At 12:49 PM 9/30/99 -1000, Steve Philion wrote: >That sounds like caricature, did Brenner ever say any such thing? I don't >think his argument came to one of no support for third world struggles. >How could the likes of a James Petras, to mention just one non Eurocentric >Marxist have much to do with him or his arguments against Wallerstein? ---sinip >This I would agree is a real problem, one not unclosely tied to the >sectarian, even cultish, nature of "Marxist" parties in the US. Not so >much the Marxism of a non-sectarian, non-cult member Robert Brenner. > ----snip >extracted value than say workers in El Salvador? That doesn't mean that >workers in Sweden are 'superior' to El Salvadoran workers...nor that the >former are beneficiaries of imperialism... Steve, your comments are right on target and point out to some real problems with the self-appointed anti-Eurocentrists. For one part, their strategy seems to be based on a simple positive/negative sign reversal, embodied in that once popular in liberal circles "politically correct" (original term, not mine) map of the world with the South pole up. It is basically a simple vertical flip of some-old fashined imperialist rhetoric - any person of the European origin who does not show proper deference to the Black or the Latino man is automatically labeled an eurocentrist, a racist or worse. Basically, the old male pecking order in reverse. But beyond this sad rhetoric there is a much larger and more important issue - pointed to by the last postings by Jim Craven - which criteria are being used to "evaluate" cultures and peoples? In my exchange with Jim Craven I that suggested different peoples/cultures faces much different sets of conditions and challenges and develop unique solutions to those problems. We cannot therefore judge one culture by the standards of effciency or superiority adopted in another culture because they are simply incompatible. To illustrate that, Native American cultures stressed the importance of balance between all elements of the natural and social environment - and by those standards capitalist conquest of nature and conspicuous consumption are sure signs of ineffciency and inferiority. In the same vein, the balance achieved by Native Americans is viewed as stagnation and thus inefficiency and inferiority by capitalist standards. So the point is to avoid getting into the male pissing contests whose efficiency is bigger than whose - and instead focus on the adaptability of human societies to very diverse conditions. This, however, is not what the self-appointed anti-Eurocentrists do. In (otherwise justified) reaction to imperialist rhetoric that judges every culture by standrads adopted by the conquering power and obviously finds them falling short - these anti-Eurocentrists deny the obvious instead of rejecting the standard. In other words, to defeat Eurocentrism they defy the common sense and claim that non-Europeans are or have been on a par with the Europeans in the European-defined game. In so doing, however, they essentially accept the Eurocentric or rather academe-centric criteria by which peoples and cultures are judged, and which essentially boil down to high scores on a standard math and sciences test. Math, math-based science and technology it develops are a uniquely European response to environmental challenges - but it is not the only possible or a superior response. My favorite example are !Kung bushmen who developed a unique cognitive skill that allowed them to survive in their arid environment. Facing the chronic shortage of drinking water, they learned how to extract water from the roots of desert plants. In the spring, they would walk through the desert looking for the plants accumulating water in their roots and then memorizing their location. Few months later, they could return to the same location and dig out the root even though the upper part of the plant had withered away and there was virtually nothing on the surface that would indicate the presence of the root. Of course, by those cognitive standards a math-wiz getting the top GRE score would be considered a moron and a burden to the !Kung society (in all likelihood, they would not let him die and they would take care of him). Thus, the best way to counter the imperialist pissing contest of superiority/inferiority would be to reject the standards that measure human worth by successes in math and science. But the "problem" with that solution is that math and science are *meritocratic* standards, and meritocracy is the cornerstone of the academe-centric view of the world. Rejecting math and science as the basis of human "merits" is tantamount to undercutting the academe's own claim to power, privilege and superiority. In that context, the strategy of denying the obvious and claiming that ascribed characteristics, such as ethnicity or nationality, have no bearing on attaining competence in European-invented games seems to be a convenient way out of the more objectionable aspects of the human superiority/inferiority game (e.g. overt racism, nationalism, or sexism) but preserving, at the same time, other aspects of that very same game, namely those based on academe-centric merits. wojtek
