RE: [Marxism] Dying languages

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis wrote:

(Although this NY Times Magazine article has interesting facts on "dying

languages", it basically conceals the real reason this is 
happening--namely political, economic and cultural genocide. Forced 
assimilation is a form of genocide basically. The article claims that 
people opt for Spanish rather than Kawesqar because there are "economic 
advantages". The only reason Spanish became dominant in Latin America is

that the native population was either killed or suppressed. It is 
interesting that the article cites spiked-online luminary Kenan Malik's 
view: "What if half the world's languages are on the verge of 
extinction? Let them die in peace." I decided to begin investigating 
indigenous issues back in 1996 when I first ran into such poison written

at that time in the name of Marxism, an outlook that the people 
associated with spiked-online dropped long ago.)

Response (Jim C) Languages, along with other aspects of culture are the
carriers of culture and history. In the case of the Blackfoot language,
it did not become a written language until around 1963 (the first
dictionary and grammar book were developed by a non-Blackfoot working
with a Blackfoot woman). To argue that these languages should just
disappear is to argue that the cultures and histories of the Peoples
speaking these languages should also just disappear--no position any
serious Marxist should take.

International law distinguishes between "ethnocide" ("voluntary"
assimilation into a dominant culture in order to acquire advantages of
membership in/adherence to some dominant culture) which is not
considered "illegal" in international law and genocide (forced
assimilation or transference of members of one group to another group,
sterilization, killing members of the group--need not involve all
members--causing serious mental or bodily harm to members of the group,
deliberately inflicting upon a group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part) and as such
there is no such thing as "cultural genocide" under international
law--only genocide which involves destruction of culture as part of
overall destruction of a People or Nation as a People or Nation. 

Marxism and Marxists will go nowhere, and cannot be taken seriously,
until they have something to say about and start dealing with genocide
going on right under their noses in the "metropoles" as well as in more
"exotic" places more spatially removed in the "periphery." 

Jim C.

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