The consistent fallacy in Max's argumentation on these issues is made clear by the inconsistency of his two statements copied below. That fallacy is that his position and arguments are not ideological or "political in an unconstructive sense", as he puts it, but his opponents' are. The accurate position is that all postions and arguments are ideological and political. There is no neutral science in politicaleconomy. In the below he openly exonorates his ideology, which is much friendlier to bourgeois ideology/liberalism than that of those he criticizes, from scrutiny and criticism for its world historic crimes. This approach includes the well known nonsense of declaring himself objective and not ideological. The term "genocide" came out of an assessment of World War II. European mass suicidal war finally forced a breakthrough in European consciousness that had applicability to the long history of slavery and colonialism. Max wants to leave out a major fraction of the history of capitalism in assessing its potential for reform. He suggests we start our comparisons of actual historical capitalism and actual historical socialism only at about 1925. This is patently anti-scientific, anti-historical anti-objective (rigging data) and ideologically motivated, not to mention grossly racist , since he blithely ( and I do mean lightly) dismisses the Native American and African American Genocides as " ha(ving) has zero political impact from any left political standpoint you care to espouse " (!!!!!!!). Excuse me. That is one of the most racist things I have heard uttered on these lists. Such a conception is death to the left, such as it is. Not that even comparisons from 1925 don't make capitalism more genocidal and warmongering than socialism. If we are going to be antihistorical, lets start with 1990. The holocausts of liberal capitalism out weigh those of socialism by far since then. Max's "leftism" is demogogic. Charles Brown >>> Max Sawicky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/22/99 11:56AM >>> * whatever the machinations of imperialism, it is undeniable that stalin, mao, pol pot, and their cronies were personally responsible for enough deaths and murders to exempt them and their "thoughts" from my list of plausible guides to revolutionary change. It doesn't much matter whether Stalin killed ten million or one hundred million, since they will all stay dead in any case. Ten million is quite enough for me to come to a negative judgement. -clip- I think this war over terminology -- was it genocide, or what -- is political in an unconstructive sense. Calling the treatment of native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide" is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root. That doesn't mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that its political context often -- especially on PEN-L -- makes its use tendentious. People are not arguing about history for its own sake -- they are trying to prop up problematic arguments and political precepts, and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero political impact from any left political standpoint you care to espouse.
