Carrol: >I think that the educated guesses made by you, Lou, Jim B, etc. are >pretty good guesses. But that is all they are, and I want to base my >anti-imperialist and anti-racist politics on something firmer than >educated guesses about a past empirical state of affairs or hypotheses >however educated about what would have been if.... This is a much too mechanical understanding of what the discussion is about. We are not trying to establish some kind of a priori historical basis for a "politically correct" strategy in the second millenium. The issues under debate are part of a much broader struggle to develop a more SCIENTIFIC understanding of society. Although I have read through Blaut's book prior to this discussion, I had never read it from cover to cover as I am doing now. He makes a very interesting point about the need to constantly "revolutionize" science in the Thomas Kuhn sense, but he extends this to the social sciences as well. Studying the 15th century is not a prerequisite for building a Marxist-Leninist vanguard democratic centralist anti-racist party today. But it is a prerequisite for sweeping out myths and lies. That being said, all of this is deeply imbued with another kind of politics. Like it or not, the right-wing has made these issues key to their struggle for intellectual hegemony. In places as wide-spread as Lingua Franca to the New Yorker Magazine, you will find articles that try to drive points like these home: 1) Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" is Afrocentric nonsense. 2) Indigenous peoples were just as destructive to the environment as modern capitalist society. Also, they died on account of accidental spread of disease rather than "genocide". 3) Non-European societies are pervaded by irrational and "traditional" socio-economic structures that prevent them from "modernizing". These structures are vestiges from their despotic past. The more contact they have with the West, the better off they are. (In recent years, there has actually been a call for a "new colonialism" in Africa, including in the pages of the liberal Atlantic Monthly. Enlightened colonial adminstrators would presumably have prevented the genocide in Rwanda.) 4) Israel is entitled to seize territory after territory and prevent Palestinian self-determination because there "was never such a thing as Palestine" going back to the biblical era. (Joan Robinson). 5) etc. It is impossible for left intellectuals to ignore these debates. If the right-wing is victorious, it helps to create a more favorable environment for the sorts of attacks on living standards and equal rights that are of more immediate concern to Carrol. It is helpful to recall that much of Malcolm X's rise to prominence is associated with his courageous stance on African and African-American history. Despite much of the anti-scientific nature of NOI thought, Malcolm made an effort to correct the record on the accomplishments of Black people. This, I would argue, helped to create a more favorable climate for direct action by militants in the Black Panther Party, SNCC et al. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
