Rakesh, you are welcome to argue against those who fight against
sweatshops, but the personal attacks cannot go on here.
Your long attack on Lou is double irrelevant since he is no longer on the
list.
I learnt from your earlier attacks on sweatshops. I believe that Doug
also said on LBO that he nuanced his thinking on sweatshops from your
posts. I did also.
Here in Chico, the "owner" of the town in the last century was a man named
John Bidwell. He fought strongly against the anti-Chinese laws -- but
because he wanted cheaper labor. The racists did terrible, murderous
things here, but the "race to the bottom" was still an underlying issue.
It would be preferable to find a way to raise up the wages in the
impoverished countries. It would be preferable if those countries would
find a way to try to develop like the US did, through their own form of
protectionism.
In any case, I would be happy to have you sharing your views with the
list, but only if you can do so without attacking others personally.
On a personal note, I am looking forward to see you next week.
On Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 12:38:54AM -0700, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote:
> >
> >Even so, please, I am trying to avoid the aggressive sort of note that you
> >posted here. Please cool it.
>
> I see aggression in what Spivak once called in a moment of clarity
> "sanctioned ignorance", i.e., what can be safely ignored. Note Max's
> refusal to reply to "Jain Carowan's" well reasoned criticism of the
> use of trade sanctions for the enforcement of the Core Conventions or
> Doug's and Liza's refusal to investigate the consequences of the
> Harkin bill, the protectionist clauses and unilateral quota denials
> for which the same UNITE that is bankrolling the student anti
> sweatshop movement is militating.
>
> It's not as if either could have been ignorant of such concerns--they
> just chose to ignore them just as Hitchens somehow forgot that
> Chancellor Bob Kerrey's account had been contested when first asked
> to comment on the allegations of a war crime (I guess for some here
> it was no big deal that Hitchens had at first actively ignored those
> who were contesting Kerrey's account, but from my perspective this
> was an act of aggression--maybe you see my point, maybe you don't).
> At least, Hitchens did eventually think through the implications of
> Kerrey's account being contested, though not as eloquently and
> profoundly as did Reed, Schell and Falk.
>
> Such haughtiness and aggression are only invisible to those who are
> not subjected to it. I think it's a huge mistake that Robert Pollin
> and James Galbraith want to make themselves the intellectual
> champions of the student do gooders--the newest American jingolos (I
> was surprised to read in Doug's account that Galbraith seems to have
> lent his unqualified support to the student protests). Today they are
> crying about the US import of cheap foreign goods, Andrew Ross, once
> a general in the science wars, has now joined in the war against
> sweatshops; tomorrow after they make sure the MFN and system of
> agricultural protection aren't truly relaxed in 2005 they'll have set
> the stage for a campaign against the direct import of foreign labor.
> Hasn't Dana Frank laid out the historic connections in detail?
>
> Someone suggested to me offlist that I don't have much a future with
> the internet left because of the way I am always carping about its
> racism (of course Proyect is convinced that I am an anti black racist
> and went to the length of fabricating a dossier against me, which was
> then used in an employment application; and even after this, Michael,
> you not only did not kick Proyect off your list, you never asked him
> to promise that he would never do such a thing again as condition for
> remaining).
>
> At any rate, I actually think this stuff about racism makes up a
> very small part of what I post. But it's true I don't expect much
> support. Even Charles who never thinks there has been enough
> discussion of anti black racism has ever said a word--as far as I
> know--about how easily American blacks join in with general anti
> immigrant sentiment and national chauvinism.
>
> Oh by the way, here are the putatively racist things I wrote about
> Malcolm X which had Proyect trying to defame me...with no price to
> pay. He was not kicked off this list for what he did.
>
>
> here is what I wrote on Malcolm X:
>
> Jan 4th and 5th, 1999 LBO
>
>
> Ah, so my memory is not as bad as I feared. For some bizarre reason, Louis
> P didn't type in the whole FBI file on Malcolm Little from 5/17/61. Here
> it is (some standard abbreviations are used; what is below is de facto
> verbatim):
>
> [Bureau Deletion] advised on Jan 30, 1961, that certain Klan officials met
> with leaders of the NOI on the night of Jan 28, 1961, in Atlanta, GA. One
> of these NOI identified himself as Malcolm X of New York, and it was the
> source's understanding that Malcolm X cliamed to have hundred seventy give
> thousand followers who were complete separationists, were interested in
> land and were soliciting the aid of the Klan to obtain land. During this
> meeting subject stated that his people wanted complete segregation from
> the white race, and that land obtained would be occupied by them and they
> would maintain their own businesses and government. Subject further stated
> that the Jew is behind the integration movement, using the Negro as a
> tool. Subject was further quoted as stating that his people would do
> anything to defend their beliefs and promote their cause and in his
> opinion there would be violence some day. Subject was further quoted as
> saying at this meeting that if one of his people went against their
> teachings, he would be destroyed. Subject also stated that if his people
> were faced with the situation that the white people of Georgia now face,
> that traitors, meaning those who assisted the integration leaders, would
> be eliminated."
>
> In Clayborne Carson, Malcolm X: The FBI File. Intro by Spike Lee. NY:
> Carrol and Graf Publishers, 1991.
> __________________________
> I can't access old messages on this topic from this program. So here is a
> general reply (and remember I have joined this list to make as many
> friends as I can). I am still finding it a bit creepy that Louis P didn't
> cite the whole FBI report of Malcolm X's meeting with the Klan while
> continuing to insinuate that I was a liar. But such creepinenss is deeply
> embedded after so many years as a party hack, I imagine. Give no support
> to your enemy--calumny, bile and caricature!!! The same modus operandi is
> evident in his criticism of Adolph Reed Jr for putatively attempting to
> shut up an independent struggle against racism.
>
> I also find Arthur McGee's response, filled with gutter language, rather
> troubling. In responding to me, he can't even get right that it was
> Malcolm X himself who felt ashamed of what he done as a member of the NOI,
> not the white left who shamed Malcolm X. Indeed we find here a reluctance
> of the white left, starting with the SWP, to express criticism of
> Malcolm. Of course the right will dis him for his violence, but the white
> left seems hardly bothered by his separatism, black belt secessionism,
> open support for nascent third world fascists, and ill defined black
> nationalism. We are just happy to have him as a hero and assimilate him
> into all our multiculti syllabi.
>
> Malcolm X's criticism of the Kennedy administration, the Civil Rights
> establishment, and Farce on Washington--while accurate in many ways--is
> compromised by the positive vision that undergirds that criticism: a
> racially defined black nationalism or separatism to be achieved through
> violence. That is, his criticism is not simply of the non violence or the
> reformism of the civil rights movement but (as already suggested) of the
> goal of desegregation and integration itself; after all, he declared that
> the NOI would kill Black Muslims who assisted the integration leaders and
> was not willing to even attempt to actually organize the armed self
> defense of civil rights workers until he broke from the NOI. That is,
> Malcolm X's criticism is in many important ways a radical one from the far
> right vision of complete racial separatism. This is why I prefer James
> Forman's criticism, though I am sad that late in his life James Forman has
> himself moved to support of black secession--despite his earlier
> criticisms of Stokely Carmichael and other black nationalist types.
>
> Louis P is correct that I think this NOI vision which Malcolm X accepted
> and never fully broke from is accurately characterized as black fascism.
> Or to put it another way, it was only in the form of the NOI radical
> sounding demagogue Malcolm X then and Louis Farakhan now that Jim Crow or
> apartheid generally could appear in respectable form to blacks and non
> racist whites.
>
> Ken is bothered that I would raise such criticism of Malcolm X's radical
> criticism without mentioning another alternative or guide to action. But
> there were rank and file voices within SNCC which called for armed self
> defense and militance. Ken argues that militants drew inspiration from
> Malcolm X's defiant speeches and that they understood NOI Malcolm X's
> speeches (incorrectly it turns out) as a call for arms in the struggle to
> end apartheid; yet there is also the question of how his anti white
> demonology did damage to the movement and the determination of what the
> long term goals actually were and are.
>
> Malcolm X never broke from black separatism; he was not sure what he meant
> by black nationalism at the end of his life. He moved back and forth from
> support of violent secession through guerilla warfare to control of
> businesses in the ghetto perhaps through set aside programs by black govt
> officials to be put into power by the ballot. The latter strategy has been
> tried, thanks to Richard Nixon, and has proven not to be helfpul to
> ghettoized blacks. Indeed the black urban regime--one goal that followed
> from Malcolm X's revised black nationalism--has turned out be a nightmare.
> In the Joe Wood, ed. volume, Patricia Hills Collins raises some tough
> questions about the meaning and limits of Malcolm X's most developed ideas
> on black nationalism.
>
> Malcolm X's internationalism reduces to the support of emergent national
> bourgeois leaderships in the third world without any sense of the new
> reign of oppression that they would inaugurate. This follows from a racial
> theory of history in which the concept of class is eclipsed, and here
> Malcolm X proves less prescient than Fanon. It also follows from his
> vision of blacks as a nation waiting to realize itself in the black belt.
>
> If one reads Malcolm X's speeches from Jan and Feb, 1965, it is clear that
> his exposure of the NOI/Klan links is what brought the wrath of Farakhan
> and Elijiah Muhammed down upon him. After all, Malcolm X should have
> known that he would be killed for exposing this link since he himself had
> articulated that NOI policy years before. And Malcolm X did know and
> indeed predicted his assasination.
>
> I also find it dishonest of Malcolm X and Alex Haley that *The
> Autobiography*, now everywhere on syllabi, includes no discussion of the
> NOI/Klan link that Malcolm X would later die for exposing. While as a
> political theorist I think Malcolm X is deeply flawed, I do think
> Malcolm X is a hero for feeling shame over his meeting with the Klan
> and consciously facing his death in order to expose the very NOI that has
> now ascended to respectability or at best endures usually lame criticism.
> But he is certainly not more of a hero than those who did not phrase
> monger, did not meet with the Klan and did risk their lives collectively
> every day in the civil rights struggle. In Race and Class more than five
> years ago, Barbara Ransby has expressed how bothered she was by the
> worship of Malcolm X at the expense of many forgotten heroes.
>
> Daniel contines to argue that factoid history matter less than what
> Malcolm X meant then and now. Yet it is over the meaning he wanted to give
> to the contemporary NOI as an anti racist organization that this
> discussion of Malcolm X's politics began.
>
> I also think Malcolm X's radical anti white speeches were actually
> intended for whites. Or perhaps to get a rise out of them in order to
> entertain blacks. But in so far as his attacks on whites--as evil because
> of their race, genes, Ice Age Ancestry--implies the deep difference of
> blacks due to their race, genes, Sun Land Ancestry, I think this kind of
> anti white mythology (or essentialism!) is quite disturbing both in the
> attitude towards truth it encourages and in the psychological games it
> plays with black people.
>
> I do welcome all criticism, and if I have failed to respond here to honest
> criticism, it is only because I don't have the previous messages with me.
>
> yours, rakesh
>
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--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
