Re: Auschwitz in Bulgaria

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2000, Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky wrote:

> We Marxists cannot set holocausts obtained by economic measures as a
> class apart from those obtained by overt State enforcement. The unity
> of the total whole is our methodological cornerstone.

But the whole, as someone said, somewhere (someone who had the
unforgiveable bad taste of pointing out that the East was becoming
identical with the West thirty years ago, that late capitalism is a
world-system, and that the one-party state has not saved us) is the false.
You have to carefully distinguish between local, regional, international
and multinational capitalisms, as much as between the respective state
formations of these. Eastern Europe is simply not experiencing the kind of
devastation visited on Africa or Southeast Asia; the EIB is giving them
lots of money, rents from immigrants living in the EU are boosting
incomes, and cheap consumer goods are everywhere, even if many people
can't afford them. That's not the same thing as death camps and gulags.
Late capitalism is a totally *mediated* society, not a totally
militarized one.

-- Dennis