[PEN-L:9523] RE: Rummel et al

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The consistent fallacy in Max's argumentation on these issues is made clear by the inconsistency of his two statements copied below. That fallacy is that his position and arguments are not ideological or "political in an unconstructive sense", as he puts it, but his opponents' are. The accurate position is that all postions and arguments are ideological and political. There is no neutral science in politicaleconomy.

 In the below he openly exonorates his ideology, which is much friendlier to bourgeois ideology/liberalism than that of those he criticizes, from scrutiny and criticism for its world historic crimes. This approach includes the well known nonsense of declaring himself objective and not ideological.

The term "genocide" came out of an assessment of World War II. European mass suicidal war finally forced a breakthrough in European consciousness that had applicability to the long history of slavery and colonialism.

Max wants to leave out a major fraction of the history of capitalism in assessing its potential for reform. He suggests we start our comparisons of actual historical capitalism and actual historical socialism only at about 1925. This is patently anti-scientific, anti-historical anti-objective (rigging data) and ideologically motivated, not to mention grossly racist , since he blithely ( and I do mean lightly) dismisses the Native American and African American Genocides as " ha(ving) has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse " (!!!!!!!). Excuse me. That is one of the most racist things I have heard uttered on these lists. Such a conception is death to the left, such as it is.

Not that even comparisons from 1925 don't make capitalism more genocidal and warmongering than socialism. If we are going to be antihistorical, lets start with 1990.  The holocausts of liberal capitalism out weigh those of socialism by far since then.

Max's "leftism" is demogogic.

Charles Brown




>>> Max Sawicky <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxx> 07/22/99 11:56AM >>>
* whatever the machinations of imperialism, it is
undeniable that stalin, mao, pol pot, and their cronies
were personally responsible
for enough deaths and murders to exempt them and their
"thoughts" from my list of plausible guides to
revolutionary change.  It doesn't much matter whether
Stalin killed ten million or one hundred million,
since they will all stay dead in any case.  Ten
million is quite enough for me to come to a negative
judgement.


-clip-

I think this war over terminology --
was it genocide, or what -- is political in an
unconstructive sense.  Calling the treatment of
native Americans or the Middle Passage "genocide"
is a rhetorical instrument for indicting bourgeois
demoratic capitalism (BDC) at its root.  That doesn't
mean the term is inappropriate; it does mean that
its political context often -- especially on PEN-L --
makes its use tendentious.  People are not arguing
about history for its own sake -- they are trying to
prop up problematic arguments and political precepts,
and doing it in a way, I might add, that has zero
political impact from any left political standpoint
you care to espouse.