Re: Re: Re: Re: Foster responds

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:35 PM 6/29/01 -0400, you wrote:
> Jim Devine:
> >"conclusive evidence"? in science, and especially social science, there's
> >no such thing.
>
> So does this mean that the agrarian origins of capitalism in 15th century
> Great Britain is also up for grabs?

_obviously_: any theory, no matter how popular and no matter how much you
hate its author, is merely a working hypothesis. Of course, it's not
sufficient to criticize that theory: not only does one have to understand
the theory being criticized but one has to present a better alternative.
Mere skepticism, though it can be useful, is destructive, not constructive.

> >There must have been something profoundly wrong with Mayan civilization
> >(and its agricultural/water system) if a mere climate change -- an external
> >shock -- led to its utter collapse. But some people on pen-l seem to have
> >been portraying Mayan civilization as lacking any internal contradictions
> >(unlike other class systems, it seems -- or didn't the Mayan system have
> >classes?).
>
> Somehow the original strand in this discussion got lost. 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.

As almost all leftists -- including those on pen-l -- would agree,
instinctively and heartily.

The only problem is that the concept of "net loss" is too one-dimensional.
That is, it assumes that the gains and losses can be quantified along a
single scale, so that the losses can be subtracted from the gains (or a
benefit/cost ratio can be calculated).

When I was wandering around the mountains of Guatemala in 1976 (as a
tourist), trying to used my ultra-poor Spanish to speak to folks whose
Spanish was sometimes almost as bad as mine, I came up with a linguistic
analogy to replace the cost-benefit calculus. The Spanish obviously
destroyed what was left of the Mayan civilization, while subordinating its
languages. The linguistic shift directly benefited the Spaniards, while
clearly hurting the Maya-speakers. (I'm ignoring the nonlinguistic
dimension for reasons of  analytical clarity.) However, the invasion also
created a potential (which can't be stuffed into the cost/benefit rubric
easily). The various groups of Mayans couldn't talk to each other very
well, since there were a wide variety of different dialects which were
quite distinct from each other. (In places like New Guinea, the linguistic
diversity is even worse, because until quite recently they hadn't been
conquered and united by even a home-grown empire.) The Spanish brought a
unifying language, which the Mayan peasants could then use to fight against
the landlords, etc. Similarly, the residents of India used English as part
of their unity against the English occupiers.

Frankly, I think that was what Marx was talking about even in his early use
of "stage theory." Capitalism wasn't a "net improvement" over feudalism --
and I doubt that he would think in such a utilitarian way. Rather, it
created the _potential_ for the building of socialism (or for the working
class to win life-saving reforms from their bosses).

> ... This tends to go against the accepted wisdom of Kautskyist "stages"
> that in my opinion never died out on the left, even
> though it no longer exists in quite the same format.

I think that there's too much either/or thinking going on. People have to
either accept the third-worldist perspective or they're relegated to the
evil Kautsky (and early Marx) camp that sees capitalism's conquest of the
world as having a net positive impact. Either Milosevic is uncritically
defended or you're a defender of NATO. Etc.

The left is too small for such black/white thinking.

> That's the substance of my criticism of Hardt-Negri, that they are
> defenders of colonialism on the basis that every advance of capitalism is
> an improvement over what preceded it, especially the sort of "village
> idiocy" framework that pre-Columbian societies are often cast in.

I don't know anything except hearsay about Hardt-Negri, so I can't comment.
However, I haven't seen any evidence that their book should be burned or
dismissed.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine