Date: Mon, 5 Jan 98 2:57:08 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Marx on Native Americans







		To whom...,



	There is a vast amount of poverty in the world, it is true.  It is
also true that capitalism does not benefit at all from much of that
poverty, in fact it suffers because of it. Poverty in Africa, for example,
gives international capitalism almost nothing.  What it gains in low wages
for natural resource wokers it loses in costs bringing those resources to
market reliably (plus the cost of the odd relief effort).  Ultimately the
capitalist would just as soon mine everything with modern methods.
Overproduction in gold, zinc, titanium, copper, steel and aluminum bear
witness to the relative long-run unimportance (to international capitalism
if not local capitalists) of third world wages for natural resource
workers.  As for industrial workers, of course capitalism demands the
cheapest labor, as long as it also has consumers, but we know this. As for
the kind of hand and animal powered subsistence agriculture that much of
the poor world engages in, it is indeed wasteful of effort and provides a
meager living.  It is not all that environmentally friendly, either,
because tends to encourage erosion.  Quite primitive agriculture has
created dust-bowl conditions throughout the world at one time or another. 
Furthermore, since the reality is crop production for sale (despite the
bartering paradise that golden age lefties imagine) small land owners are
always under pressure to exploit their capitals to the maximum.  Peasant
farming is an anachronism that everyone, especially the peasants, would be
better off without.  Any other conclusion is poor Marxism, in my view,
provided that one's Marxism is informed by an objective reality more
recent than 1917.  



	Capitalism does encourage net development, economies are not a
zero-sum game.  Of course capitalism demands that the bottom line grow as
fast or faster than the top line, but to argue that capitalism is simply a
re-distribution towards the rich is unsound economics.  Workers create
increasing amounts of lasting value, even if capitalists take more of it.
Nobody dislikes capitalism more than I.  However, I do not dislike it as
an all-plaguing chimera.  I dislike it because it is a concrete impediment
to prosperity and freedom. 
 


	

	peace




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