February issue of Monthly Review

[James Farmelant]

The new February issue of Monthly Review features several
articles of interest including Michael Parenti's "Reflections on
the Politics of Culture" in which critiques the pervasivism of
culturalism in mainstream social science.  Mainstream social
science in Parenti's view portrays culture as representing the
customs and mores of a society including its language, laws,
and religion.  This makes the notion of culture neutral-sounding
but as Parenti contends there is nothing neutral about culture
once we understand it as a vehicle by which the dominant economic
class is able to transmit its class-based values.  Parenti takes
culturalism to task for ignoring social structure including especially
social classes.  He also argues that culturalism easily leads to
cultural relativism which easily becomes a mask for rationalizing
oppressive social practices such as patriarchy.  He attacks the
pomos for buying into the doctrine of cultural relativism. As he
notes for the pomos: "Evaluating any culture from a platform of
fixed and final truths, they say is a dangerous project that often
contains the seeds of more extreme forms of domination.  In
response, I would argue that, even if there are no absolute truths,
this does not mean all consciousness is hopelessly culture-bound.
People from widely different societies and periods of history can
still recognize forms of class, ethnic, and gender oppression in
various cultures acroos time and space.  Though culture permeates
all our perceptions, it is not the totality of human experience."

Parenti goes on to note the anti-Marxism that is at the root of pomo
and notes that they " . . . able to enjoy the appearance of independent
critical thought without ever saying anything that might jeopardize
their academic careers."

Robert W. McChesney in "The U.S. Left and Media Politics"
calls for the left and the labor movement to challenge the existing
corporate media monoploies that he sees as strangling American
democracy.  He advocates  a number of steps including the
funding of independent and alternative media, the raising of the
issue of media reform as one that can unite environmentalists, feminists,
civil rights advocates, and labor activists, along with journalists,
educators etc. against the commercialization of public life, the
strengthening of progressive media watchdog groups like Fairness
& Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and the Cultural Environment Movement
(CEM).

Also, in Montly Review, philosopher, WIll Miller writes on "Social
Change and Human Nature" noting how conservative doctrines
concerning the alleged intrinsic selfishness and unchangeability
of human nature provide a basis for ideologies rationalizing
market competition and economic inequality.

In the book reviews, Paul Burkett reviews James O'Connor's
_Natural Causes: Essays in Ecological Marxism_.  Burkett on the
whole approves of O'Connor's book but challenges his view that
Marx & Engels were as indifferent to ecological concerns as
O'Connor seems to think.  In Burkett's view, O'Connor fails to
perceive the extent to which classical Marxism can help us to
better understand the capitalist environmental crisis and to
fashion an appropriate political response to it.  Burkett also
challenges the extent to which O'Connor in his analysis tends to
separate out his "two contradictions" of capitalism. In doing
so O'Connor in Burkett's view unwittingly erects a barrier to the
formation of an effective Red-Green politics.

		Jim Farmelant

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