...
> Etounga Manguelle, a Camerounian, whose book "Does Africa Need a
> Cultural Adjustment Program?" identifies fatalism and sorcery, a
> distaste for work, centralized traditions of authority, and the
> suppression of initiative, achievement and saving as chiefly
> responsible for Africa's poverty, authoritarianism and social
> injustice.
bad subjects for late capitalism.
"The economic calculations of Helmut Meinhold [German sociologist] explain why the Germans did not have the Jews simply dig canals after the Germans had deprived them of their rights and their property, but instead used up transport, labour and materials to kill them: The death of the Jews provided the simplest and most viable means of slowing down capital erosion and of keeping open the possibility for an economic upswing in occupied Poland. Helmut Meinhold ... as well as many other German intellectuals, were engaged in what can be called the political economy of the 'final solution'. This was an activity that, precisely because it appeared so abstract and neat, tells us more about the causes for the destruction of the European Jews than do the actions performed by subordinate executioners.
Through the activities of these men, an originally racist concept such as the 'solution of the Jewish question' underwent a fateful change of values. The intellectual planners did not use the concept emotionally, as if they were filled with hatred, but scientifically as technical terminology. Hate and base motives were transformed into the necessity of population and structural policies. Only thus, rendered rational endogenously, could the 'final solution' be implemented with the appearance of being a reasonable measure."
Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim, "The Economics of the Final Solution", _Common Sense_, issue 11, 1991.
one should add of course, that in the instance of the WSJ article, the delight with which citations are sought from capitalist planners of 'other colours' is an interesting innovation.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au