Wed, 05 Apr 2017 12:06:46 +0000, 12:06 PM
http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=4715
I'll give a paraphrased synthesis of some of the things I felt were highlights for me.
Critiques of Marxism:
1. Marxism is distinctly European and Weaternized in economic and social paradigms - to enforce "the struggle of the proletariat" onto aboriginal (or any indigenous people for that matter) is colonialism. Just because both the worker and the aboriginal are oppressed by capitalism doesnt they're inherent allies.
2. Marxism recreates capitalism paradigm mode of production by flipping or mirroring capitalist ecenomics; communists are still and will always be ruled by the production/consumption dichotomy
3. Marxist progress is measured by the degree that nature and thus the primitive are pacified (read: domesticated, categorized and then commodified into labor). This is exemplified in this quote from Marx: "[capitalism] produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia" - referring to the industrialization of India by capitalism and colonialization.
Potential synthesis:
The Miskito's in Nicuragua was attempted to be co-opted by the Sandista socialists in 79. The Sandista's attempted to fix the problems of forced proletarianization from British colonialism by further industrialization for stimulated economic growth. The Miskito's resisted in full force and used the Sandista's socialist liberationist rhetoric to oppose proletarianization.
The article ends with questioning if it's possible to create large planned economies while imbedding protected mechanisms to create autonomous and self-contained cultures and economies to exist with self-determination. He suggets that the only way to achieve this is to reject industrialization as a good and necessary step, to forgo progress but maintain a socialist economy. However I suspect that the problem might lie with mass-scale planned economies themselves regardless of industrialization - I don't see how any planned economy at all can resist universalizing its constituents.
What do y'all think?
I'll give a paraphrased synthesis of some of the things I felt were highlights for me.
Critiques of Marxism:
1. Marxism is distinctly European and Weaternized in economic and social paradigms - to enforce "the struggle of the proletariat" onto aboriginal (or any indigenous people for that matter) is colonialism. Just because both the worker and the aboriginal are oppressed by capitalism doesnt they're inherent allies.
2. Marxism recreates capitalism paradigm mode of production by flipping or mirroring capitalist ecenomics; communists are still and will always be ruled by the production/consumption dichotomy
3. Marxist progress is measured by the degree that nature and thus the primitive are pacified (read: domesticated, categorized and then commodified into labor). This is exemplified in this quote from Marx: "[capitalism] produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia" - referring to the industrialization of India by capitalism and colonialization.
Potential synthesis:
The Miskito's in Nicuragua was attempted to be co-opted by the Sandista socialists in 79. The Sandista's attempted to fix the problems of forced proletarianization from British colonialism by further industrialization for stimulated economic growth. The Miskito's resisted in full force and used the Sandista's socialist liberationist rhetoric to oppose proletarianization.
The article ends with questioning if it's possible to create large planned economies while imbedding protected mechanisms to create autonomous and self-contained cultures and economies to exist with self-determination. He suggets that the only way to achieve this is to reject industrialization as a good and necessary step, to forgo progress but maintain a socialist economy. However I suspect that the problem might lie with mass-scale planned economies themselves regardless of industrialization - I don't see how any planned economy at all can resist universalizing its constituents.
What do y'all think?