Hi Wojtek, Perhaps I haven't been clear. I am not anti-industrialization, only anti-capitalist-industrialization; I am not anti-urbanization, only anti-urbanization under capitalism; I am not a Luddite (I desperately seek to have Louis P come out to Browning and other reservations/reserves to help wire them up); I am not seeking a return to "primitive" communalism. This is about comparative paradigms and the inner/defining features and structures of systems that shape the inner "logic" and imperatives of systems that shape the dynamics, trajectories and dominant paradigms of systems. In Kerala, a favorite saying is: "For the little frog in the well, the sky is as big as the mouth of the well." Under capitalism, as revealed by the whole history of capitalism everywhere it is found, a central dynamic is increasing "socialization" of costs and risks of accumulation, production and distribution--with true costs and risks very narrowly defined--coupled with increasing privatization/concentration/centralization of the returns of accumulation/production/distribution. The core imperatives of accumulation and expanded reproduction of the whole system lead to short-run myopia in terms of defining/calculating/underestimating true costs of production/distribution/capitalism versus often exaggerating the true returns--and to whom those returns accrue--of the above-mentioned. So for example, GDP excludes--and therefore demeans--so-called "non-market" services such as Household services done primarily by women; it excludes some of the true costs associated with industrialization/urbanization--under capitalism and other systems to some extent--such as rapid resource depletion of non-renewable resources, environmental decay, rat-race individualism, divorce/suicice rates etc etc. Even when so-called corrections are made for positive and negative "externalities" through taxation and subsidies to supposedly make market prices reflect marginal private costs and benefits plus marginal costs of negative externalities or marginal benefits of positive externalities, this is done by a State bought and paid for by the ultra-rich to ensure they get the benefits while the costs are born by the least able and least involved in generating those costs in the first place. In traditional Indigenous societies, there is no notion of "private" and "social" costs and benefits analogous to that under capitalism, because all in the Tribe are considered "related" (In Pikunii language greeting and leaving is via "Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa" or "We are all related")and so the notion of someone for private gain, shitting in the collective environment and distinguishing between "private" versus "social or collective" interests is not done. There is no notion of a few satisfying luxury "wants" at the expense of basic "needs" of the many because "Ni-Kso-Ko-Wa (would you live in a huge luxury house while your mother, father or sister were homeless?; in the Tribe, all are related in that way) So the sick paradigm of capitalism, partly summed up in methodological individualism--plus more--is central to the core/defining imperatives of capitalism that shape the logic, dynamics and trajectories of that system. And as that system ripens, expands and attempts to conquer more and more of nature, people, investment outlets, resources and whole nations, the sick increasingly outweighs the healthy, destruction increaisngly outweighs construction, destruction of the environment increasingly outweighs preservation of the environment, alienation and fear increasingly outweighs contentment and hope, etc--for the broad masses as opposed to some privileged few. Yes we get a panoply of products and product diversity, but what good are new toys and magnificent inventions the borad masses cannot afford to buy and/or are not used in the interests of the whole Tribe? What good are all these conveniences that may be all lost at any moment through the rampant cruel vicissitudes and restructuring of the whole system? What kind of system and systemic paradigms/values present a cornocopia of instruments for financial speculation but leaves more than one-third of its population without any health care or without full health care and leaves millions homeless? What kind of system and systemic values demand using scarce resources to prop-up ugly genocidal dictatorships that service imperial accumulation by breaking up unions, mass terror through death squads, keeping wages low and unconscionable while keeping productivity high and therefore surplus value extraction continually flowing back to the metropoles? That was my point. The paradigms of capitalism and the contrived and very narrow and very inhuman syllogisms, definitions and concepts of progress, efficiency, "optimality", "economy", etc that they embody and utilize, along with the theories and policies they produce, lead nowhere except to NET destruction, decay, inefficiency, misery etc. Jim C. James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -----Original Message----- From: Wojtek Sokolowski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 1999 8:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11951] Re: Indigenous Efficiency At 03:57 PM 9/28/99 -0700, Jim Craven wrote: >The real "savages" are all wearing uniforms and three-piece suits and acting >oh so "civilized" and "efficient". If I remember correctly, the Canadian government outlawed for some time the practice of potlatch, solely because it was soooo antithetical to the holy spirit of capitalism. While we are at that, the idea of potlatch (=ritualistic feast + giving gifts to visitors at the 'expense' of the village chief) had an important function of attracting new people to a village (the 'wastefulness' of latter days potlatches so bemoaned by westerners was simply a result of the decimation of the indigenous population). It thus follows that humans were a scacre resource in the indigenous economy. That is also consistent with the practice of prisoner taking by many tribes to replace the deceased members of their community. Those prisoners were adapted to the new society as equals, and given the functions that the deceased member performed. That further explains why white women kidnapped by the tribes often refused to return to the 'white' society when they had a choice - they were simply better treated by the indigenous people than by white men. Now it is quite clear to me that in a situation when the total population is on average stable, you can can economize by balancing the existing resources. That is you may have periodical shortages of material resources, but you can solve these shortages by simply transfering the surpluses from more abundant periods (saving). Those inter-periodical redistributions do not affect the long term balance. But that is not the case when shortages are endemic i.e. you either face a persistent shortage of labor (i.e. the "systemic' situation the latter day potlatches tried to avert by 'local' i.e. redistributive means), or the opposite, population growth puts increasing strain on the existing resources. It is not possible to solve these persistent shortages by redistributive means, including obtaining new resources from outside of the system - at least not in the long run. You need to eliminate the cause of the problem, that is, either stabilize population growth or increase the volume of resource production. So its seems to me that indigenous and capitalist economies dealth with two much different problems that makes them very difficult to compare and say which one is 'more efficient.' As you correctly pointed out, capitalist economy was 'inefficient' form the indigenous point of view, because it was geared to achieve a different set of objectives than the indigenous economy - the constant growth of resource production instead of balancing the existing resources. In the same vein, the indigenous economy may appear 'ineffcient' preciesely for the same reason - it is not designed to generate constant growth of production (which it views as wasteful excess). Regardless of ideological pronouncements and rivalries, every society (and every living species for that matter) needs adequate material resource base to survive. The social and economic institutions are mere adaptations to the procurement of adequate material resources under given circumstances. That does not mean that old institutions die when their usefulness for resource procurement expires. It means that a society dies if it does not develop adequate social-economic institutions when the usefulness of the old ones expires due to changing material conditions. My intention is not to defend the excesses of conspicuous consumption characteristic of late capitalism, or its numerous paradoxes and aberrations, such as social inequality, hunger and povert amidst of plenty, the undemocratic character of the organization of production etc. While these problems are very serious and must be eventually solved (that's what unites people on this list, despite petty differences, no?) - i do not think that we as society have an option of returning to a pre-capitalist society, no matter how appealing its customs and instituions may appear to us. Unless, of course, someone wants to take an alternative route to restoring the resource/population balance - a "final solution" to "surplus" population. wojtek
