>Lou, > >I was surprised to see you uncritically post a piece by Bill >McKibben. His bourgeois antiurban romanticism seems deeply at odds with >Marxism, even your own somewhat peculiar romanticized preindustrial >Marxist fantasia. Were I feeling less kind, I'd say your style of Marxism >has a face that only a NYC cubicle dwelling computer geek could love. > >Frances Actually McKibben is fairly reactionary on the "population control" issue and was one of the ideological leaders of the recently defeated anti-immigration measure put forward in the Sierra Club in California. I was more interested in the books being reviewed than I was in McKibben's own politics. As far as my "preindustrial Marxist fantasia" is concerned, I haven't heard this kind of idiotic garbage since Jim Heartfield stalked off the Marxism list 6 months or so ago when I asked him to differentiate his politics from JFK's "Alliance for Progress". Just to remind people what I really believe, here's the concluding paragraph in my review of Jerry Mander's "In the Absence of the Sacred": === In the chapter "Seven Negative Points About Computers," Mander takes exception to the Canadian government's attempt to provide computer training to Indians for the purpose of resource management. Mander challenges the notion that trees, grizzly bears, water, etc., are "resources." They are rather part of mother nature and Indians should use traditional methods of keeping track of them, which is much more intuitive than a computer can hope to achieve. This is bad advice. The Indians of the United States are facing a fundamental challenge with respect to resources like oil, coal, gas and uranium. There is no "traditional" way of keeping track of them since traditional society had no particular use for them. Meanwhile, there are vicious, greedy corporations who want to avoid paying royalties to the tribes, while polluting the water and soil on their land. How can one prevent this? Clearly, this involves keeping accurate records of the quantity of such resources and accounting exactly for royalties. There are estimates that billions of dollars have been stolen from the Indian because of shady bookkeeping practices by the government and the corporations. The only way that this can be prevented is if Indians develop their own expertise and know for sure what they own and how much it is worth. Mander cites an article in the October 1984 issue of "Development Forum" titled "Worshipping a False God," by Ken Darrow and Michael Saxenian. The authors, who have been involved in developing small-scale technology in third world countries, reject the use of computers. They do not think that computers can provide low-cost communications and information processing needs to primarily agrarian societies. This is "dangerous nonsense" and Mander agrees with them. They say, "In a poor country, using a microcomputer linked by satellite to an information system half-way round the world...is absurd." To the contrary, it is "dangerous nonsense" for indigenous peoples to avoid using computers in this manner. Anybody who has been following the Zapatista struggle for the past few years understands how crucial the Internet has been. Not only has it served to educate people all around the world about what these Mayan peoples are fighting for, it has also provided an emergency response mechanism when the Mexican government has attempted to repress the movement. Immediately after the massacre in Chiapas last month that took the lives of 44 people, the Internet became a beehive of activity as word circulated. Demonstrations, picket-lines and other forms of protest forced the Mexican government to open up an investigation and public awareness will surely make it more difficult to repress the movement in the future. Furthermore, the World Wide Web is replete with pages devoted to struggles of land-based peoples all around the world, including the American Indian. The information originates with the tribes themselves and provides an accurate source of information in contrast to the misinformation contained in the daily newspaper or television and radio. For somebody to tell Indians not to use computers is not only arrogant, it is stupid. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
