icians, to get involved in environment groups like the
Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the
Earth and do whatever they can do.
"If the traditional owners cannot stop the mine in the Federal Court, the
only way to stop it is by people physically blockadi
by Oxford
University Press. This web presentation is Copyright by the Trustees of
Columbia University in the City of New York.
Louis Proyect
e and take courses given by Marxists, preferably those who
organized Vietnam antiwar demonstrations..
Louis Proyect
trip for
you. Please e-mail Susan Kench with your needs.
Louis Proyect
ll
do most of the work that Alan's side wants out of "the truth" perfectly well.
Louis Proyect:
Odd, I thought the debate was over the appropriateness of "sciences" or
"local knowledge" versus universal scientific standards. Meera Nanda's
debunking of reactionary Hindu nation
1) HISTORIC INJUSTICES ADDRESSED IN CANADA
January 8, 1998
Indigenous Tribes in Canada Receive Formal Apology
By ANTHONY DePALMA
OTTAWA -- For the first time, the Canadian government has formally
apologized to its 1.3 million indigenous people for 150 years of
paternalistic assistance
ve done was to work
with AIM in its just struggle. Instead the Maoists decided to denounce AIM
as a bunch of romantic primitives who didn't understand the need for
progress. This scandalous debate is the subject of my next post.
Louis Proyect
(The material in the post drawn from Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart At Wounded
Knee" and Peter Mathiessen's "In The Spirit of Crazy Horse")
Lou et al,
This is of course an extremely important thread. Much of it has great
relevance for Australia around the question of Land Rights for Indigenous
Australians.
The Right here have argued that the near extinction of Australia's
Aborigines was primarily the work of germs and viruses and
as Sherburne F. Cook once said,
'totalitarian' diseases: virtually all the Indians were afflicted by them."
Louis Proyect
cts. This is besides the point. The poor villagers who will lose
everything need champions for their cause. The choice for these villagers
is not between subsistence farming and a co-op three blocks from Zabars. It
is between subsistence farming and begging on the streets.
Louis Proyect
American Indians and energy reserves
4) American Indians and ecology
5) A critique of Jerry Mander
6) Mariategui's Marxism
7) A Communist Manifesto for the next millenium
Louis Proyect
Minnesota to Washington State, etc.
that genuine socialist politics is grounded in. Your support of equal
rights, etc. sounds like the sort of cheap campaign pledges made by a
typical bourgeois candidate.
Louis Proyect
my own goal of
coming up with a synthesis of communalism and communism. I agree with
Michael Perelman. It is useful that LM provoked the discussion. Now it is
up to serious people to finish it.
Louis Proyect
need
to "revolutionize the means of production." This is obviously the subject
of these articles. In my next post, I will address the topic of American
Indians and energy reserves. It should be clear that Marxists have a
responsibility to defend the right of American Indians to defend themselves
from the incursions of uranium mining companies. The stakes are quite high,
not only from the viewpoint of American Indian survival but from the
broader perspective of ecology.
Louis Proyect
Heartfield:
Louis Proyect is right to say that post-modernism and
indigenism have the same outlook, because both are an expression of the
anti-enlightenment thinking. From this reactionary standpoint it is
right to say that Marxism and Capitalism share the same prejudice
towards progress
tion battle. These
artistic dichotomies have deep roots in the racial contradictions of
American society. A new music would engage with these contradictions and
move to a higher level, but this can only occur when society itself
provides the inspiration. It will be obvious when that moment is at hand.
Louis Proyect
volution into the
sterile world of classical music and left his roots long behind him in the
juke joints of Texas.
Louis Proyect
The flip
side of the loss of the traditional jazz aesthetic is a situation in which
sound and music saturates a whole new set of consumer spaces: multimedia
computers
merican Indian beliefs about ecology, which
are essential to understanding a way out of the madness of a capitalist
system run amok.
Louis Proyect
(sources for this post include Marjane Ambler's book and the Black Mesa Web
Site at
http://indy4.fdl.cc.mn.us/~isk/maps/az/navhopi.html)
January 20, 1998
On the Road to Capitalism, China Hits a Nasty Curve: Joblessness
By ERIK ECKHOLM
HARBIN, China -- The chant of the bean-curd peddler swirled through the
alleys of the derelict Daowai district of Harbin, but on this 5-below-zero
morning there were no takers.
The cold weather
January 20, 1998
A 'Dead Zone' Grows in the Gulf of Mexico
By CAROL KAESUK YOON
It can stretch for 7,000 square miles off the coast of Louisiana, a vast
expanse of ocean devoid of the region's usual rich bounty of fish and
shrimp, its bottom littered with the remains of crabs and worms unable
Posted at 7:40 p.m. EST Wednesday, January 21, 1998 Translation of
Castro's speech
The official translation of Cuban President Fidel Castro's statement of
welcome to Pope John Paul II:
Holy Father,
The land you have just kissed is honored by your presence. You will not
find here the peaceful
perceived a shift then it is incumbent upon the rest of us to pay more
careful attention. Specifically, this means understanding the Cuba trip on
its own terms rather than seeing it as a repeat of the trip to Poland.
Louis Proyect
At 03:48 PM 1/22/98 -0800, you wrote:
Before you give the Pope too
were opened to foreign companies.
Louis Proyect
art and William Smith
Colleges.)
Louis Proyect:
I am struck by the analogies between American Indian survival strategies
and what is happening in Cuba today. Communalist societies based on hunting
and gathering, and modern socialist societies, both have to function in an
ocean of capitalist
REUTER INFORMATION CENTER - Wednesday 13 November 1996
Pope, opening World Food Summit, deplores gap between rich and poor
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service
ROME (Nov 13, 1996 09:01 a.m. EST) - Pope John Paul called on world leaders
on Wednesday to bridge
vana last year to promote class
solidarity against "globalization." Nothing has changed since 1959. We in
the USA must press the ruling class to accept Cuba as an independent
socialist nation entitled to the same respect as any other nation. This is
all that Fidel Castro has ever asked and this is all we need to do.
Louis Proyect
demise and potential replacement by a politically pluralist, more
open society.
(From "Backgrounder #1010" titled "WHY THE CUBAN TRADE EMBARGO SHOULD BE
MAINTAINED", By John P. Sweeney, November 10, 1994. It is on the Heritage
Foundation Web Page, www.heritage.org)
Louis Proyect
to elementary-school name-calling.
I wasn't calling you a name. I was simply commenting on your "on one hand,
and the other hand" posture. This sort of punditry rather turns my stomach
and I didn't know how to put it into diplomatic language. Sorry for the
bluntness, but its nothing person
The official translation of Cuban President Fidel Castro's statement of
welcome to Pope John Paul II:
Holy Father,
The land you have just kissed is honored by your presence. You will not
find here the peaceful and generous native people who inhabited this island
when the first Europeans
capitalism is
not really worth my time. The speech that Castro made when the Pope arrived
could not be made by somebody who favored capitalism.
Louis Proyect
socialism can work. I am much more interested
in, for example, trying to figure out whether in retrospect the Sandinistas
made a wise decision when they channeled so much investment into
large-scale state-owned farms.
Signing off on the Cuba thread,
Louis Proyect
January 25, 1998
Troubled Waters
An oceanographer delivers a warning on the dangers facing the world's seas.
By THURSTON CLARKE
Can you imagine trying to impress friends and business associates by
ordering, say, breast of eagle in tarragon sauce, or tournedos of panda?
But you would
e current situation in Cuba today, but I feel obligated to correct
misunderstandings about what Marx wrote.
Louis Proyect
eftists should fight against, not try to dispense spurious advice that
nobody is in a position to act upon.
Louis Proyect
and allowed valuable parts of the animal to go to waste, how can
we even begin to compare our society to their's? This of course is the goal
of Hutchinson and other apologists for capitalism, to legitimize the waste
that our system has institutionalized.
Louis Proyect
ass movement and did not make a fetish of armed actions.
The other big mistake that Castro made was to give political credit to
Allende, whose horrible class-collaborationist policies helped drown the
workers movement in blood.
Louis Proyect
Cuba's Entrepreneurial Socialism
by Joy Gordon
MAKING sense of Cuba's economy is not easy. There's a joke I heard when I
was in Havana recently: The CIA sends an agent down to live in Cuba and
report back on the state of the economy. He returns six months later,
babbling, and is carted off to
In his last film titled "The Stranger" by the great Indian director,
Satyajit Ray, a long-lost uncle comes to visit his neice's family for
a few days. This uncle has travelled widely through out the world being
infected by "wander lust". He has visited the European continent, then
the U.S. where
95. The director is Scott Elliot, and
Kevin Price's set and Tom Cochan's original music are first-rate.
Performances are uniformly excellent, most especially Alexi-Malle's who was
the subject of a lengthy NY Times profile. It noted that he was
extraordinarily capable of expressing a wide range of emotions despite the
fact that his character was not allowed to speak English. For ticket
information, call 212-279-4200.
Louis Proyect
ting our needs
and elaborating our desires. It means inventing new politics that welcome
differences but provide processes of interaction which minimize antagonism.
(From a longer paper by Harry Cleaver available at
www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/Faculty/Cleaver/hmchtmlpapers.html)
Louis Proyect
d to enter Communism.
Louis Proyect
re
Goriot": "Behind every great fortune there is a great theft."
Louis Proyect
t dreaming? God, I'm glad I'm making a honest living as a computer
programmer.)
Louis Proyect
ch has culminated in
almshouses, prisons, and hospitals."
Louis Proyect
for how urgent it is to defend the human rights of the remaining
tribes. While it is too late to turn back the clock, it is not too late to
fight for the survival of this important part of our human race right now.
Louis Proyect
haracterized the 1930s, a revolutionary
organization will not just be a good idea but something with enormous
magnetic powers. We are simply in a preparatory period right now and the
only thing we can do is weed out the theoretical and organization dead wood
of the past. For all of Sam Marcy's dedication to the working class and to
socialism, the group he left behind him belongs to this dogmatic and
sectarian past.
Louis Proyect
tes came,
but I suspect that large scale warmaking was a function of being drawn into
the white man's squabbles. French vs English; English vs. American; North
vs. South, etc.
Louis Proyect
to
alert the left about the issues so they will rally on behalf of Indian
claims. There's some guy in NY who's supposed to have a radio show on this
week about land-claims...
Louis Proyect
Check out the Baffler "Commodity your Dissent" collection. (W.W. Norton)
There's an article "Apostles of the New Enterpreneur: Business Books and
the Management Crisis" by Bill Boisvert in it. He rips Tom Peters apart.
Louis Proyect
structure of knowledge, it is absolutely essential
that we not be diverted into side paths that avoid this central issue. If
we are to construct an alternative world-system to the one that is today in
grievous crisis, we must treat simultaneously and inextricably the issues
of the true and the good."
Louis Proyect
A VISION OF ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE is becoming increasingly prominent in
leftist thought. The idea of the end of the world -- not just as a
metaphor, but quite possibly as a real event -- is becoming common in the
writing of Marxists, usually linked to an implicit forecast of ecological
Sneering at the
concerns that some people have over polluted water is not what builds a
socialist movement. Socialists have to figure out ways to tie these
struggles together and not apply such litmus tests.
Louis Proyect
This is the epigraph to "Pere Goriot".
Louis P.
At 09:34 PM 2/22/98 -0800, you wrote:
Where did Balzac write: "Behind every fortune lies a grand crime."?
Thanks.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
February 23, 1998
Drought in Borneo Feeds Fear of New Asian Fires
By SETH MYDANS
SAMARINDA, Indonesia -- The eastern coast of Borneo, dry after a year of
drought, is bursting into flame again, raising fears that a wave of choking
smoke could soon blanket Southeast Asia as it did last fall.
ribe to Counterpunch,
edited by Ken Silverstein and Alex Cockburn.
Louis Proyect
At 03:10 PM 2/23/98 -0800, you wrote:
Max brings up an interesting challenge. I disagree with him, but I do not
have enough factual evidence to clinch my case.
I am sure that the poor are hurt more by pollution
radicals and the
corporate oriented mainstream groups like the Sierra Club. What is missing
from the mix is socialism. There is not much of a socialist presence in the
movement. I am not for banning Harvey. I am for fighting sectarianism.
Louis Proyect
a few
years ago attacking O'Connor and John Bellamy Foster.
Louis Proyect
ave been reading selections over the past couple of weeks and plan to go
through it systematically when I have the time. It has not gotten much
notice in the left press and it is important to have a discussion over it.
It represents an important contribution to the green-red dialectic and can
not be ignored.
Louis Proyect
These are comments by Mark Jones that appeared on the m-i list, where I
posted the entire Boucher article. (For anybody at all interested in
Marxism and ecology, the fall '96 issue of Science and Society is a must.
Perhaps Dave Laibman can provide details on how to get a copy.)
Louis P.
e developments, or else face
irrelevancy. With all the problems facing Marxism since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, it would make sense to not squander opportunities when they
arise. Our class enemy is infinitely more aggressive and opportunistic
after all.
Louis Proyect
the space of the first two
options. But Jim and Paul DeMain will have much more information on this,
I'm sure.
Louis Proyect
ematic
genocide from Asia to Africa to the New World. Additionally, Watts explains
how not just the science and history of epidemics but how they were
interpreted by elites--and how this interpretation resulted in very
material consequences for those they ruled and conquered."
Louis Proyect
Why don't you remind us of what the URL is? For somebody so turned on to
computers and socialism, it is incredible that you left this out. (Insert
smiley face here.)
Louis Proyect
At 09:25 AM 2/7/98 +, you wrote:
On my website on Computers and Socialism I've periodically (but not
recently
is whether this heritage should be accepted in an
uncritical manner. In our critique of the postmodernists and Vandana Shiva,
it is imperative that we not end up in the enemy camp. If the only
yardstick of progress is advances in the mode of production, then Marxism
will inevitably fail to distinguish itself from the bourgeoisie which has
developed this to a science.
Louis Proyect
nnot see it and even grows rebellious, that is the
basest ingratitude to its benefactors, the exploiters.
Louis Proyect
st of these, I will review
the mistakes and the corrections made by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua
vis-a-vis the Miskitu Indians. As part of this, I will examine Russell
Means' role in the contra war. Following that I will examine the political
philosophy of Juan Carlos Mariategui, a Peruvian Communist who tried to
synthesize Incan communalism--embodied by the "ayllus"-- and 20th century
Marxism.
Louis Proyect
sential reading. At a certain level, they tell
us something that the social scientists can never tell us and that is who
we really are.
Louis Proyect
NO EUROPEAN EXCEPTIONALISM
We must take exception to this alleged European "exceptionalism"
on several related grounds:
-- 1. As already noted above, the theses of AfroAsian
"Orientalism" and European "exceptionalism" empirically and
descriptively MIS-represent how Asian economies performed
ry naughty of you, if not
even perverse.
Louis Proyect
panish-introduced diseases ran wild: measles,
smallpox, typhoid, and influenza epidemics occurred and re-occurred, while
syphillis and turboculosis became, as Sherburne F. Cook once said,
'totalitarian' diseases: virtually all the Indians were afflicted by them."
Louis Proyect
THE ASIATIC MODE OF PRODUCTION
Perry Anderson (1974:548) asked that the Asiatic Mode of
Production [AMP] "be given the decent burial that it deserves."
That is very decent of him, since the AMP hardly deserves even
that. We need not go into the controversial and controverted
history of this
This just showed up on the Communist-Manifesto mailing-list. I haven't had
a chance to read it, but it should provoke some discussion related to
recent threads on the role of capitalism, etc. It is pretty radical stuff.
Part 2 tomorrow and 3 the next day.
Louis Proyect
ous amounts of variation that
cannot be ignored. The people in the US are still relatively privileged,
even if the privileges are fading.
The only tendency I see here is cliched thought.
Louis Proyect
some
kind of book form.
Louis Proyect
subsistence of those people,
pushing them to pursue non-existent employment -- thus making the problem
visible.
I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean. Try harder next
time, unless you are relying on obfuscation to make dubious political points.
Louis Proyect
been just
as significant. These questions are dealt with in the scholarly
"Pleistocene Extinctions: The Search for A Cause", edited by Paul Martin
and H.E. Wright Jr. (Yale Univ., 1967). Where does Barkely get his
information from?
Louis Proyect
ctories by the business class. His co-thinker
Kirkpatrick Sale agrees with him and was a supporter of Ted Kaszynski. He
begins each lecture by smashing a personal computer. I will offer my own
ideas on how Indian ecological and religious beliefs can be reconciled with
modern society. It does not include smashing computers, otherwise I would
not have a way to be communicating my ideas with you good people out there.
I will propose that the First Nation, the American Indians, can also
benefit from the use of such technology.
Louis Proyect
Union and elsewhere. The notion that capitalism is beneficial is false and
owes much to a vulgar reading of Marxism that the Second International and
the analytical Marxists have helped to propagate.
Louis Proyect
on of only a billion or
so but not for a world of 6 billion and growing. And even "administrative
methods" short of Buchenwald will not put a stop to that growth or reverse
it in less than a century or so.
??????????
Carrol
Louis Proyect replies:
These are t
"American Indian
Environments", edited by Christopher Vecsey and Robert W. Venables,
Syracuse University, 1980. Highly recommended.)
Louis Proyect
just don't understand them. Give me something like the old Sid
Caesar show or the "Honeymooners" any day of the week.
Louis Proyect
ead actors promoting their
next rotten flick. You might as well watch "Entertainment Tonight."
Louis Proyect
A Sunny Day in Rome
In the view of one who knows them both, Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro
have long fascinated each other.
By Tad Szulc 12/2/96 Newsweek/International
John Paul II has fascinated and attracted Fidel Castro since he was elected
pope more than 18 years ago. And the Cuban
is written for a working-class
audience. The workers have appeared more as objects in the other books,
rather than subjects. When the Barnard strikers were out on the picket line
last year, this is just the kind of book that I would have loved to have
passed around. Best wishes for the success of this effo
that the
current leadership would fight it until death.
Louis Proyect
THIS PEOPLE, THIS PARTY WILL NEVER SURRENDER THEIR UNITY
Revolutionary ideas will live on as long as there are revolutionaries,
patriots and noble hearts, as long as there are people who carry within
themselves the finest human virtues
socialism will be strengthened. That's a fact.
Louis Proyect
. The ellipsis was there in the
original.
Louis Proyect
olitically akin to the Sandinistas, during the high point of
the revolution. In other words, for social justice but opposed to dogmatism
and repression.
Louis Proyect
[Note that this interesting NY Times article names the system "capitalism."
This is some kind of first. LP]
January 17, 1998
Crisis Pushing Asian Capitalism Closer to U.S.-Style Free Market
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SEOUL, South Korea -- Sitting in his office just off the factory floor, a
week's
ll University
PhD Candidate
Department of City and Regional Planning
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Jim Devine:
Also, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas argued that the active participation and
enthusiasm of the people could substitute for the narrowly-defined forces
of production.
Not true.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Guatemala is that the Sandinistas armed the
people, a decidedly Marxist and Leninist approach. They failed for reasons
similar to those of the Paris Commune or the P9 strike in the 1980s. Poor
relationship of forces.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
with it? I have
yet to see an academic conference announced in Lingua Franca that does not
go overboard in the same way.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Again, I have a feeling that this taxes versus permits
debate as we have been debating it has a "rearranging deck
chairs on the Titanic" air about it. None of this really
deals with more deeply rooted ecological questions that get
buried in that nice fuzzy rubric of "measuring social
e you
can learn how to handle grievances.
--A photo of Dave Dellinger and my friend David McReynolds from an
anti-nuclear demo in 1980. David's is wearing shades and looks like a beat
poet.
Louis Proyect
list manner." For pete's sake, Dennis,
that's the sort of useless hot air we hear from Trotskyists on the Marxism
lists, isn't it?
Louis Proyect
sional type material, but it is a political engagement with Harvey's
work, not fishing through his garbage pail for scandal.
Louis Proyect
At 05:39 PM 4/29/98 -0700, you wrote:
Louis, I for one find personal criticisms of David Harvey to be useless.
I'll bet he has character flaws, since everyone else does (including that
old hairy German guy who wrote so much). The question is: what are the
theoretical and/or empirical holes in his
james m blaut wrote:
Louis P:
Read on. Give us a new post on each chapter of David Harvey's book as you
finish reading it. Let's see if your ideas change as you proceed.
En lucha
Jim B
P.S. Tail the workers. Down with theory.
This is silly. It was precisely the workers who asked for
nable growth and
eco-limits, the sort of issues posed by Marx himself in V. 3 of Capital.
When you combine this with poor Harvey's inability to understand the class
priority of defending the Rover workers unambiguously, one can only
conclude that there is a deep malaise in academic Marxism.
Louis Proyect
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