Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 17:26:28 -0500
From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans


Comrade "Boddhisatva" gives us, unknowingly, the reason why Marxism is at
present peripheral, almost irrelevant, to social struggles around the world
and here in the belly of the beast. His kind of Marxism sneers at all
peoples other than the proletariat of the rich capitalist countries,
talking disparagingly of

"the romanticizing of land-based economies...an idyllic antediluvian
existence...pastoral peasant life...wasteful agriculture, atavistic social
relations...noble peasants,  pipe-dreams of pre-capitalist
post-capitalism...the communes and peasants and monasteries...macrobiotic
plowshares...the bucolic..."

This is not just a case of profound ignorance and Eurocentric prejudice,
conflating three-quarters of the people of the earth with "communes" and
"monasteries," and ignorantly denying that peasant agriculture is
productive and ecologically sound,and that peasants enjoy a reasonably
adequate living standard execept when capitalism steals their lands. This
is also horribly bad Marxism. 

The idea that capitalism has reached the technological level where it  can
provide abundance to humankind is flat wrong. Capitalism can provide
abundance for maybe 20% of the people of the world, not through
technological achievement, but through the superexploitation and
immiseration of most of the other 80%, helped along by ecological rapine.
Marx and Engels did not realize this,but evidence about the world outside
of Europe was not available to them (Proyect is wrong here). Lenin showed
that core capitalism *requires*, *depends on*, superexploitation of
peripheral working people: he was the first Marxist to understand the
process on a world scale (Luxemburg shares priority on this matter). This
was the birth of a modern Marxism that understands imperialism and is
anti-imperialist, and it has informed struggles everywhere. 

Boddi denies all of this: capitalism has created a world that will bring
abundance to all, if only we let it go about its business and if only its
fruits are fairly distributed. So we Marxists will dismiss the struggles of
everyone other than the industrial proletariat (and thereby lose our
influence in the struggles of 80% of the world). And the proletariat of the
rich countries will laugh us off the stage because we promise them no real
economic improvement, merely a psychological freedom from their
subordination to the Rich Folk. Nobody needs this kind of Marxism and it is
NOT Marxism.

I don't have time to go into greater detail on this matter. I will close
with a true story. Some years ago I was giving a talk on the Puerto Rican
struggle at a Canadian university. I mentioned the fact that US capitalist
colonialism has led to the destruction of Puerto Rican agriculture, and
most of the good land is now lying fallow, formerly producing an abundance
of food crops, sugar, coffee, and tobacco but now used only for rough
pasture. A communist graduate student got up and denounced my argument. He
said: if most of the  good land is lying fallow, then that MUST mean that
its highest use under capitalism is to lie fallow, because capitalism is
technological rationality. Therefore, the wiping out of the peasant class
and agricultural production (including. by the way, large-scale capitalist
agriculture) in Puerto Rico was rational. This is the kind of bullshit that
Boddy and co. are trying to project as Marxism. This kind of Marxism is of
no use to anybody.

I wish I had time to denounce the reactionary assimilationism of Boddy and
James Heartfield; also, the latter's stupid belief that peasants are
bourgeois land owners and the former's even stupider belief that land is
under-used unless it is in the hands of capitalist corporations.

Jim Blaut



Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans
Date:    04-Jan-98 at 02:19   
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Date: Sun, 4 Jan 98 3:18:23 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
To: marxism-international-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans
In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 3 Jan 1998 15:27:22 +0000
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                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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