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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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