POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*
Here's a Marxist critique of Farmer. Anyone who wants the full piece,
please email me.
http://coa.sagepub.com/content/33/4/447.abstract
Here is a snippet:
*A Rigorous Detour through Marx is Essential*
Dr. Farmer has vigorously renounced Marxist approaches for diagnosing and
transforming the world. In a text from the bestselling *New York Times*
book, *Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who
Would Cure the World*,” Kidder writes of Dr. Farmer, “He had studied the
world’s ideologies. . . . .But years ago he’d concluded that Marxism
wouldn’t answer the questions posed by the suffering he encountered in
Haiti. And he had quarrels with the Marxists he’d read: ‘What I don’t like
about Marxist literature is what I don’t like about academic pursuits–and
isn’t that what Marxism is, now? In general, the arrogance, the petty
infighting, the dishonesty, the desire for self-promotion, the orthodoxy: I
can’t stand the orthodoxy, and I’ll bet that’s one reason that science did
not flourish in the former Soviet Union.’”
Like Kim, Farmer’s assertions distort Freire’s essential message. In
Freire’s final publication, a posthumous collection of letters titled,
*“Pedagogy
of Indignation*, published in 2004, Freire’s colleague Donaldo Macedo puts
the issue succinctly,
“. . . . one cannot understand Freire’s theories without taking a rigorous
detour through a Marxist analysis, and [any] offhand dismissal of Marx is
nothing more than a vain attempt to remove the sociohistorical context that
grounds *Pedagogy of the Oppressed*” (Freire 2004:xiv-xv). Macedo
underscores that “the misunderstanding, even by those who claim to be
Freirean, is not innocent. It allows many liberal educators to appropriate
selective aspects of Freire’s theory and practice it as a badge of
progressiveness while conveniently dismissing or ignoring the ‘Marxist
perspectives’ that would question their complicity with the very structures
that created human misery in the first place” (Freire 2004:xvi).
*Naming the Pathologies of Power*
For some time Farmer himself has been reluctant to critique capitalism per
se, instead tending to cite “structural violence” as the source of the
problems of many of the world’s poor. Still, in his recent book *Haiti
After the Earthquake* he does acknowledge that “growing inequality, both
within countries and between them, is the linchpin of modern servitude”
(Farmer 2011:117).
PIH is becoming more and more closely tied to corporate capital. In 2011
PIH generated revenues of $88 million. There were more than 15,000 new
donors the last fiscal year. Among its corporate and foundation donors are
Abbot Laboratories, Aetna Foundation, Inc. American Express, the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, General Electric, Co, Goldman, Sachs Co., Google,
Home Depot, HSBC Philanthropic Programs, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.,
Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Novartis, Pfizer, UPS, U.S. Bancorp, Wells
Fargo and Weyerhaeuser Family Foundation (PIH Annual Report 2011).
In a February 23, 2013 article by Henry Giroux titled *The Politics of
Disimagination and the Pathologies of Power*, Giroux charged that “American
Society is awash in a culture of civic illiteracy, cruelty andcorruption.
For example, major banks such as Barclays and HSBC swindle billions from
clients and increase their profit margins by laundering money for terrorist
organizations, and no one goes to jail” (Giroux 2013). Dr. Farmer, who
receives support from HSBC, among other financial institutions, has chosen
not to make these kinds of linkages in his public pedagogy.
Drs. Farmer and Kim work closely with Presidents Obama and former President
Clinton. When he was president, Clinton forced Haiti to drop tariffs on
imported subsidized U.S. rice. This neoliberal policy destroyed Haitian
rice farming and seriously undercut Haiti’s ability to become a
self-sufficient country. It is widely viewed as contributing to Haiti’s
forced urbanization, an event that increased the earthquake toll. Clinton,
of course, also passed NAFTA which significantly hurt the US working class.
He destroyed welfare and in 1999 was responsible for tearing down the
firewalls between investment and commercial banking which opened the
banking system to speculators and contributed to much human misery
associated with the 2008 financial meltdown. Obama raised more than $600
million for his 2008 election and over $715 million for the 2012 election,
most from corporations, and has served those same corporations as well as
his Republican predecessor. He has stood by while those same corporations
looted the treasury and has done little to help the millions of Americans
who
