Date: Fri, 30 Jan 98 8:08:29 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Malthusianism







		Proyect,



	I'm pretty sure the Filipino villagers cited in the article as
reef fishing with cyanide were not mining industrialists - if you don't
want to call them peasants, fine.  I'm not saying, and no reasonable
person would contend that I was saying, that capitalist politics were not
at work even in Rwanda (which Proyect conveniently failed to cite since it
seems fairly certain that, with what, a half-million dead, there had to be
some pretty intense peasant-to-peasant oppression going on).  I am simply
pointing out that lionizing a group blinds one to their material class and
social relations.  Marxists have been going on about peasants and farmers
so long, they have not stopped to consider the fact that the world has
changed since 1917.  I don't blame peasants for the causes of the Chiapas
massacre, but even on this list there was an article about how peasants
are turned into pistoleros for oppressive causes.  I am merely pointing
out, with my reference to Thai peasants selling their daughters, that
there are some very atavistic tendencies among these people.  Poverty does
not lead to selling family members unless you first think you own them.



	Black and Latino gansta's are certainly killing each other and
their neighbors because they have internalized capitalist norms.  That
still means they themselves are doing bad things for bad reasons.  The
pimp is living the logic of capitalism to the extreme. 


	
	We can live in a dream world where all the oppressed are
innocents, and where everything organic, herbal, and native is good, and
everything industrial and commercial is bad, but then we would not be
living as Marxists.  




	
	peace




C. Lou - I'm pretty sure that farmers, dumb as they are, use chemicals to
*increase* their yields.  Organic methods are always going to be less
productive in net vendable yield.  Insect and disease will take yield,
longer vine time means more size variation, and more opportunity for
weather damage infection and consumption by pests.  Also, the nutrition
difference between organic and conventionally raised fruits is not that
extreme, although I'm sure organic fruits contain more Chi.  Organic
methods can be more productive per unit cost, but then for you to deal
with that distinction, you would have to acknowledge money exists, and you
might get hives. 



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