemocratic and artificial statelet that must go." British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will be visiting Washington, DC on February 3-5. Beginning at 7:00 p.m. on February 2, Irish Northern Aid will sponsor a 24-hour vigil and fast outside of the British Embassy. The vigil will have nationwide participation. The final hour will include a Candlelight Remembrance Ceremony while participants observe a minute of silence for the murdered victims during this recent phase of the 'peace process.' It is time for all peoples to recognize the horrors that are continuing unabated in Ireland. It is time for justice and a legitimate peace process. Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- James Heartfield
Re: Ken Starr
In message l03102806b0f789b5b05f@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Apologies to all you non-USers - and maybe a few USers too - who don't share the present obsession with Tailgate. Don't apologise. The whole world waits with baited breath to see what the President will come up with (if that's not too graphic an image). In Britain the press has manufactured a mirror image scandal around foreign secretary Robin Cook so artificial that one is bound to set prejudice aside and defend the Labour government against its critics. I understand that in the Middle East newspapers are reporting the impending conflict over weapons-inspectors as 'The War of Clinton's Penis' (as reported by Tam Dalyell MP in parliament). The out-of-control character of the Special Prosecutors' Office is an interesting warning for Britain, where parliamentary regulators were given powers higher than those of parliament (previously a taboo in British constitutional theory) for the first time. Permanent scandal is getting to be the norm for the political process in most countries. -- James Heartfield
Re: Ken Starr
In message l03102805b0f90ec15daf@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James Heartfield wrote: Permanent scandal is getting to be the norm for the political process in most countries. Replacing real politics, I suppose, a process the U.S. probably leads the world in. I wrote this commentary for LM Online, comparing the US and British scandals. Any criticism - especially on the US side of things gratefully received: Sex scandals James Heartfield explains why hes not prepared to swallow the latest stories coming from the Whitehouse For the last two weeks America and Britain have been in the grip of sex scandals - scandals about US President Clintons alleged adultery and harassment of women, and scandals about British Foreign Secretary Robin Cooks separation from his wife and relation to his lover. This is one instance where LM Online is happy to rally to the defence of Bill Clinton and Robin Cook. Not only are the allegations against them both trivial, but even if they were entirely true they would be of no account. The gravest charges against President Clinton are those made by Paula Jones in a sexual harassment suit that is being supported by the Special Investigator Kenneth Starr. Paula Jones allegations, even if they were true, are at worst the description of a misunderstanding between two adults. But without any direct evidence they are simply unprovable. The attempt to establish a pattern of behaviour by dredging through the Presidents past are a scurrilous attempt to smear Clinton and prejudice people against him - in the hopes that prejudice will substitute for a real case. The latest tittle-tattle standing in for news reporting is the Monica Lewinsky allegations. This parlour room gossip is dressed up as serious allegations on the spurious grounds that Clinton told Lewinsky to perjure herself in the Jones trial by denying an affair. But again there is no proof behind these allegations. Similarly, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook is berated for trying to sack a civil servant so that he could get his girlfriend Gaynor Regan the job. Cook is also challenged for taking Regan along on foreign trips as his spouse. These high moral principles about perjury, perks and civil servants are just an excuse for Conservatives and Republicans to stir up the sexual scandals and keep them in the public eye. According to Hillary Clinton, the allegations against her husband are part of a right-wing conspiracy. It is true that the Right has rallied behind Kenneth Starr, but there is no need for a conspiracy theory to explain the scandals. In fact the descent into scandal has more to do with the failures of the right-wing opposition - in Britain and in America. Rather contesting the policies of Blair and Clinton, the right have latched onto sexual and other scandals to make up for their lack of a political alternative to New Labour and New Democrats alike. But more than the politicians, it is the press that has fuelled the scandal-mania. The British press are pre-occupied with Labour scandals in much the same way that they obsessed on Tory scandals in previous years. Labours honeymoon with the press would seem to be over (though Tony Blair has managed to rise, presidentially, above the gutter- sniping). There is a great deal that the British press could criticise the Blair cabinet for. Labours many attacks on civil liberties, or its refusal to pay the nurses the award recommended by the independent review are an example. But New Labour is rarely criticised for its policies. There is a consensus in Britain that political differences are best swept under the carpet, in case they provoke any real conflict. In America, too, there is no real criticism of what Bill Clinton is doing - except what he does with his fly open. Bipartisanship is the order of the day between the Democratic President and the Republicans in Congress. There the press are equally craven about the Presidents policies. The British and American press both glory in their role as a check on the power of the politicians. But the truth is that the press have manufactured bogus scandals to embarrass the politicians, while going along with all the regressive social policies - from criminalising children to welfare cutbacks. An additional force behind the US scandals has been the role of the Special Investigator Kenneth Starr. The existence of this permanent legal investigator into any and all allegations against the incumbent president is a sneaks charter. Any accusation, no matter how cranky, is investigated, without any end-point ever coming into view. Starr began looking at the Whitewater affair - an investigation into real estate speculation. Now Starr has lumped in the latest sexual harassment scandals. Starr is alleged to be politically motivated. He might well be, but the principal motivation is the office itself. The role of Special Investigator was created after the Watergate era, as a check
Re: ForniGate?
In message l03102801b0ee9eb90a06@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Tom Walker wrote: It's only a matter of time before Clinton's current scandal becomes known as "ForniGate" On another list, "Tailgate" was suggested. Doug On the cover of today's Daily Mirror newspaper (UK): 'Fornigate' -- James Heartfield
Re: on the meaning of success
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Thomas Kruse [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes From today's NYT: To the liberal critique [of the IMF Asia bail out plans], Rubin responded that human rights, workplace issues and the environment, while important, should be not be thrown into the maelstrom of bringing an international financial crisis under control. "To add these three objectives, however important, would vastly complicate this effort and greatly reduce its chances of success," Rubin said. Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rubin's reasons might be suspect, but the idea of the IMF enforcing human rights, workplace issues and so on seems pretty retrograde to me. I've just finished William Greider's book in which he suggests that workers rights could be demanded of America's trading partners as a condition of trade. In both cases you would depending on the entrenched power of capital to defend workers' interests, and, at the same time, giving the West a stick to beat its rivals in Asia with. I think there is something creepy about those Western leaders who complain about low wages in every country but their own. -- James Heartfield
Re: Ireland civil rights III
In message Pine.GSO.3.95.980121182633.12844D-10@earth, valis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Are you asserting through this quote that Sinn Fein _never_ had a serious left agenda? How can a subject people located a mere spit from yesterday's most rapacious imperial power have conceived of independence through any other schema? Answer to the whole list, for I have nothing more to say. Ireland's republican movement always had a rather strained relation with the left intrnationally, as much because of the left's shortcomings on Irish independence as the Republicans' anti-leftism. In the fifties the IRA came under the influence of Stalinism and turned its back on the struggle against Britain. The Provisional IRA reversed this policy in favour of confrontation with Britain and the defence of Ulster's catholic community against sectarian attacks. As they did so they renounced left politics, especially of the Marxist variety, as a deviation from the principles of republicanism. That meant that the correct turn against Britain was tied up with an anti-communist ideology. Republicanism in the seventies moved closer to the general mood of radicalism and liberation on the left, but was always wary of politics, which it tended to see as a deviation from the armed struggle. Adams' turn towards negotiation is the most political period in the life of the Republican movement since the civil war of 1921. Unfortunately Sinn Fein's programme is largely undeveloped since then, and has quickly fallen away in the face of a lot of rhetoric about mutuality, parity of esteem and de-militarisation - most of it on the El Salvador/ South Africa peace and reconciliation model. Without doubt Republicans fought the British state to a stand-still in their own backyard - no mean feat. But in terms of political trajectory there was no greater programmatic development than the demand for national independence. Britain's inflexible stance on sovereignty tended to obscure the short-comings of the nationalist programme, but their more flexible approach in the 'peace' talks has wrong-footed Republicans. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Ireland civil rights II
In message Pine.GSO.3.95.980121124314.9867C-10@earth, valis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James Heartfield concluded: It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have come away with less than even Yasser Arafat settled for. A pretty pointless comparison, since Arafat had no discernible ideological objectives beyond securing some land and hoisting a flag. Can somebody tell me otherwise? Wouldn't that make it a very close comparison? Adams had no discernible ideological objectives beyond securing some land and hoisting a flag. These are the latest weasel words from Sinn Fein: Sinn Fein's preferred new arrangement is a unitary Ireland with a central government and a system of regional councils. The status quo is not an option, the paper states: there can be no internal settlement and there is a need for a balanced agenda of issues to be resolved that must be "inclusive and comprehensive". Said party President Gerry Adams: "It is Sinn Fein's consistent view that an agenda for talks, or propositions for Heads of Agreement or a framework for a settlement, must be inclusive and comprehensive. It needs to be a bridge to the future, not a u-turn to the past". Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Baudrillard
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ricardo Duchesne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes It is not "you" or "I"; it is us: the war in Irak was presented to us in TV in the form of video games. It wan't much, I know, but when we organised demonstrations against the intervention we changed our experience of the war from a passive one to an active one. That intervention widened our experience of the war. If I had not been working on Living Marxism magazine, I probably would not have seen Simon Norfolk's photographs of Iraqis protesting againt the West (or that they had adopted the British left's slogan against Margaret Thatcher 'Thatcher, Thatcher, Milk Snatcher' to draw a parallel between the way that the one-time education secretary had removed free school milk and the Prime Minister had bombed a milk-powder plant). If I hadn't been active in the Hands off the Middle East Committee, I might never have seen the uncensored film of the Basra High-Road slaughter smuggled out by one BBC correspondent, which we showed to highlight the West's all too real role in the Gulf War. It isn't necessary to take the media's presentation of the conflict on face value, you can find out for yourself what happened. Many of those I met in the campaign aginst intervention did, like Felicity Arbuthnot, a peace campaigner who went to Iraq to find out what was really happening behind the headlines. She has done much to popularise the case of those Iraqis suffering under sanctions. So too did Kayode Olafamihan and Hugh Livingstone did. You can read their report at http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM81/LM81_Iraq.html Since you want to play "reality" games, how much "wider" were those events not experienced by the potatoes? Well, the experience of those who were bombed was certainly different from that of those who watched the events on TV. I guess you could say this, keeping in mind that Baudrillard does not celebrate but criticizes our post-modern society; and criticism presupposes enlightenment... Does he criticise or celebrate. I read Fatal Strategies as the latter. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Baudrillard
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ricardo Duchesne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Nothing absurd about Baudrillard's analysis of the Gulf war. Wouldn't Baudrillard be disappointed with the judgement that his work was not absurd? The war was hardly "real" in that we merely experienced it through a series of entangled simulated images Mediated is not the same as unreal. 180 000 Iraqis were killed in the initial raids. Tens of thousands more have died since as a result of the embargo on Iraqi oil, and the shortages of medicine and foodstuffs. ...Callinicos is not to be trusted on Baudrillard, or any postmodernist; he has yet to outgrow the infantilism of international revolution. Does postmodernism aim at maturity? I don't think so. Is it maturity to make peace with the United Nations continuing war against the Iraqi people, or to pretend that it is all spectacle? Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Baudrillard
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ricardo Duchesne [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Mediated is not the same as unreal. 180 000 Iraqis were killed in the initial raids. Tens of thousands more have died since as a result of the embargo on Iraqi oil, and the shortages of medicine and foodstuffs. But that's not how we experienced the war; the images had no relation to the war whatever, yet debated as if they were authentic by the experts in TV. You might have exprienced the war through the medium of TV, or you could have experienced the war through the medium of the many solidarity campaigns. In any event, immediate experience is not the test of what is real, unless of course, rality is limited to 'what is real for you'. But there were events taking place that were wider than the average couch potato's range of experience. ...Callinicos is not to be trusted on Baudrillard, or any postmodernist; he has yet to outgrow the infantilism of international revolution. Does postmodernism aim at maturity? I don't think so. Is it maturity to make peace with the United Nations continuing war against the Iraqi people, or to pretend that it is all spectacle? This does not follow. My point was that Callinicos book on postmodernism - in which he completely dismisses Baudrillard - should be seen for what it is: a childish response to new reflections about the world. Sorry for not being clear: My first point is that in introducing the differentiation mature/childish you are participating in the value schema shared between enlightenment and Marxist thinking, ie developmental or progressive. A post-modernist would surely embrace the badge of the enfant terrible with pride. IE from Baudrillard's point of view, Callinicos is too mature and not childish enough. In my old-fashioned view that maturity is indeed a better thing than childishness, I take Baudrillard's temper tantrum as evidence of childishness. -- James Heartfield
Re: M-I: Russell Means, the RCP and Jean Baudrillard
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Russell Means, a leader of the Wounded Knee occupation, presented a paper titled "The Same Old Song." It is a challenge to dogmatic Marxism and a powerful one at that. He says:"But, as I've tried to point out, this 'truth' is very deceptive. Look beneath the surface of revolutionary Marxism and what do you find? A commitment to reversing the industrial system which created the need of white society for uranium? No. A commitment to guaranteeing the Lakota and other American Indian peoples real control over the land and resources they have left? No, not unless the industrial process is to be reversed as part of their doctrine. A commitment to our rights, as peoples, to maintaining our values and traditions? No, as long as they need the uranium within our land to feed the industrial system of the society, the culture of which the Marxists ARE STILL A PART." Churchill does have kind words for Jean Baudrillard's "The Mirror of Production." According to Churchill, Baudrillard reaches many of the same conclusions that he, Means and Deloria have reached. "Radical in its logical analysis of capital, Marxist theory nonetheless maintains an anthropological consensus with the options of Western rationalism in its definitive form acquired in eighteenth century bourgeois thought. Science, technique, progress, history--in these words we have an entire civilization that comprehends itself as producing its own development and takes its dialectical force toward completing humanity in terms of totality and happiness. Nor did Marx invent the concept of genesis, development and finality. He changed nothing basic: nothing regarding the idea of man producing himself in his infinite determination, and continually surpassing himself toward his own end." This of course is the natural trajectory of contemporary indegenism (which has nothing much to do with the actual lives of indegenous peoples). Louis Proyect is right to say that post-modernism and indigenism have the same outlook, because both are an expression of the anti-enlightenment thinking. From this reactionary standpoint it is right to say that Marxism and Capitalism share the same prejudice towards progress and development. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Capitalism produces a whole host of slick facades to "show" that choices are indeed free choices or if they are even "constrained choices", we are all constrained and they are choices nontheless. But the reality is that what appears to be "consensual" is the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less money but rather no money; the "consent" given when the alternative is not simply less comfortable shelter but rather no shelter; the "consent" given when the alternative is a slow and horrible death. This is all very well, but you seem to be arguing that there is no difference between wage slavery and slavery, or between adulthood and childhood. To argue that the power of capital is coercive surely does not mean that we might as wll be slaves, does it? -- James Heartfield
Re: Final Comment
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], James Michael Craven [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes But just as these privileged few don't speak for me (also one of the "privileged few" in relative terms) and certainly do not speak for the part-time teachers or the grounds keepers, so no hooker from Canberra can speak for all "sex workers"--like a teenage Blackfeet girl in Great Falls or a sex slave in Patpong--just because she is doing tricks and is a self-proclaimed "activist" for sex workers. Surely nobody disagrees with the idea that sex-slavery or underage prostitution is wrong. The sex-workers comments were not aimed at coerced or non-consensual prostitution, but at prostitutes who bject to being criminalised in the name of saving their honour. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: M-I: Mythologising Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes 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 man who is tired of London is tired of life, Dr Johnson said. Like Mark Jones, Louis Proyect's rural idyll is just the inverted projection of his hatred of the masses. It is not that he likes native Americans, its that he doesn't like those teeming masses of immigrant Americans, with their vulgar cars and music. This is the original motivation of the idea of the noble savage, the romantic rejection of modern life, the retreat into an idealised past. This kind of idea is commonplace amongst the landed gentry in England. Sir Laurens Van Der Post, close confident of Prince Charles and all round mystic used to wax lyrical about the Kalahari bushmen and their noble simplicity - we all knew that what he really meant was that he didn't like all those pushy industrial workers in Britain. So much easier to have someone that you can patronise from a distance. 'Listen to Shamans' I ask you! The idea that this kind of obscurantist rubbish has got anything to do with socialism is absurd. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Mythologising native Americans
flourishes here, you do seem at least to understand that the interests of the settlers and those of the native Amricans were inimical. What you seem to understand less well is that the means of keeping the border closed, and hence depress wages, was to unilaterally grant land to Indian tribes. These property titles were not an expression of the interests of native Americans but of a desire to restrain the Westward expansion on the part of the Eastern elites. In fact this policy ensured that there could be no common ground between settlers and native Americans. It is a pity that Louis Godena gives aid and comfort to this kind of miserable posturing. What Heartfield wants to say but is still afraid to openly pronounce, is that winning the West was a good thing and so was the way it was won. Like Louis P's pronouncements, this suffers from a misplaced moralism, that gets in the way of real understanding. What do I think of the genocide of native Americans? I think it was a grotesque evil. In these posts I have tried to explain that it was the way that the colonial and East coast ruling classes used native Americans as a border police that put them on a collision course with the settlers. If you want to talk about lost opportunities, there is a story to be written about the initial attitude of settlers, such as the quakers, towards cooperation with native Americans. But more to the point, what are we to make of the United States today? On the one hand, this is a nation built upon barbarism, towards indigenous people, towards its own subject class, and towards the oppressed of the world. On the other hand the 200 million or so north Americans are amongst the most creative part of humanity, whose contribution to human civilisation is second to none. 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. On Rakesh's account of the AIM in the seventies, it sounds plausible enough as far as the well-springs of the movement itself goes, but more interesting, is why the American left, having, one suspects, ignored the issue, adopted the cause of the native Americans. I suggest, like much of the 'new social movements' rhetoric, has more to do with a failure to make any great inroads into the American working class, than with a particular dynamic within those movements. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes What we differ on is the substantial question of social justice. You side with the land thieves, I side with the victims. You confuse questions of history with questions of policy. I'm not taking sides with anyone in history because it has already happened and cannot be reversed. History for me is first a question of the truth, not of striking moral poses. I want to understand how things change, you want to kid yourself that nothing ever changes. (quoting Marx) How, then, to heal the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies? ... Let the Government put upon virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the law of supply and demand, a price tht compels the immigrant to work for a long time for wages before he can earn enough to buy land and turn himself into an independent peasant.' p721-2. LW ed. Virgin soil? Yes, I've heard this before. What was Zionism after all: Hmmm. So now Marx is a Zionist. I've heard that one before. A people without land looking for a land without people. It doesn't matter if Marx used the term "virgin soil." This does not make it right, for god's sake. Right does not come into it. It happened. It cannot be undone. Unless of course your appeal to God almighty is less rhetorical than I think. It was a barbaric misrepresentation of American civilization. The Native Americans were living here minding their own business and colonial settlers stole their land. Like Ricardo who thought that the cavemen consulted the stock exchange before exchanging fish and furs, you have native Americans doing business and owning land - but you cannot steal what was never owned. Strip away the property fetish if you want to understand what happened. The Native Americans were slaughtered, not robbed. Property rights are alien to native American culture. And you apologize for this by quoting the more unfortunate aspects of Marx and Engels. I'm not apologising for anything. Nor were Marx and Engels, who you finally appreciate shared none of your moralistic fervour, but preferred a scientific understanding of history, without the hystrionics. The most blood-stained settler state in the world is the USA and the Seminoles et al, and African-Americans deserve restitution. It is really not an issue that can solved in the state of Florida by itself. It has to be settled on a national and global level. No Seminole has asked for the state of Florida to be returned, by the way. Then it was a bit premature of you to offer it to them. These questions are popping up everywhere in the world today. The NY Times reported that Mugabe is threatening to finally expropriate the rich white settlers and give the land to the land-based Zimbabweans. The whites complain about the injustice that is about to be done to them. Poor dears, where will they go. Israelis have from the day of the birth of their nation constructed a wagon-circling ideology directed at the Palestinians who want to "drive them into the sea." Settler states have accounts to pay and that's that. Quite different questions altogether. In Zimbabwe land-ownership and the displacement of blacks is a social condition of their exploitation at the hands of white farmers today. There property in land is the instrument of exploiting black labour in the here and now, not an historical question. In Israel, the principle motor of the Zionist occupation is political: the subordination of the Arab people as a whole. Opposition to Israel is a question of the self determination of the Palestinian people. Within Palestine the land question is more traditional in the sense that Israel has become dependent on Palestinian workers - but even there the principle motives for settlement are political control, rather than economic exploitation. Needless to say, the United States in no sense resembles a settler state like Zimbabwe or Israel, since native Americans do not constitute the exploited class in the US. No matter to Louis, for whom understanding the specificity of distinctive historical periods is just a distraction from the true lesson of history: nothing ever changes. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Again it is difficult to talk sense into Louis when accusations like FBI membership collusion with genocide and other emotionalism is in the air, but here goes. In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The American Indians did not have a concept of land ownership like Donald Trump's, but they certainly did have a concept of territoriality. Heartfield is aware of this, I'm sure, since he has been anxious to remind us of the intermittent wars between various tribes, who fought over hunting grounds typically. Not quite. Territoriality is a long way from property. The wars amongst native Americans were not *over* anything. As kinship groups they were irresolutely hostile. It is just ahistorical to read capitalist competition back into these societies. Both the American government and the tribes understood the territorial rights of the Indians, since the evidence of such an agreement can be found in the myriad of treaties that they hammered out and which the whites betrayed over and over again. This is just surreal. Louyis should ask why the US govt. like the British govt. before it recognised native American land rights. Was this some love of justice on their part? In all other respects native Americans were denied the basic civil liberties of US citizens. So why should the US courts suddenly reverse their position and embrace native Americans as legal subjects? Only the most naive would be taken in by this charade. The so-called treaties (in fact unilateral impositions by the more powerful force) only negotiated the retreat of the Indian tribes. Their terms were onerous. The 'property' that they granted was not property in any sense enjoyed by US citizens. It was not theirs to dispose. On the contrary. These treaties weere ghettoes, as their degeneration into 'reservations' for the management of native Americans by 'Indian Agents', like Custer, who were appointed to 'manage' this property on their behalf. It is difficult to imagine a more fictitious land title than that granted to native American tribes. That much is forcefully demonstrated by the ease with which these treaties were unilaterally overturned by the US govt. The sense in which the US govt. understood the territorial rights of the Indians Is explained by Louis himself The treaty of 1851 was subverted through a provocation by the capitalist government. This treaty was violated, just as the 1851 treaty was violated. the US Cavalry attacked at dawn, slaughtering 150 poorly armed Indians. The architect of this "victory" was Indian agent under the treaties George Custer. Heartfield hates these treaties as much as the capitalist class did and finds all sorts of "Marxist" reasons to throw them into a bonfire and piss on them while they burn. Again, I neither hate nor love the treaties. They are there, and they ought to be understood. But they were based on law and were not at all "fictional." Touching faith in the law. The Supreme Court of the United States and state supreme courts are called upon to adjudicate them constantly. All power to the Supreme Court All these cases involve land claims made by Indians on the basis of various treaties. Like them or not, neither - like has nothing to do with it they are real, not fictional. And yet, strangely, afforded native Americans no protection whatsoever against the invasion of these lands and the slaughter of their inhabitants. Native American land rights proved about as 'real' as the rights of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. As to the honouring of these treaties today, what role exactly does land ownership play in socialism? -- James Heartfield
Marx on the Westward expansion of the US
Marx on the Westward expansion in the US It would be a mistake to impose upon the real history of the United States a model of development derived from Capital's account of primitive accumulation in Western Europe, as Marx himself says: 'The chapter on primitive accumulation [in Capital] claims no more to trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist economic order emerged from the womb of the feudal economic order. ... He [a Russian, not Louis P] absolutely insists on transforming my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical-philosophical theory of the general course fatally imposed on all peoples, whatever the historical circumstances in which they find themselves placed'. Karl Marx: a letter to the Editorial Board of Otechestvennye Zapiski. This appears in "Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and 'The Peripheries of Capitalism" by Teodor Shanin, Monthly Review 1983 In fact Marx wrote extensively on the Westward expansion in the US, which, he argued operated under different principles in North and South, neither of which could be argued to be simply capitalistic. In the South he considered the expansion wholly regressive, and indicative of the perverse system of the plantation, that was incapable of intensive growth, and only increased production extensively through the conquest of more territory. Fortunately, he argued, the perverse development of the South was offset by the wholly progressive and free development of the North-West. These immigrant communities were close to Marx's heart. Many thousands of his comrades in the German democratic revolution had fled to America, such as his friend and correspondent Joseph Weydemer, who served as an officer in the Union forces. These immigrant communities were not yet reduced to the level of wage slavery, as the Western frontier provided an escape route from that fate. The following is taken from the Collected Works vol 19 'the North had accumulated sufficient energies to rectify the aberrations which United States history, under the slaveowners' pressure, had undergone, for half a century, and make it return to the true principles of its development. ... there was one broad statistical and economic fact indicating that the abuse of the Federal Union by the slave interest had approached the point from which it would have to recede forcibly... That fact was the growth of the North-West, the immense strides its population had made from 1850 to 1860, and the new and reinvigourating influence it could not but bear on the destinies of the United States.' P10 'He [Louis Bonaparte, not Proyect] knows that the true people of England, of France, of Germany, of Europe, consider the cause of the United States as their own cause, as the cause of liberty, and that, despite all paid sophistry, they consider the soil of the United States as the free soil of the landless millions of Europe, as their land of promise, now to be defended sword in hand, from the sordid grasp of the slaveholder.' P29 'As the population of the free states grow far more quickly than those of the slave states, the number of Northern representatives was bound to outstrip that of the Southern very rapidly.' P40 'It did not escape the slaveholders that a new power had arisen, the Northwest, whose population, having almost doubled between 1850 and 1860, was already pretty well equal to the white population of the slave states - a power that was not inclined either by tradition, temperament or mode of life to let itself be dragged from compromise to compromise in the manner of the old Northeastern states.' P42 'The whole movement was and is based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated or not, but whether the 20 million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders.' P42 On the Allegheny Mountains: 'every raw material necessary for a many-sided industrial development, is already, for the most part free country. In accordance with its physical constitution, the soil here can be cultivated with success only by small farmers.' P44 'Virginia now forms a great cantonment where the main army of secession and the main army of the Union confront each other. In the North West highlands of Virginia the number of slaves is 15 000, whilst the twenty times as large free population consists of free farmers.' P45 Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes The law that ceded tens of thousands of acreage to the Seminoles in 1938 I see. As Marcel Marien said of the Belgian Resistance, native land rights came 'after the war'. I don't really see how a law passed in 1938 changes the fact that Indian treaties afforded no protection against the slaughter of the latter half of the nineteenth century. was passed by a left-wing Congress that reflected enormous yearnings for social justice in the US in the general population. This is, to say the least, a generous interpretation of the New Deal. Paul Mattick argues that the New Deal was the product of a peculiarly low level of class consciousness, that it involved the militarisation of labour - he could have added the destruction of truck farming that disposessed a million Southern Blacks (Economics, Politics and the Age of Inflation, Merlin, 1980). Rather than looking at the ostensible reason for the passing of land to the Seminole, this land transfer should be understood in terms of the Roosevelt administration's more general land policy, under which many tracts of undeveloped land were given away, as in Washington state, for example, to sustain the monopoly of land. There were sharp lawyers like William Kunstler who fought for such Indian claims in the courts protected by treaties or law throughout the 1970s. Again, the key to the revitalisation of land claims in the seventies is to be found in the times themselves, not in any innate character of Indian land claims. These were the vessel through which a quite new kind of struggle was being fought, effectively the beginning of identity politics in the US. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Heartfield: In Particular Marx and Engels both considered native American society backward technologically and morally, as the blood-ties of kinship groups (gens) stifled individual personality. I think at this point we understand what Heartfield means by "individual personality". It has little to do with Marxism, ' However impressive the people of this epoch appear to us, they are completely undifferentiated from one another; as Marx says, they are still attached to the navel string of the primitive community' Engels, 'Origin of the Family...' With respect to technological backwardness, this is a truism and hardly worth commenting on. On the contrary, it was a discussion on this list, which Louis P contributed to at length. With respect to morality, I am not aware of Marx dwelling much on this question outside of the context of the need to establish communism. A common misreading of Marx. Because he eschewed a fixed moral order, it does not follow that Marx has no moral goal - on the contrary, the goal is human development, of yes, free individuals (quite how Marxism got counterposed to freedom is a mystery to me). Where Marx's morality differs from say Kant, or the medieval church, is that his is open- ended. Now one could read into Heartfield's selective quotations and possibly conclude that if the Aztecs et al were bellicose, why wring one's hands over the rape and pillage wrought by the Spanish invaders? Well, I presume you did not want me to reproduce the whole thing. But what is it that you mean here? That Marx did not write these things? That the Aztecs did not engage in human sacrifice? That the Iroquois did not engage in bloody wars against other native Americans? Or that evidence of these atrocities should be supressed? Do we want to understand native American society, or idealise it? As to the rape and pillage wrought by the Spanish invaders five hundred years ago, I must say it leaves me wholly indifferent. None of the perpetrators lives. It is at most of historical interest. 'Let the dead bury their dead' I say. On the other hand, the social inequality created in that historical transition is with us today, and that we can do something about. I plan to offer my own reading of the history of the genocide against Native Americans and subject the standard Marxist interpretation to a fresh re-evaluation. My sources will be scholarly histories of today, not selective quotes from Marx. I look forward to reading it. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
hern poor fought to defend that peculiar insitution). Were the Colonists wrong to seek their independence? Was Marx wrong to side with Lincoln? Lenin, citing James Connoly poured scorn on those revolutionary purists who will not endorse a struggle unless the two classes line up in perfect formation against each other, like two armies on a battle-field. As he said anyone who expects the class struggle to take such a pure form will never live to see it. Real history is a lot messier than that. Marxists in 1998 should identify with these subordinate classes and not try to create artificial identities between the oppressor and the oppressed as LM does. This is just rhetoric. By the way, my source on Bacon's Rebellion is Howard Zinn's "People's History of the US". What is your source, Heartfield? Funnily enough, Howard Zinn. And what was the war of 1812 all about? Are you proposing a new topic? Are you supporting George IV? Are you proposing a withdrawal from Florida? Anyway. wasn't I the one who said that the colonists were predisposed to see the Indians as their enemies? Furthermore, aren't you aware that not all Indians were in favor of war with Washington? The Creeks were divided, some just wanted to live in peace. Oh yes the pro-US Indians, I had forgotten their great contribution to the struggle. Louis Proyect: What garbage. "Colonists" is a term that has no class meaning. It is like saying that the Indians were an obstacle to the eastward expansion of "Americans". By 'class meaning' you mean lifeless formula, by virtue of which all history can be subsumed under the one universal truism: The real story of this continent--as it is in Europe and elsewhere--is a story of the ruling classes versus the underclasses. There is an English song 'it's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the poor what gets the blame, its the same the whole world over, ain't that a bleeding' shame'. Compared to Louis' tract, that is a triumph of historical analysis. When I get into my re-examination of American history, Native Americans and the Marxist outlook, I will argue that any attempt to identify the bourgeoisie with progress in its attacks on Indian land claims is deeply inimical to genuine progress, in other words, socialism. And good luck to you, because I never sought to identify the bourgeois with progress in its attacks on Indian land claims (as though such claims were ever the product of native American society), only to understand the forces at work in the American history. But then that is your problem. You always want to rush to a position, or moral stance. Real facts are just raw material to reproduce the timeless story of the underdog. Too much meditation on historical change threatens to overturn your little moral universe of good and evil and most be short-circuited as quickly as possible. Real social classes, and the different social relations that sustain them are quickly merged into a caricature of 'rich and poor'. Fraternally -- James Heartfield
Re: Marx on Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Over here much more rigor is necessary. and then It is the genocidal exploitation of Native Americans and African slaves that made US capitalism possible. I was unaware of the exploitation of Native Americans in the North. One might have thought that reservations and genocide made exploitation impossible, but perhaps in your scientific rigour you have discovered some new form of exploitation. Surely your Oxford education can do better than this. Flattered as I am by the praise, I must admit I don't have an Oxford education. Meanwhile, there's nothing you wrote that I find worth commenting on except one small item. You ask me how American landlords transformed themselves into a bourgeoisie without a struggle?My suggestion is that you take a look at Part 8 of Volume One of Capital, "The Secret of Primitive Accumulation" for an answer. Might I suggest that you read Marx on the American Civil War (collected works, vol 19) for a full appreciation of the conflict between the plantocracy and the Northern Capitalists, and that the most useful chapter of part eight of Capital volume one would be ch 23, The Modern Theory of Colonisation, in which Marx explains the importance of a monopoly of land (ie means of subsistence) to the maintenance of Capitalist social relations): Citing Wakefield's complaint about the lack of subservience amongst US workers: "The labourers most distinctly decline to allow the capitalist to abstain from the payment of the greater part of their labour. It avails him nothing, if he is so cunning as to import from Europe, with his own Capital, his own wage-workers. They soon 'cease ... to be labourers for hire; they ... become independent landowners, if not competitors with their former masters in the labour-market.' Think of the horror! [Then citing Merivale] 'In ancient civilised countries the labourr, though free, is by a law of Nature dependent on capitalists; in colonies this dependence must be created by artificial means.'" How, then, to heal the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies? ... Let the Government put upon virgin soil an artificial price, independent of the law of supply and demand, a price tht compels the immigrant to work for a long time for wages before he can earn enough to buy land and turn himself into an independent peasant.' p721-2. LW ed. Here Marx captures one point of the conflict that took place throughout the Westward expansion of the US, between capital and a free peasantry who evaded subservience by moving West. The authorities ran to keep up with this expansion, first trying to monopolise land, and then giving in to pressure to make it cheap. Oh yeah, one other thing. I am in favor of giving Florida back to the Seminoles. And that's just a start. This is the kind of childish political posturing that one expects of somebody who is not used to taking responsibility for their actions. Is this meant to be rhetorical, or serious? Do you intend to forcibly remove the current inhabitants? Or just remove their citizenship? In what sense are they responsible for the wrong done to the Seminoles? Is land ownership a part of your socialist programme? Why not start at home and hand over your apartment to the Algonquin? Such emotionalism leads to a wholly rhetorical radicalism whose grand gestures are in inverse proportion to its seriousness. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
In message l03102802b0c5a7e1158c@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I'll bet Gillott Kumar's book doesn't contain anything like a critique of technology, and though MR furiously dissents from the rest of the LM package, I'll bet they (as would many leftists) published the book because they were all too happy, post-Sokal, not to entertain a critique of technology. Doug Ralph Waldo Emerson joked that he never read a book before reviewing it, in case it prejudiced him. Why don't you read Science and the Retreat from Reason before you close your mind to it. I have read it, and there is a great deal of critique of science, especially of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and of chaos theory, as I recollect. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
In message l03102805b0c31f03af13@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I don't know either, really, which is why I asked a lot of questions, instead of my usual mode of vigorous assertion. Terry Eagleton says in his little book on postmodernism that to a Marxist, capitalism is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to humanity. He's got a point. Doug I tend to agree with Doug and Terry Eagleton on this point. Capitalism does two things at the same time: 1. It develops social productivity to the point that it is possible to advance to a better society 2. It makes the persistence of private property relations intolerable for the majority making it necessary to advance to a better society. Beyond that it is necessary to distinguish between capitalism today and in Marx's day. In Marx's day it was still possible to talk of a progressive capitalism. Today, any advances that are made are more than offest by the destructive side of capital. In the main further development of social productivity can only be won in opposition to capital. There are notable exceptions. Real technological advances have taken place is SE Asia. What is not sensible in my view is to attack capitalism from the standpoint of more archaic social forms. This romantic critique, far from providing a secure alternative, is simply assimilated into political conservatism. Instead of capital being the enemy, development itself is seen as the problem. More to the point, it is not possible to identify any part of the world that is not already subsumed into capitalist social relations. The Indian Marxist Jairus Banaji made this point in relation to supposedly pre-capitalist economic formations in India. Banaji argues that th existnce of these is an illusion, by distinguishing between the formal subsumption of production relations into capital, which he says is ubiquitous, and the actual reordering of production relations, which he explains is patchy. All this meaning that uneven development is not evidence that capitalistic domination is not partial, but rather that uneven development is the form that capitalist domination takes. The quotation from LM that cultures cannot be preserved like jam might have been put precociously, but it seems unassailable to me. It reminds me of the story about president Marcos' delight that anthropologists had (mis) identified a prehistoric people in the Phillipines. Marcos was so made up about the academics' interest in his country that he sent his troops in to smash up these unfortunate people's cooking utensils and steal their clothes before each new anthropolgical visit was about to happen, to hide the knowledge that even this isolated group ahd established trade relations with others. In assessing indigenism as a political strategy today, it is necessary to understand it as a modern development, in contemporary circumstances, rather than a resistance to modernity. It is right that Marxists should defend people's rights against oppression. But that must mean that indigenous peoples' have a right to scure their own economic development, as well as a right to seek work. There really is no way forward but forward. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marxism and Native Americans
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James Heartfield: Whatever attitude we today might want to take towards the rights of indigenous peoples, it is difficult to find a case for them within the writings of Marx and Engels (whose attitude seems at times close to genocidal). Some examples: 'Just as each century has its own Nature, so it produces its own primitives.' Excellent, I can't wait till I get my hands on Marx's ethnological notebooks which repudiate this sort of misinterpretation of his immature thought. And watch Heartfield ignore the evidence. This is like using the Herald Tribune articles as a justification for the Vietnam war. Louis Proyect Never mind teaching Proyect to read Marx. Somebody should teach him to read. I post some examples of what Marx says, and he says that I am ignoring the evidence. But I do not even say that one should agree with Marx, only note what he says. Louis thinks that the Ethnological Notebooks will overturn Marx's 'immature thought'. By this standard Marx's immature thought extends from the early writings of 1840s right through the Grundrisse to Capital! Louis promises that he will be vindicated by the publication of the Ethnological Notebooks, apparently unaware that they were published in the 1970s, and contain no substantial departure from Marx's mature insight that human development corresponds to the development of society's productive forces. In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James Heartfield: No I don't. And any way, what has the question of Nigeria got to do with land rights in the Americas in the last century? Everything. The same methodology you deployed to rationalize genocide against Native Americans is used in your attack on human rights groups defending the Ogoni. They are trying to preserve primitive peoples like "jam" or maintain "human zoos" for ecotourists. You view peoples like the Sioux and the Ogoni as obstacles in the path of "civilization". Louis Proyect Surreal. All history in this post is reduced to moralistic precepts, as though the differences between the nineteenth and late twentieth century's were a mere debating point. Kenya is America to Louis P. I'll have a pint of whatever he's been drinking. A government health warning: I do not stand by any of the positions that Louis Proyect attributes to me. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James has a similar analysis of the "Odonis" in Nigeria, No I don't. And any way, what has the question of Nigeria got to do with land rights in the Americas in the last century? Louis' combination of misrepresentation, ahistoricism, insult and an inability to stick to the point is an example of his Absolutely loathsome stuff and antithetical to Marxism as I will prove. You already have proved it. -- James Heartfield
Re: Marxism and Native Americans
Whatever attitude we today might want to take towards the rights of indigenous peoples, it is difficult to find a case for them within the writings of Marx and Engels (whose attitude seems at times close to genocidal). Some examples: 'Just as each century has its own Nature, so it produces its own primitives.' The Philosophical Manifesto of the South German Historical School of Law, p 61 --- the reproduction of presupposed social relations - more or less naturally arisen or historic as well, but become traditional - of the individual to his commune, together with a specific objective existence predetermined for the individual, of his relations both to the conditions of labour and to his co-workers, fellow tribesmen, etc - are the foundations of development, which is therefore from teh outset restricted ... The individuals may appear great. But thre can b no conception here of a free and full development either of the individual or of the society, since such development stands in contradiction to the original relation. Grundrisse p487 Penguin 1973 '[Primitive communism was an] 'abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilisation, and the return to the unnatural simplicity of the poor unrefined man who has no needs and who has not even reached the stage of private property, let alone gone beyond it.' Economic and Philosophical Manuscriptsp346 Penguin 1975 'Sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilisation and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that those idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies.' British Rule in India P 306. Marx changed his assessment of the positive role of British Imperialism, but not of the restrictive character of traditional communities. 'Those ancient social organisms of production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely simple and transparent. But they are founded either on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community, or upon direct relations of subjection. They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the material life, between man and man, and between man and Nature are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is refelcted in the ancient worship of Nature...' Capital, p84 And then there is this from Engels: 'There is no country in Europe that does not possess, in some remote corner, one or more ruins of peoples, left over from an earlier population, forced back and subjugated by the nation which later became the repository of historical dvelopment. These remnants of a nation, mercilessly crushd, as Hegel said, by the course of history, this national refuse, is always the fanatical representative of the counter- revolution and remains so until it is completely exterminated or de- nationalised, as its whole existence is in itself a protest against a great historical rvolution. In Scotland, for example, the Gaels, supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745. In France, the Bretons, supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800. In Spain the Basques, supporters of Don Carlos. In Austria the pan-Slav South Slavs...' Revolutions of 1848, quoted in Engels and the Non-Historic Peoples, Roman Rosdolsky, Critique Books 1987 -- James Heartfield
Native American land rights
Eastward. In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt of black slaves and white indentured servants against the English governor, imprisoning him. Bacons rallying cry was an aggressive Indian policy, meaning an escape East - something which England had to send battalions across the Atlantic to prevent. The association of popular democracy and an aggressive Indian policy endured through the War of Independence, Jacksonism, right up to the closing of the frontier at the end of the nineteenth century. What protection was afforded Native Americans by their land rights? None. In fact these rights were artificially construed to frustrate Eastward expansion, which meant that they only served to place the Native Americans directly in the line of fire between the Colonists and the European powers. They locked Native Americans into a hostile relation with the Colonists that led to one slaughter after another. As the New Republic grew, it is important to note, the powers that be carefully regulated the Eastward expansion by systematically renegotiating Native American land rights. In keeping with the fictitious nature of these right, however, the government did not negotiate with the Native Americans directly, but appointed Indian Agents, like George Armstrong Custer. The reservation policy operated by the Indian Agents has as its legal basis, the land rights of Native Americans. Native Americans were in a trap, but seemed to have little option but to continue to press their claims as described in the successive treaties re-negotiated on their behalf by Indian Agents. The final culmination of the land rights came with the Chiliasmic uprising of Sitting Bulls spirit dance, when Native Americans realised that there was nowhere further West to go and tried to fight. The ensuing slaughter brought an end to the Native American people as a collective entity. James Heartfield
Reply to Louis Proyect
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes If you take a look at the participants in LM's TV show, you simply can not have the illusion any longer that this group is part of the left. And if it still is, it is only a matter of time when they make a full break. Well why don't you just join in the witch-hunt? Today's Guardian newspaper denounces the Against Nature series as a sinister plot by Marxists who want to make sure that 'the revolution will be televised'. These McCarthy smear tactics are now supported by Louis Proyect. But, make no mistake, this group is not part of the left. It is mounting a powerful attack on the left. When you gain access to millions of television viewers in order to provide a platform for speakers who have been conducting a "war on the greens," you are doing the work of the bourgeoisie. Let me be absolutely clear: I do not want to be part of a left which is defined by its opposition to progress, and the romanticisation of poverty and underdevelopment. Marxism is about human liberation, not restraint. If Louis wants to line up with the Western nations who are trying to torpedo growth in the rest of the world, why doesn't he go the whole hog and endorse the IMF austerity package in Korea: after all, that should reduce the number of car users in Seoul. -- James Heartfield Books Editor, Living Marxism
