[PEN-L:3162] Ken to Louis-->Doug

[valis <valis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> You don't believe that capitalism has progressive aspects?
> I thought you were a Marxist?
> How can you hold both that capitalism has no progressive
> aspects and that you are a Marxist at one and the same time?
> There are numerous passages in Marx filled with praises of
> capitalism's progressive features, of the manner in which
> it releases the productive forces of nature and frees people
> from feudal bonds.

Yeah: yesterday, astounded at what Louis had told Doug, I sent
them a comment meaning the same as above, if expressed in very
different terms.  When speaking of capitalism in terms of
a world-historic continuum M & E sounded so like a pair of 19th
century American town-boosters and Chamber of Commerce members
that I've had to rescue them from the sputtering confusion of
newcomers to the literature, but of course that is not the nature
of Louis's problem, which he has just cleared up in another
installment of the thread still inappropriately called Re: Nigeria.
I had, and still have, my own problem with the relationship of
capitalism and a successor; Russell Means masterfully articulated
it in his 1980 speech "The Same Old Song," about which I blew my
stack last June in the post named Ceremony (after the Silko novel).

I recently looked at moving onto a reservation as a way of dodging
all that I find most repugnant about the larger American society,
and concluded that it would be much ado for very little or nothing
of the desired gain.  The existence of a few NA radicals like Jim
Craven does bugger-all, for the time being, to alter the fact that
too many tribal elders are now scrambling to faithfully reproduce
capitalist production relations on tribal turf, perhaps under the
illusion that they can turn off unexpected "side effects" whenever
and wherever they choose.  No thanks, catch you later, maybe.

My problem, post-Means, is that socialism, as it would play out
in an urban-industrial matrix, is, to a distressing degree,
an extension of the thing it is meant to replace.

   I think there's a problem with language here. Christians,
   capitalists, Marxists, all of them have been revolutionary
   in their own minds. But none of them really mean revolution.
   What they really mean is a _continuation_. They really do
   what they do in order that European culture can continue to
   exist and develop according to its needs. Like germs,
   European culture goes through occasional convulsions,
   even divisions within itself, in order to go on living
   and growing. This isn't a revolution we're talking about,
   but a means to continuing what already exists.
   An amoeba is still an amoeba after it reproduces. But maybe
   comparing European culture to an amoeba isn't really fair
   to the amoeba. Maybe cancer cells are a more accurate
   comparison because European culture has historically
   destroyed everything around it; and it will eventually
   destroy itself.

At this point the revelatory pleasures of being shelled and
strafed in the company of the Miskito Indians was still in
the future, but Means already felt certain of his grounds.
Marx was correct in his model of history, so in this vein
I consider myself a Marxist, beyond which I have the deepest
of misgivings about who the members of this list should be
killing time and six-packs with.  The more I listen, the more
I see the cynical vision that sustained the Grand Inquisitor:
the "liberated" masses begging to receive back their burdens
and chains.

Occasionally our honorable moderator beseeches us to,
in some sense - perhaps literally, horror of horrors -
desert our keyboards and get out into the bubbling
ideological broth of the streets, because the endgame
is definitely in progress.  Here in Pen-land, however,
the rule book is still in hot debate, and the game
itself still subject to basic philosophic departures.

                                         valis
                                         expat-in-training