[PEN-L:11422] Re: Capitalist development

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that these questions are wrong questions. However, the problem I see with the one ( and maybe another )is the double question in one, on the model of the old trick lawyer's question, "When did you stop beating your wife ?". This is really two questions: Did you beat your wife ? If yes, when did you stop ?

Similarly the question below sneaks in an answer to a hidden premise question such as "Did the Chinese commit a failure by not leaping into what has become capitalism ? If yes, why.? or in this case "If no, why ? The answer to the second is obvious.

I am not clear on the dehistoricizing aspect. Seems to me that the dissolution of capitalism, racism and homophobia is a dialectical unity of their past, present and future. The working class revolution today is still part of historical materialism. The empirical history of capitalism is part of its instant dissolution, no ?

Charles Brown



>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> 09/21/99 12:57PM >>>
Carrol wrote:
>Lou believes that this empirical question
>is at the source of eurocentrism. I believe the source of eurocentrism
>*is in the present*, not the past.

I agree.  No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to 'Europeans.'
The problem lies in the question, not various answers given to the
question.  The day we'll get rid of capitalism & other oppressions, we'll
stop asking questions such as 'why did China fail to become capitalist?'
'Are blacks intellectually inferior to whites?'  'What causes
homosexuality?'  And so forth.

Yoshie