RE: Love and Proyect

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On Sun, 13 Jan 2002, Louis Proyect wrote:

> Duncan, I have no idea what you mean by class. In Marxist terms, that
> term has absolutely no relevance to societies like those that existed
> throughout North America before the arrival of the colonists. I don't
> feel it necessary to define the term "class" before this forum. If
> you need to have it defined, I can recommend some literature.

Then perhaps you shouldn't confuse him with words such as this:

L.P.: "If this is a reference to the Kwakiutl people, we have to be
careful.  According to some scholars, Kwakutl society was rapidly evolving
a kind of class formation even before the arrival of the European. The
radical anthropologist Alice Kehoe writes, "Chiefs somewhat resembled
feudal barons in medieval Europe or Japan, differing perhaps mainly in
that the Northwest Coast had no free cities counterbalancing the landed
barons, and so far as we can tell, more limited domains than the most
powerful in feudal Europe or Asia.""

Joan: What kind of class formation did you have in mind, exactly, and how
does it differ from the caste societies of the Tlingit, Gitskaan, Nisga'a,
Tsimpshian, Nootka, Bella Coola, Saanich, Salish, Squamish, - all of whom
also made war clubs and conducted slave raids?

Duncan: ... the idea that we can go off and do "something else" is a false
consciousness.  Some people seem to think that hunter-gatherer life or
subsistence farming might be islands of safety from capitalism.

Joan: This is quite true. In my lifetime, I have watched the relatively
progressive back-to-the-land hippies turn into bush yuppies and
reactionary survivalists.  They were all influenced by pettit bourgeois
consciousness nurtured, in part, by dreams of this hunter-gatherer life.
In fact, the post that launched this epic discussion last summer was an
attempt to discuss exactly this point. It got waylaid by the aboriginal
activists who called me arrogant and haughty.



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