Re: Re: Foster responds

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Why does it have to be black and white.  There are some gains and some
losses.  I don't know if I would rather be a serf in 1500 or in a factory
in 1750.  Both were difficult and unpleasant occupations.  I would rather
work in a Ford plant today than either of the other choices, but my
standard of living would still depend upon the relationship between the US
economy and the rest of the world.

Can you really get far by arguing about the situtation of a small group at
a particular point of time -- especially when your knowledge is limited?
Probably not.

On the other hand, it is useful to take into account that the indigenous
people that we see today are the survivors who have been pushed to the
margins.  They may not be representative of life in other, more fertile
places.

Again, the evidence is contradictory.  The Native Americans suffered from
diseases, but the Plains Indians were the tallest people in the world --
often taken as an indication of health.

I would like to learn more about this sort of stuff, but the invective
here makes it too painful to learn.

On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 01:02:53PM -0400, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Lou says:
>
> >Of course, Mayan
> >society was a class society. Of course there were internal contradictions.
> >What is at issue is the notion of "romanticism" of pre-Columbia society.
> >People like Michael Parenti argue that colonialism produced a net loss for
> >the Guatemalan Mayans. So would be the case of Aztec Mexico and Incan Peru
> >by all the evidence I've seen.
>
> The point for Marxists, however, is that even if capitalism produced
> a net gain empirically for the working class, compared to what had
> existed before, it would still have to be superceded by socialism in
> order to accomplish universal social emancipation of humanity.  We
> are not conservatives who prefer the pre-capitalist past to the
> capitalist present; we examine the capitalist present critically from
> the point of view of what can be accomplished in a socialist future
> based upon the potential objectively inherent in the present but
> blocked by social relations of capitalism.
>
> Yoshie
>

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx