File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9801, message 41


Date: Sun, 4 Jan 98 3:18:23 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans







		Comrade Heartfield,



	Foolish to enter the fray, yet I press on.  Surely you must
acknowledge that if the proletariat was to defend native peoples' rights in
the spirit of comradeship with the intent of limiting capitalists' access to
land, it would be a good thing.  If sympathy for the Yanomamo or the Sioux
stops capitalists from raping lands, there is no harm in it, certainly.  My
questions begin when the development of native lands would benefit the larger
proletariat as well as the capitalists (as, possibly, with a dam project)
especially in the area of infrastructure that will persist after the
revolution and may even be necessary for it to develop.  


	Beyond that it seems to me that the modern, realistic Marxist is
only fighting the romanticizing of land-based economies in a capitalist
world. What to some natives and certainly to first world romantics seems
an idyllic antediluvian existence is desperate poverty to others,
including natives. What to some seems pastoral peasant life to be wished
for, seems to others wasteful agriculture, atavistic social relations and
poor standards of living.  Who to some seem noble peasants, to others seem
petty landowners whose need and desire to make their capitals sustain them
drives them to overproduction and ecological abuse.  The take-home here is
that capitalism is the dominant mode of production and there is no reason
to think that any pre-capitalist society has a chance of withstanding it. 
Furthermore, capitalism, for all the faults that we Marxists love to hate,
provides a better living than pre-capitalist economies.  It exploits, of
course, but it also loves a consumer.  It needs new technology to stay out
of crisis, and it tends to do best under the rule of law.  The proletariat
benefits from these tendencies, if only as a side-effect of capitalism. 



	It is not, therefore, that we should encourage capitalism, quite
the contrary.  However, we should never be a party to pipe-dreams of
pre-capitalist post-capitalism with all the attendant niceties that the
capitalist machine throws off magically put into place by the hand of "the
party".  Furthermore, we must avoid as half-witted the bourgeois distaste
for commerce and production that has infected leftist thinking for so
long.  There will be markets after the revolution and this is to be
devoutly hoped for since one dares not bid socialism wait while the world
finds a substitute for markets. 



	The long and short is let the Yanomamo and all the native people
live the way they want and prosper.  Let the capitalists go suck eggs and
turn green watching all that virgin land "go to waste".  Let the communes
and peasants and monasteries live in peace.  Don't go the Red Mandarin
route and brand the Dalai Lama a reactionary.  Realize at the same time
that capitalism is here, its power is near total, and it is unlikely we
will bend its swords into macrobiotic plowshares.  Instead we will take
its dangerous, industrial swords from its owners then hope and pray we
will have the sense to re-forge them.  I believe it will happen and I also
believe that, in all likelihood, the bucolic will not inherit the earth.




	peace






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