>This is lacking totally in what should matter most, a historical analysis
>of the role of tobacco in capital accumulation. Tobacco, coffee, tea, sugar
>and rum are linked historically to the emergence of Western European
>colonialism. New world indigenous societies were destroyed by the invading
>maruaders and valuable land was used to create essentially habit-forming or
>addictive products. As Warren Buffett once said, there is no better
>profit-rewarding business than cigarettes. You take cheap crops that are
>worth pennies, wrap paper around them, and sell them for dollars to a
>population which becomes addicted. Then, corporations use the power of the
>state to protect their interests.
This is really not all that relevant to the issue of why people smoke in 1998. Geoffrey Bible and evil geniuses of Philip Morris weren't around in the 17th century, were they?
>Doug, as in a previous discussion of prostitution on PEN-L, doesn't see
>these questions in class terms. They are only life-style questions for him.
In other words, merely cultural, eh? Class explains a lot in life, but it doesn't explain everything you know.
>Under socialism, I would expect people to act in less self-destructive
>manners. Anybody who spent time in Sandinista Nicaragua would have been
>astonished by the high level of cigarette-smoking. The only explanation is
>that people in desperate situations need everything they can to get through
>the day. The idea obviously is to reduce desperation, which starts by
>eliminating the capitalist system.
Human desire is a lot more complicated than that, Lou, and anyone who thinks that you're going to make a revolution against capitalism without understanding that is going to lose badly. Klein's point that anti-smoking campaigns (and anti-drinking and anti-drug campaigns too) generally occur along with other forms of social repression is an important one. Is it mere coincidence that the most anti-smoking president the U.S. has ever had is also the one who signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act? And who wants to put a snoop chip in every cell phone and a V-chip in every TV?
Doug