Re: Native American land rights
Ajit: I goofed on the citation. It should be: Henderson, John and Patricia Netherly. _Configurations of Power: Holisitic Anthropology in Theory and Practice_. Ithaca: Cornell U Press, 1993. Lechtman is the author of the article "Technologies of Power: The Andean Case" which appears in the volume. Tom At 17:12 24/12/97 +1100, you wrote: At 08:40 23/12/97 -0400, Tom K. wrote: There is a healthy antidote to this in the literature spawned by Murra in anthropology. See the wonderful collectinon of essays called the _Technologies of Power_ (despite the title, it is not a Foucauldian inspired collection) edited, I believe, by Heather Lecthman. ___ Thanks for the reference. I'll check this out. Cheers, ajit sinha Tom Kruse / Casilla 5869 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
James Heartfield wrote: Ralph Waldo Emerson joked that he never read a book before reviewing it, in case it prejudiced him. Why don't you read Science and the Retreat from Reason before you close your mind to it. Oh that Emerson! He also said he read Shakespeare's plays backwards, so that the plot didn't get in the way of the poetry. I do plan to read the book, as soon as I can get my hands on it. I have read it, and there is a great deal of critique of science, especially of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and of chaos theory, as I recollect. Glad to hear this, but what I was talking about was a critique of the social-political role of science as an instrument of control and arbiter of Truth. These examples aren't quite what I had in mind. By the way, James, I've been kicking LM around a bit, but I still take you seriously and think of the magazine as worth reading. I'm not condemning you as agents of Satan or anything. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
At 12:57 23/12/97 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote: Absolutely, couldn't agree more - so I hope whoever's writing up the agenda hears this! As amusing as Sokal's hoax on Social Text was, its long-term effect has been negligible or even malignant, because it didn't do anything (and may have detracted from) putting the critique of technology on the agenda. ___ Absolutely! I have decided to take up the issue of technology as my next research project. I have very little idea what direction it will take and how comprehensive it would be. But I'll see what I can do on this subject, and let you all know about this in just a few years of time! All kinds of references would be appreciated. Cheers, ajit sinha
Re: Native American land rights
At 08:40 23/12/97 -0400, Tom K. wrote: There is a healthy antidote to this in the literature spawned by Murra in anthropology. See the wonderful collectinon of essays called the _Technologies of Power_ (despite the title, it is not a Foucauldian inspired collection) edited, I believe, by Heather Lecthman. ___ Thanks for the reference. I'll check this out. Cheers, ajit sinha
Re: Native American land rights
At 11:29 22/12/97 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote: Following in this morning's PEN-L tradition of quoting poets from memory, I'll quote Wallace Stevens' "It must be possible. It must!" I keep hoping that a more humane social system could appropriate the technical and organizational knowledge produced by capitalism and re-deploy it for purposes other than making money and steepening hierarchies. Maybe this is too optimistic. ___ I think it is problematic to separate 'technology' from the relation under which that 'technology' was developed. If capitalist relation could not work with feudal technology, then how come socialist relation could work with capitalist technology? I think a critique of technology should be put on the agenda. Cheers, ajit sinha Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Ajit Sinha wrote: I think it is problematic to separate 'technology' from the relation under which that 'technology' was developed. If capitalist relation could not work with feudal technology, then how come socialist relation could work with capitalist technology? I think a critique of technology should be put on the agenda. Absolutely, couldn't agree more - so I hope whoever's writing up the agenda hears this! As amusing as Sokal's hoax on Social Text was, its long-term effect has been negligible or even malignant, because it didn't do anything (and may have detracted from) putting the critique of technology on the agenda. It showed that the Social Text editors didn't really know what they're talking about, but it's put nothing in the place they've been evicted from. As far as I can tell, while he's opposed to physicists doing nuclear bomb research, Sokal has no theoretical understanding or political critique of science himself; he seems to take Reason as a category not worth serious investigation. Vulgar science studies types have taken it too far, but there is something to Foucault's power/knowledge pairing, and more than linguistic accident that joins the multiple senses of "discipline." Aronowitz-style science studies has been discredited, but what's to take its place? Monthly Review is about to publish a book by John Gillott and Manjit Kumar, Science and the Retreat from Reason. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the ad on the back of the December MR says the authors "positively reinterpret the Enlightenment-based values of progress through development of humanity's understanding and shaping of the physical world, made possible by scientific research and experimentation." Turns out that the authors are affiliated with LM, the magazine once known as Living Marxism, then published by the former Revolutionary Communist Party and now apparently published by a company whose main business is the British cybercafe chain, Cyberia. As PEN-L readers are aware, LM is passionately anti-environmentalist, holding green politics to be a symptom of the devolution of the bourgeoisie from thrusting to timorous. I'll bet Gillott Kumar's book doesn't contain anything like a critique of technology, and though MR furiously dissents from the rest of the LM package, I'll bet they (as would many leftists) published the book because they were all too happy, post-Sokal, not to entertain a critique of technology. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
In message l03102802b0c5a7e1158c@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I'll bet Gillott Kumar's book doesn't contain anything like a critique of technology, and though MR furiously dissents from the rest of the LM package, I'll bet they (as would many leftists) published the book because they were all too happy, post-Sokal, not to entertain a critique of technology. Doug Ralph Waldo Emerson joked that he never read a book before reviewing it, in case it prejudiced him. Why don't you read Science and the Retreat from Reason before you close your mind to it. I have read it, and there is a great deal of critique of science, especially of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and of chaos theory, as I recollect. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
I think it is problematic to separate 'technology' from the relation under which that 'technology' was developed. If capitalist relation could not work with feudal technology, then how come socialist relation could work with capitalist technology? I think a critique of technology should be put on the agenda. Cheers, ajit sinha YES! Otherwise we talk of gizmos (or production/information processes) totally disconneted from the context in which they arose, the ways in which they are deployed and how the fruits/negative externalities of their use are apportioned. Also, we might add we lose sight of the ways in which different users (or those subjected to the use of certain technologioes) render their exposure/interaction with tech. meaningful (the culture stuff). There is a healthy antidote to this in the literature spawned by Murra in anthropology. See the wonderful collectinon of essays called the _Technologies of Power_ (despite the title, it is not a Foucauldian inspired collection) edited, I believe, by Heather Lecthman. Therein are some very good studies of technology in different places and times which all look at the gizmos/proceses AND the specific modes of production under which they arose, were put to use, etc. There are case studies from contemporary Japan, ancient Greece, etc. I especially liked the chapter on Incan metallurgy, once you get past the chemical equations. The Incas were really very good, it turns out, at smelting, alloying, etc., yet they only developed those technologies to make fancy doo-dads to adorn temples, never to coin money or make weapons. Tom Tom Kruse / Casilla 5869 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
Without doubt, I am sure you are right. There are characteristics from a number of societies and cultures that one can respect and admire (dare I say, even our own). My point was not to suggest that there are none, but rather to observe that merely eliminating the disasterous effects which capitalism has had (assuming one had the power to erase the effects of history) would not restore indigenous societies to some state akin to nirvana, which is too frequently implied by the way some folks speak about Indian peoples. It is easy to celebrate selected elements of Indian societies (which were not all alike, even though too often they are treated as undifferentiated) as if those could be disentangled from their cultural and material contexts. Fantasy and stereotypes may inhabit the imagination, but make poor substitutes for historical and cultural analysis, and offer little in the way of insight as to what strategies should be pursued given that the historical clock only winds forward. Michael E. At 06:32 PM 12/21/97 -0800, Steven S. Zahniser wrote: On Sun, 21 Dec 1997, Michael Eisenscher wrote: Second, without laying claim to any particular expertise, I seem to recall that long before Europeans drove the indigenous peoples from their lands, Indian tribes quite regularly engaged in pretty significant inter-tribal warfare over hunting grounds and resources. Capitalism brought horrific devastation to these tribes, but their pre-capitalist lives were not idyllic or free from conflict and human suffering as some who overly romanticize them would have us believe. Even after setting romanticism aside, I suspect that a comprehensive assessment of the pre-conquest civilizations of the Americas would identify a number of characteristics that we might admire. Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED] P.S. Happy Holidays!
Re: Native American land rights
On Mon, 22 Dec 1997, Doug Henwood wrote: Or the old Marx school business, even, with poverty being produced alongside wealth. I think Marx had 19th century England in mind when he developed his analysis. Yes, capital accumulation had a double-edged character in Western Europe. Does it in Bolivia, from where Tom Kruse posts? This is the essential question after all. What is the difference between Bolivia in 1997 and England of 1840? Will Bolivia launch a textile industry? Will it build a navy that can protect its colonies? Unless the historical context is established, we are not doing Marxism. What positive aspects? Antibiotics, mass literacy, births that don't kill mother or infant, air travel, Baudelaire, telephones, astrophysics. Stuff like that. But whatever you think of capitalist modernization, it's a fact of life, part of our social inheritance, those unchosen tools we make history with. So the question is what we do with them. What's the better use for antibiotics - so Frank Purdue can crowd chickens closer together, or so a sick kid in Nairobi doesn't have to die? Nairobi is in Kenya. What has been the effect of capitalist property relations in Kenya? Has it yielded the sort of results that Marx falsely predicted would come to India in his Herald Tribune articles of 1853? Do we tell Bolivia "no pain, no gain." Unless they submit to capitalist transformation of the countryside, they won't grow up to be strong, healthy adults like their cousins in Europe? Believe it or not, there are some really intelligent people who believe this, like Jeffrey Sachs. Of course, it's totally false. Furthermore, antibiotics are a cheap fix for the problems of Kenya. What good does it do to supply medicine to keep people alive in conditions of *absolute poverty*? LM has used improved life expectancy figures based on the availability of modern medicine to make the case for capitalism. (They never use this word, they use the word "civilization". Such euphemisms are common in bourgeois society where all class-based terms are verboten.) What has been the effect of capitalism on Bolivia and Kenya? Has it produced capitalist modernization? No, it hasn't and that's the problem. Latin America, Africa and Asia will never experience capitalist modernization and that is the reason revolutionary socialism has taken roots in such places as China and Vietnam, where there was no industrial proletariat to speak of. I think it would be much more useful to discuss specific, concrete class relations in places like Bolivia or Kenya over the past century than to simply repeat mantras from the Communist Manifesto as Doug does. Louis Proyect
Re: Native American land rights
Louis N Proyect wrote: I think Marx had 19th century England in mind when he developed his analysis. Yes, capital accumulation had a double-edged character in Western Europe. Does it in Bolivia, from where Tom Kruse posts? This is the essential question after all. What is the difference between Bolivia in 1997 and England of 1840? Will Bolivia launch a textile industry? Will it build a navy that can protect its colonies? Unless the historical context is established, we are not doing Marxism. [...] I think it would be much more useful to discuss specific, concrete class relations in places like Bolivia or Kenya over the past century than to simply repeat mantras from the Communist Manifesto as Doug does. Lou, you're attributing a Heartfieldism to me that wasn't anywhere in what I posted, or what I think. One of the passages I had in mind from Marx was this, which is not from the Manifesto (what traces of the Manifesto did you find in what I wrote?), but from Capital, vol. 1, chap. 31, "The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist": "The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation W. Howitt, a man who specializes in being a Christian, says of the Christian colonial system, 'The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of earth.' The history of Dutch colonial administration - and Holland was the model capitalist nation of the seventeenth century - 'is one of the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, and meanness.' Nothing is more characteristic than their system of stealing men in Celebes, in order to get slaves for Java. Man-stealers were trained for this purpose 'Wherever they set foot, devastation and depopulation followed. Banjuwangi, a province of Java, numbered over 80,000 inhabitants in 1750 and only 18,000 in 1811.' That is peaceful commerce! The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and murder flowed back to the mother-country and were turned into capital there In fact the veiled slavery of the wage-labourers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New World as its pedestal." A description of primitive accumulation that sounds a lot like our modern system of neo-primitive accumulation. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Sid Shniad wrote: Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? Doug, please address this question yourself. If such a separation is not possible, your position becomes one of defending capitalism itself, no? Following in this morning's PEN-L tradition of quoting poets from memory, I'll quote Wallace Stevens' "It must be possible. It must!" I keep hoping that a more humane social system could appropriate the technical and organizational knowledge produced by capitalism and re-deploy it for purposes other than making money and steepening hierarchies. Maybe this is too optimistic. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
On Mon, December 22, 1997 at 10:19:28 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: What positive aspects? Antibiotics, mass literacy, births that don't kill mother or infant, air travel, Baudelaire, telephones, astrophysics. Stuff like that. But whatever you think of capitalist modernization, it's a fact of life, part of our social inheritance, those unchosen tools we make history with. So the question is what we do with them. What's the better use for antibiotics - so Frank Purdue can crowd chickens closer together, or so a sick kid in Nairobi doesn't have to die? And, according to Baudelaire, "La Nature est un temple, ou de vivants piliers laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles" (quoting from memory, but I think that's right, tr: "Nature is a temple, from whose living pillars are loosed mingled voices"). So, we carry on with the tools we have, discarding those we don't see fit for a just society of course, and recognize that nature is a living temple of sorts, that we must preserve it so that we may thrive, and that human dignity demands an end to exploitation and subjection, rooted in concentrated power of all sorts... Note that when I say "preserve", that doesn't mean "we" --- as in western white dudes --- "preserve" the land of indigenous peoples by telling them to keep their dirty little hands off of "our" forests, which by accident of nature happen to be located in their backyard. As in any human effort, it must be a shared one, and any shared human effort must be undertaken under conditions of equal participation. Bill
Re: Native American land rights
Just checking, Doug. I agree with what you're saying here. But I was concerned that you were leaning in the direction of Hayek et al, whose position is (in my untutored reading) that if you touch any of capitalism's wondrous effects in hopes of improving anything, the whole thing goes for a shit. (Ergo Stalinism, shortages, etc. are inherent in any attempt to improve upon capitalism.) Cheers, Sid Sid Shniad wrote: Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? Doug, please address this question yourself. If such a separation is not possible, your position becomes one of defending capitalism itself, no? Following in this morning's PEN-L tradition of quoting poets from memory, I'll quote Wallace Stevens' "It must be possible. It must!" I keep hoping that a more humane social system could appropriate the technical and organizational knowledge produced by capitalism and re-deploy it for purposes other than making money and steepening hierarchies. Maybe this is too optimistic. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Thomas Kruse wrote: Let's get specific. What do you have in mind when you say "positive aspects of capitalist modernization"? Mass politics? Flush toilets? Pen-l chat spaces? This is dicey. A particular kind of capitalist modernization (welfare state) produced a certain kind of generalized prosperity in certain places for a certain period. But many argue (still) that it was had at the cost of other's immiseration (the old dependency school business). Or the old Marx school business, even, with poverty being produced alongside wealth. What positive aspects? Antibiotics, mass literacy, births that don't kill mother or infant, air travel, Baudelaire, telephones, astrophysics. Stuff like that. But whatever you think of capitalist modernization, it's a fact of life, part of our social inheritance, those unchosen tools we make history with. So the question is what we do with them. What's the better use for antibiotics - so Frank Purdue can crowd chickens closer together, or so a sick kid in Nairobi doesn't have to die? Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Friends, I want to thank Tom Kruse for his insightful comments on indingenous peoples. As I said in a previous post, thee is much to learn from indigenous peoples. I hope others sho have knowledge will contribure. michael yates
Re: Native American land rights
James Heartfield: No I don't. And any way, what has the question of Nigeria got to do with land rights in the Americas in the last century? Everything. The same methodology you deployed to rationalize genocide against Native Americans is used in your attack on human rights groups defending the Ogoni. They are trying to preserve primitive peoples like "jam" or maintain "human zoos" for ecotourists. You view peoples like the Sioux and the Ogoni as obstacles in the path of "civilization". Louis Proyect
Re: Native American land rights
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2. Capitalist culture is very seductive. Almost every incident of contact subtly lures people to give up their ways. The only exception I know occured when some islanders gave Captain Cook back his metal axes because they did not know how to make the tools themselves. What fraction of Native Americans are willing to reject the casinos? Maybe we have already destroyed so many indigeneous cultures that they have already incorated the worst of what the West has to offer. Wasn't Russell Means running for the libertarian presidential nomination? "Seductive" is a very loaded word here - it implies something devious is going on. Had you used "attractive" instead, the rest of the paragraph might have been impossible. What's the point? That capitalist culture has lots of attractions that people should resist? If so, why? From what vantage point can you criticize people for "giv[ing] up their ways" to its "lures"? Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? Doug
Re: Native American land rights
On Sun, 21 Dec 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: I used the word, "seductive", intentionally. I think that outsiders see the glamor, the glitz, and the convenience long before they see the dark side of capitalist culture. For example, many immigrants who suffered great hardships to come to the U.S. returned disappointed. I don't have the data on hand, but the number was surprisingly large. Yes! In my research on Mexican migration to the United States, many migrants, as well as prospective migrants, express their strong reservations about life in the U.S., including crime, drug abuse, and what some of them see as our excessively permissive sexual mores. Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
I have resisted getting engaged in this discussion, but several thoughts dog me about which I would welcome further comment. First, without having to lay claim to any particular revolutionary theory or objectives, is it not sufficient on simple grounds of basic human rights that we defend American Indians against the genocidal practices employed against them throughout our history, and acknowledge that their rights to self-determination have been trampled by profit/power-hungry interests throughout U.S. history? It does not require that one be a Marxist to come to this conclusion, but certainly anyone who claims to embrace Marxism ought to do so. Second, without laying claim to any particular expertise, I seem to recall that long before Europeans drove the indigenous peoples from their lands, Indian tribes quite regularly engaged in pretty significant inter-tribal warfare over hunting grounds and resources. Capitalism brought horrific devastation to these tribes, but their pre-capitalist lives were not idyllic or free from conflict and human suffering as some who overly romanticize them would have us believe. Third, for the entire history of humankind, distant societies have influenced one another as they came into contact, borrowing technologies and culture from one another that in turn contributed to further transformation of social structures and practices, and cultural mores and ideas. This has been true of societies at the same relative level of social and economic development, as well as of those at widely different levels. It has been true on this continent as well as on every other. It is unavoidable that even the most remote and isolated Amazonian tribes will sooner or later touch and be touched by outsiders. The issue is not whether by on what basis this takes place. Perhaps there are some social anthropologists out there who can contribute more to these points. Bottom line, however, is that whatever the historical record may be, there is no turning back the clock. The challenge that confronts us and Indian peoples today is to chart the course ahead -- how to create a system that is more just, which respects peoples' rights to their cultural traditions, and which provides everyone in society with a sufficient standard of living, education, and social benefits to sustain and nurture their human dignity, intellectual and social development, and freedom from bigotry, racism, sexism and the other poisons that afflict the present order. Michael E.
Re: Native American land rights
In message l03102805b0c31f03af13@[166.84.250.86], Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes I don't know either, really, which is why I asked a lot of questions, instead of my usual mode of vigorous assertion. Terry Eagleton says in his little book on postmodernism that to a Marxist, capitalism is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to humanity. He's got a point. Doug I tend to agree with Doug and Terry Eagleton on this point. Capitalism does two things at the same time: 1. It develops social productivity to the point that it is possible to advance to a better society 2. It makes the persistence of private property relations intolerable for the majority making it necessary to advance to a better society. Beyond that it is necessary to distinguish between capitalism today and in Marx's day. In Marx's day it was still possible to talk of a progressive capitalism. Today, any advances that are made are more than offest by the destructive side of capital. In the main further development of social productivity can only be won in opposition to capital. There are notable exceptions. Real technological advances have taken place is SE Asia. What is not sensible in my view is to attack capitalism from the standpoint of more archaic social forms. This romantic critique, far from providing a secure alternative, is simply assimilated into political conservatism. Instead of capital being the enemy, development itself is seen as the problem. More to the point, it is not possible to identify any part of the world that is not already subsumed into capitalist social relations. The Indian Marxist Jairus Banaji made this point in relation to supposedly pre-capitalist economic formations in India. Banaji argues that th existnce of these is an illusion, by distinguishing between the formal subsumption of production relations into capital, which he says is ubiquitous, and the actual reordering of production relations, which he explains is patchy. All this meaning that uneven development is not evidence that capitalistic domination is not partial, but rather that uneven development is the form that capitalist domination takes. The quotation from LM that cultures cannot be preserved like jam might have been put precociously, but it seems unassailable to me. It reminds me of the story about president Marcos' delight that anthropologists had (mis) identified a prehistoric people in the Phillipines. Marcos was so made up about the academics' interest in his country that he sent his troops in to smash up these unfortunate people's cooking utensils and steal their clothes before each new anthropolgical visit was about to happen, to hide the knowledge that even this isolated group ahd established trade relations with others. In assessing indigenism as a political strategy today, it is necessary to understand it as a modern development, in contemporary circumstances, rather than a resistance to modernity. It is right that Marxists should defend people's rights against oppression. But that must mean that indigenous peoples' have a right to scure their own economic development, as well as a right to seek work. There really is no way forward but forward. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
Forwarded message: From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Dec 21 22:42:13 1997 Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "'me'" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "'pen-l'" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Native American land rights Date: Sun, 21 Dec 97 14:38:00 PST Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Encoding: 83 TEXT James Heartfield wrote: Capitalism does two things at the same time: 1. It develops social productivity to the point that it is possible to advance to a better society Or does it? I am not convinced of the long term viability of capitalist development. 2. It makes the persistence of private property relations intolerable for the majority making it necessary to advance to a better society. Or does it tend to push the less fortunate into self-destructive that does little to advance societty? Beyond that it is necessary to distinguish between capitalism today and in Marx's day. In Marx's day it was still possible to talk of a progressive capitalism. Today, any advances that are made are more than offest by the destructive side of capital. In the main further development of social productivity can only be won in opposition to capital. There are notable exceptions. Real technological advances have taken place is SE Asia. ok. What is not sensible in my view is to attack capitalism from the standpoint of more archaic social forms. This romantic critique, far from providing a secure alternative, is simply assimilated into political conservatism. Instead of capital being the enemy, development itself is seen as the problem. Whoa! I did not hear anyone here making a romantic critique. Nor did I hear that development itself was the enemy. Start out from false premises like that, and you can come up with some wierd conclusions. The quotation from LM that cultures cannot be preserved like jam might have been put precociously, but it seems unassailable to me. It reminds me of the story about president Marcos' delight that anthropologists had (mis) identified a prehistoric people in the Phillipines. Marcos was so made up about the academics' interest in his country that he sent his troops in to smash up these unfortunate people's cooking utensils and steal their clothes before each new anthropolgical visit was about to happen, to hide the knowledge that even this isolated group ahd established trade relations with others. We have not been arguing for Marcos to preserve cultures; rather to offer the opportunity for peoples to maintain theirs. Big difference. In assessing indigenism as a political strategy today, it is necessary to understand it as a modern development, in contemporary circumstances, rather than a resistance to modernity. It is right that Marxists should defend people's rights against oppression. But that must mean that indigenous peoples' have a right to scure their own economic development, as well as a right to seek work. I did not hear anything different on this list. There really is no way forward but forward. Nice word play. What does forward mean? Nobody here seems confident that they have THE SOLUTION, so let me turn the question around. What indigeneous culture has enjoyed a significant advancement under capitalist development. From what I have seen, capitalism relegates such people to touristic relics (jam?), degrading low wages work, or eking out a living at the margins of society. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
James Heartfield wrote: Capitalism does two things at the same time: 1. It develops social productivity to the point that it is possible to advance to a better society Or does it? I am not convinced of the long term viability of capitalist development. 2. It makes the persistence of private property relations intolerable for the majority making it necessary to advance to a better society. Or does it tend to push the less fortunate into self-destructive that does little to advance societty? Beyond that it is necessary to distinguish between capitalism today and in Marx's day. In Marx's day it was still possible to talk of a progressive capitalism. Today, any advances that are made are more than offest by the destructive side of capital. In the main further development of social productivity can only be won in opposition to capital. There are notable exceptions. Real technological advances have taken place is SE Asia. ok. What is not sensible in my view is to attack capitalism from the standpoint of more archaic social forms. This romantic critique, far from providing a secure alternative, is simply assimilated into political conservatism. Instead of capital being the enemy, development itself is seen as the problem. Whoa! I did not hear anyone here making a romantic critique. Nor did I hear that development itself was the enemy. Start out from false premises like that, and you can come up with some wierd conclusions. The quotation from LM that cultures cannot be preserved like jam might have been put precociously, but it seems unassailable to me. It reminds me of the story about president Marcos' delight that anthropologists had (mis) identified a prehistoric people in the Phillipines. Marcos was so made up about the academics' interest in his country that he sent his troops in to smash up these unfortunate people's cooking utensils and steal their clothes before each new anthropolgical visit was about to happen, to hide the knowledge that even this isolated group ahd established trade relations with others. We have not been arguing for Marcos to preserve cultures; rather to offer the opportunity for peoples to maintain theirs. Big difference. In assessing indigenism as a political strategy today, it is necessary to understand it as a modern development, in contemporary circumstances, rather than a resistance to modernity. It is right that Marxists should defend people's rights against oppression. But that must mean that indigenous peoples' have a right to scure their own economic development, as well as a right to seek work. I did not hear anything different on this list. There really is no way forward but forward. Nice word play. What does forward mean? Nobody here seems confident that they have THE SOLUTION, so let me turn the question around. What indigeneous culture has enjoyed a significant advancement under capitalist development. From what I have seen, capitalism relegates such people to touristic relics (jam?), degrading low wages work, or eking out a living at the margins of society. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
On Sun, 21 Dec 1997, Michael Eisenscher wrote: Second, without laying claim to any particular expertise, I seem to recall that long before Europeans drove the indigenous peoples from their lands, Indian tribes quite regularly engaged in pretty significant inter-tribal warfare over hunting grounds and resources. Capitalism brought horrific devastation to these tribes, but their pre-capitalist lives were not idyllic or free from conflict and human suffering as some who overly romanticize them would have us believe. Even after setting romanticism aside, I suspect that a comprehensive assessment of the pre-conquest civilizations of the Americas would identify a number of characteristics that we might admire. Steven Zahniser [EMAIL PROTECTED] P.S. Happy Holidays!
Re: Native American land rights
Much of the discussion on Indian rights has been abstract. That is not good. Not good at all. We are confronted by concrete struggles. Review the position taken by Survival International below on land rights in Australia. LM attacks Survival International and similar groups with a passion that I find blood-curdling if not reactionary. Review Survival International's statement and try to figure out what a correct "Marxist" position would be? Defend the Australian government? Condemn Survival International like LM does? Quoting Marx is not much help on these matters. Marxism requires a heart as well as a brain and if we don't have the heart to confront these issues squarely and take a stance in favor of social justice, we have no possibility of changing the world in highly industrialized nations, let alone the rainforests and back countries of the world. Louis Proyect *** Australian government plans to legalise theft of Aboriginal land The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia have only had their land rights recognised since 1992. In that year the High Court finally overthrew the 200-year-old legal fiction of 'terra nullius' - that Australia was an uninhabited land that belonged to no one when it was colonised. The 1992 decision, known as Mabo, created for the first time in Australia the concept of 'native title'. A 1996 legal decision called 'Wik' clarified what native title meant. In particular, it was clear that native title could still exist on land that was covered by 'pastoral leases' - the huge sheep and cattle ranches which cover much of outback Australia, where many Aborigines continue to live. These two decisions, while still leaving Australia far behind many 'Third World' countries in its recognition of indigenous rights, have been fiercely opposed by the powerful farming and mining industries. As a result, the Australian government is trying to undermine the Aborigines' legal victories to such an extent as to render them almost meaningless. The prime minister, John Howard, has proposed a new piece of legislation called the Native Title Amendment Bill. Crucially, this will make native title on pastoral leases worthless, and would leave many Aborigines unable to claim native title in the first place. These measures would leave the huge majority of Aborigines with no meaningful rights over their land. In a report to the Australian parliament, the independent Australian Law Reform Commission called the Howard proposals unconstitutional and racially discriminatory. The government allegedly tried to suppress the report. The Aboriginal representative Mick Dodson has said, 'If you take our land, you take the ground of our culture. If you keep on taking there will be nothing left.'
Re: Native American land rights
The recent discussions on Native American land rights has prompted some ideas. Bear with me... First, for another view (from Means') on how one Native American might read Marx, look at Leslie Marmon Silko's wonderful novel _Almanac of the Dead_. There are some sections appropriately entitled "Vampire Capitalists" or something like that. Her character, a female Native American insurgent from Mexico is being indoctrinated, trained and "hit on" by a very orthodox male Cuban advisor (what we used to cal a "machista leninista"). She finds reading Marx impossible, until she gets to the rich descriptions of the factory system's ravages. Therein she finds a powerful affinity with Marx -- because he could see how the system literally ground people to a pulp, and he was able to call things by their rightful names. Second, in conversations about Polanyi's _Great Transformation_ some years ago it was brought up that his work after GT took him not "forward" to projections on the machinations/effects of disembedded markets and their imperatives, but "backwards" to pre-capitalist, non-market forms of exchange (reciprocity, redistribution, etc.), thus problematizing the market per se. If I'm not mistaken, the notion was a) markets are not the manifestation of some timeless essence (natural tendencies to truck and barer, etc.) but contingent, historical, etc., and so b) looking back at non-market forms of exchange might help us in envisioning a "re-embedded", less tyrannical mechanism. This is not too distant from the sentiment in: 4. Indigenous people often have wonderful technology, superior to our own in terms of the biological potential of their land. An empirical example from my corner of the world: the ayllu of the central Andes. Thanks to the work of John Murra and his many colleagues, we now have a pretty sophisticated picture of the forms of non market exchange that existed prior to the conquest in the Incan empire. The Incan system of surplus generation, extraction and redistribution had at it's center a strategy of risk aversion and not endless accumulation. The key objectives were to "domesticate" the harsh environment to allow for uninterrupted supplies of food to all. Bear in mind that the central Andes is a pretty harsh, dry, desolate, mountainous place. Note: The Incan "empire" was hardly free of domination and nastiness -- here I want to powerfully echo the point made to not romanticize the past. They were conquerors who exacted serious tribute. Conquered peoples by and large kept their community lands, forms of production, etc., but had to offer some of the surplus product -- though amounts would vary. In general, no one was taxed into starvation, traditional forms of cultural practice, language, etc. were "respected" (herein Zizek's idea of multiculturalism and Empire going hand in hand?), unlike later with the Spaniards. Yet the Incas, predictably, made some mighty enemies. Testimony to this is the collaboration of the Wanka (and others) with the Spaniards to trounce the Incas. The system that evolved, and the Incas ruled/administered, was based in largest part on the ayllu (pronounced "I-you"), an archipelago of connected territorially non-contiguous communities, organized along extended kinship lines, that were scattered over various agro-ecological "levels". Each agro-ecological level was endowed with resources and climates to produce certain necessary goods: corn and chiles in the lower lands, potatoes and meat in the highlands, etc. Thus, internal to each ayllu were lands apt for cultivation of complementary goods -- all necessary for a good diet, and a hedge against drought, etc. Non-market, ritualized/practical forms of exchange (without any $$ medium) flourished within and among ayllus. There were also numerous technological-dietary innovations, for example freeze drying of foods. Potatoes (carbohydrates) and meat (protein) could be naturally freeze dried in the violent temperature swings of the high, very arid plateau. (This incidentally is the origin of the word "jerky" -- in Quechua the term for freeze dried llama meat is charki.) Thus, food could be stockpiled literally for months and months. Foods were kept in tambos (depots) that were located about every 20km on the Incan highway system. The "spatial structures" of human settlement in the highlands still reflect this: about every 20 km there is a town. The Spaniards didn't really understand all this. When Viceroy Toledo arrived in the mid-16th century to whip the colonial enterprise into order, one of his first policies was to establish reducciones (reductions), which concentrated people into what we in Vietnam were called strategic hamlets. The objective was to establish effective control over a population of people to be mobilized for work in the silver mines, the real interest of the colonial admin., and secure control over hinterland food production to support life/work in the mines. Needless to say
Re: Native American land rights
Doug Henwood wrote: "Seductive" is a very loaded word here - it implies something devious is going on. Had you used "attractive" instead, the rest of the paragraph might have been impossible. I used the word, "seductive", intentionally. I think that outsiders see the glamor, the glitz, and the convenience long before they see the dark side of capitalist culture. For example, many immigrants who suffered great hardships to come to the U.S. returned disappointed. I don't have the data on hand, but the number was surprisingly large. What's the point? That capitalist culture has lots of attractions that people should resist? Maybe not resist, but they should see both sides. I remember when I was in Cuba along with Jim Devine. Young people that I met on the bus would tell me that they were communists but that they wanted to go to Miami because levis were so cheap there. They never seemed to ask about the higher costs of rent and medical care. If so, why? From what vantage point can you criticize people for "giv[ing] up their ways" to its "lures"? Not at all. If my posts are not clear on this subject, perhaps it is because I myself feel a great deal of confusion. I am sympathetic to the idea of reparations to blacks. I, like Louis, feel that we are incurring a great loss when a traditional people succombs to Coca Cola and Marlboroughs. I also realize that during the 19th century, many whites, who were kidnapped by the Native Americans, refused to be liberated when they had the chance. Franklin and Madison were upset by this reaction. Can such people survive today? I don't know. I would not want to be in the position of dening them the conveniences that I enjoy, but I would not want to enjoy those conveniences because their way of life is despoiled. Yet if the Maidu wanted to reclaim my house, I would not be overjoyed. Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? I don't know exactly. I confess confusion on this point. For that reason, I appreciate this thread so that I can get a better handle on this matter. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
Steven S. Zahniser wrote: Yes! In my research on Mexican migration to the United States, many migrants, as well as prospective migrants, express their strong reservations about life in the U.S., including crime, drug abuse, and what some of them see as our excessively permissive sexual mores. Yeah, but what about their kids? Michael mentioned emigration from the U.S. I discovered when I did my State of the USA Atlas that exact numbers on this are very hard to come by. Counting emigrants, a demography librarian told me, is considered embarrassing. But the best estimates are that 1/3 of the people who come to the U.S. eventually leave, mostly to return to the home country, and this has been true for a long time. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Maybe not resist, but they should see both sides. I remember when I was in Cuba along with Jim Devine. Young people that I met on the bus would tell me that they were communists but that they wanted to go to Miami because levis were so cheap there. They never seemed to ask about the higher costs of rent and medical care. Michael, isn't the question whether or not there is an intrinsic link between cheap, serviceable pants and the absence of affordable rent and socially provided health care, and vice versa? Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? Doug, please address this question yourself. If such a separation is not possible, your position becomes one of defending capitalism itself, no? Cheers, Sid Shniad
Re: Native American land rights
Michael Perelman wrote [responding to me]: Maybe there are real positive attractions for most/many people that it would be impossible, and maybe even wrong, to resist. Is it possible to separate the "lures" - the positive aspects of capitalist modernization - from exploitation, polarization, and the destruction of nature? I don't know exactly. I confess confusion on this point. For that reason, I appreciate this thread so that I can get a better handle on this matter. I don't know either, really, which is why I asked a lot of questions, instead of my usual mode of vigorous assertion. Terry Eagleton says in his little book on postmodernism that to a Marxist, capitalism is both the best and worst thing that ever happened to humanity. He's got a point. Doug
Re: Native American land rights
Michael Perelman: I will ignore my own advice and raise an issue about the Cato Institute. For those outside of the U.S. it is a fightful libertarian "think tank/ideological factory". I did not mind at all when the Greens made common cause with Cato to fight government subsidies for big business. Nor did I mind that the Global Warming activists joined with the insurance lobby. This paragraph needs to be fleshed out or else it falls into the trap that the LM libertarians have set. It lumps all greens together which is like lumping all socialsts together. Would we say that the socialists made common cause with the US war-machine in Vietnam? Yes, Albert Shanker and Bayard Rustin did support the war, but the Trotskyists and the CPUSA did not. All social movements have class divisions and as socialists or progressives, we have to strengthen the more grass-roots or "proletarian" tendencies. In the green movement, there are "mainstream" groups which function within the ruling-class establishment and there are "alternative" groups which challenge it. For example, the Environmental Defense Fund supports pollution credits and was a cheerleader for NAFTA. It has a budget of $25.4 million and a staff of 160. The CEO has a $262,000 salary. It was George Bush's favorite environmental group. "Project Underground" is an example of an alternative group. It stands up for human rights being threatened by mining and oil companies. When a mainstream green group, the World Wildlife Fund, was giving an award to Shell Oil, this Berkeley-based group was exposing the ties of the oil company to Nigerian death-squads. So when you talk about "green" groups without making distinctions, Michael, you are only helping to confusing things. It is a matter of record that LM is politically opposed to groups like "Project Underground" and "Survival International". This opposition was at one point connected ideologically to a extremely vulgar version of Marxian "productivism". They no longer claim any ties to Marxism at all. The group's head guy told the British Guardian newspaper that he was no Marxist at all, just a libertarian. I am not sect-bashing when I attack this group. The Spartacist League, with all its warts, is oriented to the working-class. LM is oriented to the bourgeoisie. Bashing LM is no different than bashing the Cato Institute. If you want me to be more polite to capitalist ideologues, then I certainly will. I have lots of respect for you even when I disagree with you. And, Michael, what in the world is a "global warming activist". Global Warming is a phenomenon that was first noticed by a NASA scientist by the name of James Hansen. He brought it to the attention of government officials, other scientists and the bourgeois media. When the evidence became unmistakable that such a phenomenon was real, governments convened through the auspices of the United Nations a decision-making body that could mitigate the effects of global warming. The decisions that they reached are a band-aid and do not attack capitalist property relations which are the root of global warming. There were no activists at Kyoto, to my knowledge unless you consider Albert Gore an activist. Now it is a fact that activists in the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) have taken the Kyoto conference as an opportunity to campaign for protection of the rainforests. But RAN has not consulted with insurance companies. Perhaps Michael has better information than I do, but right now I can't figure out what he's talking about. I do not think that the program, as it was described served any good purpose, but if it did, working to expose contradictions within capitalism seems worthwhile. Their TV show exposed contradictions within the capitalist system as much as a visit to the Cato or Hudson web sites does. Go visit them and see for yourself. Find all references to the environment and you will find the same exact thing that is found on the channel 4 documentary. Now to a few unrelated questions: 1. Can we speak of native americans or indigenous people as a whole? It depends on what you mean as "a whole". The key element to people like us, I suppose, is their relationship to the means of production. I am aware of attempts of some historians like Simon Schama to categorize the Incas as a class society which exploited "lower" tribal formations. This is part of a reactionary attempt to justify what the Europeans did to *all* Indians, including the Incas. Schama says that genocide and slavery preceded the Europeans, so why make a fuss. 2. Capitalist culture is very seductive. Almost every incident of contact subtly lures people to give up their ways. The only exception I know occured when some islanders gave Captain Cook back his metal axes because they did not know how to make the tools themselves. What fraction of Native Americans are willing to reject the casinos? Maybe we have already destroyed so many indigeneous cultures that they have already
Re: Native American land rights
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes James has a similar analysis of the "Odonis" in Nigeria, No I don't. And any way, what has the question of Nigeria got to do with land rights in the Americas in the last century? Louis' combination of misrepresentation, ahistoricism, insult and an inability to stick to the point is an example of his Absolutely loathsome stuff and antithetical to Marxism as I will prove. You already have proved it. -- James Heartfield
Re: Native American land rights
The Indians supported the reactionaries, so they got what they deserved. I don't recall anyone on pen-l making that assertion. Who was the original author of the above? Jerry
Re: Native American land rights
Thanks Louis for briging up the subject. I agree with Jim Devine that we should discuss it without any sect bashing. I will ignore my own advice and raise an issue about the Cato Institute. For those outside of the U.S. it is a fightful libertarian "think tank/ideological factory". I did not mind at all when the Greens made common cause with Cato to fight government subsidies for big business. Nor did I mind that the Global Warming activists joined with the insurance lobby. I do not think that the program, as it was described served any good purpose, but if it did, working to expose contradictions within capitalism seems worthwhile. Now to a few unrelated questions: 1. Can we speak of native americans or indigenous people as a whole? 2. Capitalist culture is very seductive. Almost every incident of contact subtly lures people to give up their ways. The only exception I know occured when some islanders gave Captain Cook back his metal axes because they did not know how to make the tools themselves. What fraction of Native Americans are willing to reject the casinos? Maybe we have already destroyed so many indigeneous cultures that they have already incorated the worst of what the West has to offer. Wasn't Russell Means running for the libertarian presidential nomination? 3. Rights are difficult to define. "We" usually can find a leader who is willing to collaborate. How do we define rights? Whose rights. Wasn't the Native American Movement rife with factions? I think that I recall that one split involved Ward Churchill. 4. Indigeneous people often have wonderful technology, superior to our own in terms of the biological potential of their land. 5. Despoiling people of their livelihood, as with the oil drilling in Ecuador or Nigeria is despicable. What are/should we be doing to punish the culprits. 6. We are fouling our own nest to the point that we are threatening to exterminate ourselves. How can we prattle about our superior technology? Or do we believe that nuclear power will solve all of our ills? Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Native American land rights
James Heartfield: Clearly the Native Americans - considered as a cultural group - had an interest in supporting whichever power promised less change in the region. They were no match for the yankee ingenuity that was growing on their hinterlands, and could not compete with the new technologies that were being applied to farming and industry. Their whole way of life was threatened. Tragically, though, those interests meant that they would always be on the losing side, backing the most reactionary forces at work in the new continent. I'm glad that James Heartfield has joined PEN-L so that this august body can get a feel for the sort of mindset that has created a speakers bureau for the Cato and Hudson Institutes in the name of Marxism. I suspect that James has simply crossposted an old LM article, but that is just as well. The sentence "tragically, though, those interests meant that they would always be on the losing side, backing the most reactionary forces at work in the new continent" speaks volumes about their methdology. The Indians become cats-paws of reactionary forces rather than societies fighting for their own just demands. James has a similar analysis of the "Odonis" in Nigeria, who were upsetting Shell Oil's efforts to revolutionize the means of production and consummate the bourgeois revolution. I had to explain to him that there are no "Odonis" in Nigeria, just "Ogonis". But why quibble. Odonis--Ogonis. We certainly know *who* he was condemning. It was the fishermen and farmers led by Ken Saro-Wira. They were cats-paws of imperialism, who were dividing Nigeria. And who were the imperialist agencies manipulating Nigerian politics? The CIA? No, it was the Body Shop, the greenish bath-soap and body-oil company, whose CEO campaigned for the release of Ken Saro-Wira. Body Shop as imperialist goliath trampling on Shell Oil? Sound nutty? Well, of course it's nutty. Welcome to Furedi-land. It is most telling that James Heartfield's little essay contains not a single word of outrage about what has happened to American Indians. It is a coldblooded attempt to rationalize their extermination. The Indians supported the reactionaries, so they got what they deserved. Absolutely loathsome stuff and antithetical to Marxism as I will prove. Louis Proyect
