[PEN-L:2738] Re: article by joel kovel
Joel and fellow comrades from the Green Party will be addressing just these issues on a panel at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York, April 9 to 11. For more information about the 17th annual Conference you can email [EMAIL PROTECTED] or check out its web page at: www.soc.qc.edu/ssc It is not too late to form panels. Best, Robert Saute On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Michael Yates wrote: friends, There is an interesting article by Joel Kovel in this month's "Z" magazine. It is about his run for senate from New York as an independent "Green" candidate. Especially interesting are his comments on liberals. The increasingly f*ed up people at the Nation gave him short shrift. Anyway, Kovel is always interesting and this piece is worth reading. michael yates
[PEN-L:861] Re: Re: basic question on Min Wage
Friends, According to Card Krueger _Myth Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage_ (1995, pg. 238) 87.7% of workers nation-wide were covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act which mandates minimum wages. My notes say that percentage was in 1998, obviously wrong. The correct date is probably 1988. Could it be that less than 13% of the workforce are in the exempt groups below? What percentage of the labor force fall into the categories "professional, executive, and administrative personnel"? Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Mike Yates wrote: Friends, There is a complicated set of exceptions to the federal minimum wage law, including workers in certain amusement and recreational establishments, apprentices, domestic workers not covered by the Social Security Act, workers in smll gasoline stations (Less than $250,000 in annual sales, certain disabled workers, certain newspaper carriers, outside salespersons, professional, executive, and administrative personnel, seamen on foreign vessels, certain agricultural workers, workers at small telephone exchanges, etc. See Joseph E. Kalet, "Primer on Wages Hour Law," Bureau of National Affairs, 1990. The FLSA does have wide coverage, and many states have their own laws. michael yates DOUG ORR wrote: I was recently confronted with the most basic question concerning the minimum wage, and I realized I did not have a precise answer. Who exactly is covered by the federal minimum wage? Or more easily, who is exempted? What about farm workers? Waiters? Thanks, Doug Orr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Peruvian Maoism
Palmer is absolutely correct on the precision of Sendero's use of violence. Sendero regularly targeted political activists whom most people on this list would consider on the Left. Finding the Communist Party of Peru incomparable to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge hardly excuses them of their political crimes. Sincerely yours, Robert Saute On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, Louis Proyect wrote: Rob Saute: Of course, Louis Proyect is partially correct in the above statement. The Communist Party of Peru/Shining Path/Sendero Luminoso is not at war with the U.S. Left; they could probably care less. On the other hand, many a labor leader, leftist party militant, shanty-town organizer or peasant activist killed at the hands of Sendero Luminoso cadre might from the grave, were that possible, find his characterization of Shining Path's enemies a bit disingenuous. Seen through the lens of a debate on just how semi-feudal Peru is or is not, the endless preoccupation with human rights does seem to be so much drivel. David Scott Palmer: "The insurgency has rarely engaged in indiscriminate violence and should not be compared with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in this regard."
Re: Peruvian Maoism
On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Louis Proyect wrote: We sometimes forget that the Shining Path is in a war with the Peruvian state and not the American left and its allies in Peru. Of course, Louis Proyect is partially correct in the above statement. The Communist Party of Peru/Shining Path/Sendero Luminoso is not at war with the U.S. Left; they could probably care less. On the other hand, many a labor leader, leftist party militant, shanty-town organizer or peasant activist killed at the hands of Sendero Luminoso cadre might from the grave, were that possible, find his characterization of Shining Path's enemies a bit disingenuous. Seen through the lens of a debate on just how semi-feudal Peru is or is not, the endless preoccupation with human rights does seem to be so much drivel. Sub-comandante Marcos take heed, knock off a few human rights workers from the Catholic Church, execute a doctor or two from San Cristobal, murder local activists from the PRD, and Zapatista stock will rise in Lou's eyes. May a thousand dead dogs hang from the lampposts of a land purged of petty bourgeois revisionists and misleaders of the working class! Sincerely yours, Robert Saute
Socialist Scholar Debates
Pen-lers will be interested in two (at least two) debates at the upcoming Socialist Scholars Conference. Globalization or Not: Its Political Consequences for Organizing at the Millennium. Sponsor: CUNY Democratic Socialist of America Panelists: Stanley Aronowitz, Author, "The Jobless Future" Richard DuBoff, Bryn Mawr College Doug Henwood, Author, "Wall Street" Frances Fox Piven, Author, "The Breaking of the American Social Contract" Erika Polakoff, Bloomfield College Time: Saturday, March 21, 1:00 PM and A Debate on Ecology and Social Change Sponsor: Monthly Review Panelists: David Harvey, Johns Hopkins University John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon Time: Sunday, March 22, 10:00 AM The Socialist Scholars Conference will be held from Friday, March 20 to Sunday, March 22 at Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street in downtown New York City. Admission to the Conference is: Regular:$45.00 Low Income: $30.00 HS/Undergrad:$8.00 One Day:$20.00 For more information visit our web page at www.soc.qc.edu/ssc or email us at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call (212) 642-2418. See you there. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Polling Clinton's Appeal
But if Clinton were further to the left wouldn't the business community portray him as to the left of Jesse Jackson and Paul Wellstone, and then wouldn't the "pollerate" find him even further to the left? Would the Democratic right-wing oppose his "liberal" policies even more? Isn't his popularity related to the perception that the economy is strong and wages are climbing for the first time in decades? Of course, I would love to have my skepticism proved unfounded. Could we run an experiment where Clinton moves to the left and see how it affected poll results? Just wondering. Best, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: The March 9 issue of The Nation has an article _Polling Clinton's Appeal_. The main conclusions are: 1. Polls reveal a general public misconcpetion about Clinton's political standing; 2. People generally perceive him as being much farther to the left than he actually is, "most people place Clinton somewhere between Paul Wellstone and Jesse Jackson" - most like as a result of the corporate media portrayal of him; 3. That perception does not hurt his popularity; in fact his popularity surged despite him being perceived as more liberal than his actually is; 4. The article suggests that Clinton politics may not be driven by polls as many seem to believe, but by the political agenda of the right wing of the Democratic party. The full report of poll results by Lewis, Morgan and Jhally can be found at: www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~commdept (under "reports and resources"). Wojtek Sokolowski Institute for Policy Studies Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 Opinions expressed above are those of this writer only. They do not represent the views or policies of the Institute for Policy Studies, the Johns Hopkins University, or anyone else affiliated with these institutions.
Re: Extra Credit Assignment
I believe it was Jonathan Edwards, the Boston-area folkie (not colonial-era preacher) who penned a song about Jack Johnson and the Titanic. If I remember correctly, there were some nasty lines about Jews in the song, but on that I could be wrong. Otherwise, it was a catchy song. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, J Cullen wrote: I believe there was a blues/gospel song about the sinking of the Titanic. Supposedly Jack Johnson was refused a fare on the Titanic by the owner who said "This ship doesn't haul coal." One important aspect of the Titanic disaster not mentioned in the film or on the list: The White Star Line made a particular point of not hiring any Black workers, even porters or coal stokers, who were common on other steamships. The sinking was celebrated in African-American communities as an act of retribution, probably one of the first examples of what now might been called the "O.J. Simpson phenomenon." _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Michael Pearlman email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] J.R. Masterman School [EMAIL PROTECTED] 17th and Spring Garden Sts.fax: (215) 299-3581 Philadelphia PA 19130phone: (215) 299-3583 (215) 299-3583/299-4661 Money for Schools, not Prisons!Hasta la victoria siempre! _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ THE PROGRESSIVE POPULIST James M. Cullen, Editor P.O. Box 150517, Austin, Texas 78715-0517 Phone: 512-447-0455 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home page: http://www.eden.com/~reporter
Re: Ecology and value free Marxism
Dear friends, Those who have been following Louis' posts on ecology will be interested in knowing that the 1998 Socialist Scholars Conference will feature a panel on "Marxist Contributions to Ecological Theory" with John Bellamy Foster, University of Oregon Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University Joan Roelofs, Hampshire College It has been tentatively scheduled for Saturday morning March 21. The Conference will be held at the usual place, Borough of Manhattan Community College, 199 Chambers Street in New York City from March 20 to 22. For more information about the Socialist Scholars Conference, check out our web page at www.soc.qc.edu/ssc or email the Conference at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hope to see you (and many young people) there, Robert Saute On Sat, 21 Feb 1998, Louis Proyect wrote: Any young person who was becoming politicized around ecological issues would find Boucher's argument deeply repellent. As it turns out, tens of thousands of young people have developed inchoate anticapitalist ideas because of what corporations have been doing to dolphins and other endangered species. If you gave that young person a sample of Boucher's prose, they'd retreat in horror. There is empirical evidence for the sort of disjunction between Marxism and the young generation I am describing. Next month many of us will attend the annual Socialist Scholars Conference in New York, where we will see about a thousand middle-aged white people. Inevitably we will turn to an old friend and say something like, "God, everybody is so OLD." Meanwhile, at a conference on globalization held at the Riverside Church 2 years ago, there were twice as many participants and the average age was probably in the mid-20s. I have no doubt that if you asked the average attendee what the official Marxist position on ecology was, they'd say it was something like the position that Boucher puts forward. Louis Proyect
Re: Bright responds to Valis Craven
If you're interested in dissing rock 'n roll check out Monthly Review's most recent socialist-realist critique of do it yourself music. Its major finding is that the popular music industry is an integral part of class society and that we can't all grow up to be rock 'n roll stars. There is an interesting screed within a screed against alcohol. Apparently, no one at MR has ever done any good drugs. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: valis wrote: all those other awful LSD-smoking '70s lefties Smoking LSD does sound unusual, if not awful. So we've dis'd sex, we've dis'd durgs - who's up for rock n roll? Doug
Re: Marx on Native Americans
Doug, You might want to look at: Klein, Laura Lilian Ackerman (eds.) Women and Power in Native North America (1995 Norman, OK) Bernstein, David J. Prehistoric Subsistence on the Southern New England Coast (1993 San Diego) Simmons, Wm. S. The Narragansett (1989 NY) Sharer, Robert The Ancient Maya (5th ed. 1994) Wallace, Anthony F. C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (1969) Gerald Sider who is an anthropologist at CUNY Grad Center has written an interesting book about the Lumbee Indians who were/are attempting to be recognized as an official tribe by the US government. It is: Sider, Gerald Lumbee Indian Histories: Race, Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Southern U.S. (1993 NY) The University of Oklahoma publishes quite a bit about the Indians of North and Meso-America. They probably have a web page. Good luck, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Doug Henwood wrote: Thanks to everyone who's supplied titles on Indians. Most have been about their decimation by the Europeans - I'm more interested in stuff about their social lives - work, kinship, property, etc. Any ideas? Doug
Re: protecting the weak
I still have my copy of the poster circulated at the University of Chicago that said "Drive Friedman off Campus through Protest and Exposure." It is one of those great examples of Sparticist socialist realism that almost redeems that most sectarian of the sectarian groupuscles. Beside the wonderful call to action the poster included a picture of jack-booted Chilean soldiers burning books in downtown Santiago and a photo of poor Chileans gleaning food from a garbage dump. If I remember correctly, the Sparts argued that they were not denying Friedman his right to free speech because they wanted to drive him off campus through exposure of his deeds in Chile. It worked for me. Dan Hammond has it almost exactly wrong. At the University of Chicago Friedman was never censored. I don't beleve he was prevented from speaking, but I may be wrong. I entered the college in fall 1974 and no one stopped him from speaking that school year. If anything, Milton Friedman's influence with naive undergraduates and cashmere sweatered Chilean graduate students was immense. Chicago has had for many years a core curriculum for its undergraduates. Several of the year-long social science courses required that students read "Capitalism and Freedom." It was virtually impossible to avoid Little Milton's paeans to the virtues of untrammelled markets. When the revelations that he and Arnold Harberger had participated in post-coup planning for the Junta came to light, the Left on campus responded. The Sparts formed a united front of the marginal and tirelessly leafletted and hectored everyone else on the Left. Several demonstrations were organized. At one a message from Studs Terkel was read where he stated he would flush his diploma down the toilet except that he never picked it up in the first place. Folks from URPE organized an educational campaign that made it impossible to not have an opinion on what had happened in Chile. Editorials, front page articles, and letters to the editor appeared for months in the college newspaper. A teach-in was organized where Maurice Zeitlin told us that the lesson to be learned from the aborted revolution was that leftists ought to infiltrate the police. Friedman did appear at a public venue on campus in a debate about tax policy or something of the sort. He was one of four speakers, another was, I believe, Robert Eisner, and perhaps an economist from the UAW. A good sized picket was outside of Mandel Hall spiritedly chanting "Friedman, Harberger, Pinochet, the Working Class will not Forget." A couple of dozen protesters were inside the hall, and Friedman was met by some heckling. Friedman delivered his talk, one or two of the other speakers chastized his hypocritical commitment to freedom, and a fist fight almost broke out between a protester and one of los Chicago Boys. (BTW, you could always identify the Chilean graduate students because they dressed like they had just come back from a Saturday afternoon at the country club.) Friedman smugly answered his critics (you really wanted to shoot the bastard) that he hadn't lost any sleep, and, as far as I can tell, he was never censored. He wasn't driven off campus, but I think he was exposed. Whenever I hear Milton Friedman's name I think of jack-booted soldiers burning books, slum dwellers eating garbage, and Victor Jara singing songs of freedom as his torturers pushed on with their ugly work. The Dan Hammonds of the world will always try to rewrite history. It is up to us not to forget. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Fri, 7 Nov 1997, michael perelman wrote: Should we rise to defend the innocence of poor Milton Friedman who has suffered so much at the hands of the left for his ceaseless defense of freedom? -- From: Dan Hammond [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: HES: QUERY -- Censorship of economic writers Date: Friday, November 07, 1997 7:45 AM HES POSTING == Jim Craven's baseless and vulgar charge against Milton Friedman brings to mind that Friedman's advocacy of freedom, noninflationary monetary policy, and limited government has indeed been associated with efforts to censor. But Friedman was never the censor; he was the one censored. Before Chile, in 1974, members of the Students for a Democratic Society tried to shout Friedman down as he gave a talk at the Oriental Institute in Chicago. After Anthony Lewis's _New York Times_ article (October 2, 1975) accusing him of contributing to repression of Chile's poor, a "Committee Against Friedman/Harberger Collaboration With the Chilean Junta" was formed at Chicago. The group's posters on the University of Chicago campus called for members of the community to "drive Friedman off campus through protest and exposure." After the announcement of Friedman's Nobel Prize there were protests, and
[PEN-L:12244] Re: Ruth and DSA
Comrade Levy makes the important point that aggregates can be misleading, that shorthand can be misunderstood. He is absolutely correct that the Lower East Side is NOT mostly white and higher income. Nor for that matter is Chinatown white and high income. My larger point was that Glick gave up on the largely minority and poor sections of Manhattan that make up the "upper half" of the island probably because she saw them as uninterested in her largely social issue campaign. The bohemian character of much of the Lower East Side makes it an interesting case. I don't know how much campaigning she did (or support that she received) there, but did she campaign against poverty and racism there? (Not a rhetorical question, I really don't know.) Regarding geography. Comrade Levy, only an overheated polemicist or the cartographically impaired would place the 50s, 60s in the "upper half" of Manhattan. Only a sophist would include 70s and 80s in the northern half of the borough. Of course, I've met more than one Lower East Sider who prided him/herself on not venturing north of 14th street. From the not very hip portion of Upstate Manhattan I remain, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, Gerald Levy wrote: Robert Saute, CUNY Grad Center wrote: Glick, an outspoken lesbian and generally independent Council Person, ran a campaign in the lower half of Manhattan, i.e., the mostly white and higher income half of Manhattan. Comrade, you need a geography lesson! I assume you would include the Lower East Side as being part of the "lower half of Manhattan". Is that area "mostly white and higher income"? As for the "upper half of Manhattan", what about those affluent white communities -- both East side and West side -- in the 50's? ... 60's? ... 70's?... 80's's? , etc. Manhattan, like most parts of NYC, is very culturally, socially, and economically diverse. Simple statements like Manhattan Up = Minority Poor Manhattan Down = White Wealthy do not portray the reality very well at all. Jerry
[PEN-L:12238] Ruth and DSA
Ruth Messinger, indeed, used to be a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She remains close enough to DSA to attend their fundraisers, but she quit DSA, and here I think she has been explicit about this, to distance herself from the Left. The New York local endorsed her campaign, although there were moves afoot to endorse Sharpton by some and no one by others. Despite its endorsement, the local did nothing organizationally. The lack of action may have resulted from Messinger's absense of interest in mobilizing voters. Or, perhaps, DSAers may have been turned off by her attack on City workers (not cops). She decided in what seems like a patently opportunistic ploy for NY Times coverage to solve the problem of funding public education by increasing the work week of municipal employees and jettisoning the sabaticals of Board of Ed. hires. DSAers were not the only ones to lose interest in Borough President Messinger. Her core constituency of left-leaning liberals did not vote. Hopes for Messinger had at one time been quite high because in part she had the best network of grassroots supporters in the City. Over the years she had built up a fairly impressive cadre of campaigners, but many of them abandoned ship when they felt that she wasn't interested in their support. Her office staff has been demoralized for a long time, and it is hard to believe her campaign staff feels anything but devastated. Ruth moved to the center to capture more votes, and I'm sure she had the polling data to tell her it was the politically "intelligent" thing to do. Unfortunately for her, she became a hollow candidate winning the hollow vote, I guess. A similar phenomenon occurred with Deborah Glick who was soundly beaten in the race for Manhattan Borough President by C. Virginia Fields. Glick, an outspoken lesbian and generally independent Council Person, ran a campaign in the lower half of Manhattan, i.e., the mostly white and higher income half of Manhattan. Glick was probably the most left of the candidates for Borough President, but she made the "rational" decision to spend her resources in the socially liberal-friendly half of Manhattan. Glick's problem was not so much that she moved to the center but that she gave up on a better part of the City. BTW, I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think Messinger got support from the police unions. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:10490] Re: Labor films
Two of my favorite movies about labor from the mid/late 1970s are BLUE COLLAR with Richard Prior, Harvey Keitel, and Yaphet Kotto. Union corruption, class struggle, and the state are all prominently featured. CAR WASH is about a day in the life of a Los Angeles car wash, has great music, some very funny scenes, and a wonderful send-up of maoism. Ivan Dixon, Franklin Adjani, and, I think, Richard Prior are in the movie. Car Wash is often on late-night TV. Regards, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9791] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
No, tell me Paul, what does it "say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.!"? In the best leninist tradition and always eager to receive knowledge from on high, I remain, Robert Saute On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: is this true! what does it say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.! -paul Original message I guess I have gotten used to how bad the Nation magazine has become, but every once in a while I run into something so rancid that I have to pause and catch my breath. This was the case with a review by DSA leader Barbara Ehrenreich of 3 books on war. This review was accompanied by a review by Susan Faludi of Ehrenreichs new book on war titled "Blood Rites". All this prose is dedicated to the proposition that large-scale killing has been around as long as homo sapiens has been around and that it has nothing much to do with economic motives. Looking for an explanation why George Bush made war on Iraq? It wasnt over oil, "democratic socialist" Ehrenreich would argue. It was instead related to the fact that we were once "preyed upon by animals that were initially far more skillful hunters than ourselves. In particular, the sacralization of war is not the project of a self-confident predator...but that of a creature which has learned only recently, in the last thousand or so generations, not to cower at every sound in the night." In a rather silly exercise in cultural criticism, Ehrenreich speculates that the popularity of those nature shows depicting one animal attacking and eating another are proof of the predatory disposition we brutish human beings share. I myself have a different interpretation for what its worth. I believe that PBS sponsors all this stuff because of the rampant oil company sponsorship that transmits coded Social Darwinist ideology. Just as the Leopard is meant to eat the antelope, so is Shell Oil meant to kill Nigerians who stand in the way of progress. One of the books that Ehrenreich reviews is "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" by Lawrence Keeley. Keeley argues that material scarcity does not explain warfare among Stone Age people. It is instead something in our "shared psychology" that attracts us to war. Keeley finds brutish behavior everywhere and at all times, including among the American Indian. If the number of casualties produced by wars among the Plains Indians was proportional to the population of European nations during the World Wars, then the casualty rates would have been more like 2 billion rather than the tens of millions that obtained. Ehrenreich swoons over Keeleys book that was published in 1996 to what seems like "insufficient acclaim". I suspect that Keeleys book functions ideologically like some of the recent scholarship that attempts to show that Incas, Aztecs and Spaniards were all equally bad. They all had kingdoms. They all had slaves. They all despoiled the environment. Ad nauseum. It is always a specious practice to project into precapitalist societies the sort of dynamic that occurs under capitalism. For one thing, it is almost impossible to understand these societies without violating some sort of Heisenberg law of anthropology. The historiography of the North American and Latin American Indian societies is mediated by the interaction of the invading society with the invaded. The "view" is rarely impartial. Capitalism began to influence and overturn precapitalist class relations hundreds of years ago, so a laboratory presentation of what Aztec society looked like prior to the Conquistadores is impossible. Furthermore, it is regrettable that Ehrenreich herself is seduced by this methodology since she doesnt even question Keeleys claims about the Plains Indian wars. When did these wars occur? Obviously long after the railroads and buffalo hunters had become a fact of North American life. The reason all this stuff seems so poisonous is that it makes a political statement that war can not be eliminated through the introduction of socialism or political action. For Ehrenreich, opposing war is a psychological project rather than a political project: "Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war -- a warrior elite or, on our own time, the chieftains of the military-industrial complex risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome .. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding that the enemy is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace." Really? The abstract institution of war maintains its grip on "us"? Who exactly is this "us"? Is it the average working person who struggles to make ends meet? Do they sit at home at night like great cats fantasizing about biting the throats out of Rwandans or
[PEN-L:9791] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
No, tell me Paul, what does it "say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.!"? In the best leninist tradition and always eager to receive knowledge from on high, I remain, Robert Saute On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: is this true! what does it say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.! -paul Original message I guess I have gotten used to how bad the Nation magazine has become, but every once in a while I run into something so rancid that I have to pause and catch my breath. This was the case with a review by DSA leader Barbara Ehrenreich of 3 books on war. This review was accompanied by a review by Susan Faludi of Ehrenreichs new book on war titled "Blood Rites". All this prose is dedicated to the proposition that large-scale killing has been around as long as homo sapiens has been around and that it has nothing much to do with economic motives. Looking for an explanation why George Bush made war on Iraq? It wasnt over oil, "democratic socialist" Ehrenreich would argue. It was instead related to the fact that we were once "preyed upon by animals that were initially far more skillful hunters than ourselves. In particular, the sacralization of war is not the project of a self-confident predator...but that of a creature which has learned only recently, in the last thousand or so generations, not to cower at every sound in the night." In a rather silly exercise in cultural criticism, Ehrenreich speculates that the popularity of those nature shows depicting one animal attacking and eating another are proof of the predatory disposition we brutish human beings share. I myself have a different interpretation for what its worth. I believe that PBS sponsors all this stuff because of the rampant oil company sponsorship that transmits coded Social Darwinist ideology. Just as the Leopard is meant to eat the antelope, so is Shell Oil meant to kill Nigerians who stand in the way of progress. One of the books that Ehrenreich reviews is "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" by Lawrence Keeley. Keeley argues that material scarcity does not explain warfare among Stone Age people. It is instead something in our "shared psychology" that attracts us to war. Keeley finds brutish behavior everywhere and at all times, including among the American Indian. If the number of casualties produced by wars among the Plains Indians was proportional to the population of European nations during the World Wars, then the casualty rates would have been more like 2 billion rather than the tens of millions that obtained. Ehrenreich swoons over Keeleys book that was published in 1996 to what seems like "insufficient acclaim". I suspect that Keeleys book functions ideologically like some of the recent scholarship that attempts to show that Incas, Aztecs and Spaniards were all equally bad. They all had kingdoms. They all had slaves. They all despoiled the environment. Ad nauseum. It is always a specious practice to project into precapitalist societies the sort of dynamic that occurs under capitalism. For one thing, it is almost impossible to understand these societies without violating some sort of Heisenberg law of anthropology. The historiography of the North American and Latin American Indian societies is mediated by the interaction of the invading society with the invaded. The "view" is rarely impartial. Capitalism began to influence and overturn precapitalist class relations hundreds of years ago, so a laboratory presentation of what Aztec society looked like prior to the Conquistadores is impossible. Furthermore, it is regrettable that Ehrenreich herself is seduced by this methodology since she doesnt even question Keeleys claims about the Plains Indian wars. When did these wars occur? Obviously long after the railroads and buffalo hunters had become a fact of North American life. The reason all this stuff seems so poisonous is that it makes a political statement that war can not be eliminated through the introduction of socialism or political action. For Ehrenreich, opposing war is a psychological project rather than a political project: "Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war -- a warrior elite or, on our own time, the chieftains of the military-industrial complex risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome .. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding that the enemy is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace." Really? The abstract institution of war maintains its grip on "us"? Who exactly is this "us"? Is it the average working person who struggles to make ends meet? Do they sit at home at night like great cats fantasizing about biting the throats out of Rwandans or
[PEN-L:9593] `96 Presidential Voting Stats
Dear Colleagues: Where can I find a breakdown of votes for the 1996 presidential election by sex, marital status and income? Please feel free to respond to my email address or the list. Thanks, Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9033] Re: Socialist Scholars Conference
Exactly how much would you pay? By next year's Socialist Scholars Conference we ought to be able to clone Doug. Presently, we have the venerable New York law firm of Lucre, Prestige, Status Wealth checking out the intellectual property issues involved in cloning. BTW, can money be cloned? Is that the same as counterfeiting, and is it inflationary? The schedule for the Socialist Scholars Conference ought to be up on the SSC web page www.soc.qc.edu/ssc by Monday or Tuesday. Check it out. Robert Saute [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, 20 Mar 1997, Anders Schneiderman wrote: Louis wrote: I would give a hundred dollars for a ticket to see Doug Henwood debate Stanley Aronowitz debate Doug Henwood on the disappearance of jobs, ... Hey, I'd pay a lot more than that to see Duo Dougs (or, for that matter, Dueling Deconstructing Dougs, if that was an effort on your part to pose the impossibility/necessity of the Subject or some some shit). Anders Schneiderman
