first, I think perhaps it might be worth your while to read the original article in this thread, and then you can come back and tell me how you intend to distinguish between your own version of progress and that in the article.
> As I read Marx, he viewed capitalism as a progressive force that abolishes
> old cultural vestiges. From that point of view, pre-capitalist cultural
> forms are impediment to progress. Where Marx and bourgeois political
> economy parted company was the future - bourgeois pundists saw capitalism
> as th eend of history, Marx did not.
you forget that Marx did not see capitalist progress in such one-dimensional terms. you also forget that Marx was not pro-capitalist.
> >From taht point of view, yes, cultural resistance to capitalist innovation
> and the preservation (in various ways) of pre-capitalist social-cultural
> instituions is generally a bad thing - Eastern European development with
> its informal 'shadow' economy (a verstige of pre-industrial social
> instituions) is a good case in point.
rubbish. Marx speaks forcefully and critically of the processes of immiseration and the removal of peasants from the land to make available a proletariat. you confuse a celebration of the collapse of patriarchal and feudal authority with the celebration of capitalism.
> Unlike the multi-culti crowd that cherish cultural differences (in the way
> they cherish exotic animals in a zoo) - I do not see "indigenous culture"
> as a sacred cow - if anything, it is the "noble savage"/ "golden
> communitarian past" crap peddled by the right.
I have no idea how you get this from anything that I said or implied. in point of fact, I have written very critically of both multiculturalism and exoticism over time. the option is not between celebrating a faux authenticity of cultural difference and community and the homogenization of people as commodities under capitalism. both can move simultaneously in my view and experience. I have no idea why you would wish to reduce matters to a culturalist plane, thereby coming up with such a supposed dichotomy.
as for moralising, exactly who would I be moralising against in this explanation? it is the article which blamed those who are impoverished for creating their own impoverishment, which sought explanations for such in something which could be made external (and prior to) capitalism, hence letting capitalism off the hook. and it is you who echo such sentiments by likewise drawing a line between (supposedly) pre-capitalist and capitalist cultural forms, situating explanations for poverty _which exists now_ in the ostensibly residual expressions of the former.
> >moreover, there are ways of explaining poverty that have little to do with
> >those who are impoverished. that you want to locate explanations of
>>poverty _in_ those who are impoverished, and whether this explanation
>>proceeds through biological or culturalist definitions makes little
>>difference here, then you explicitly reverse the order of explanation
>>which is central to any leftist, let alone marxist, understanding of
>>poverty and inequality.
>
> Angela, with all due respect, I think this distinction is but a pc crap -
> moralising instead of explanation. The only use of the distinction in/out
> those who are impoverished comes when one is very conscious about blaming a
> "proper" social group. Otherwise, the distinction makes little sense, as
> it creates a serious difficulty in explaining the reproduction of
> capitalist exploitation without the evidence of any explicit coercion.
oh, please Wojtek. this thread began with an article outlining the causes of poverty (which I object to for fairly clear reasons and) which you did not read, but chimed in with a post defending a cultural explanation of poverty, presumably based on an argument about culture being an important element in the maintenance of oppression. not once have I mentioned the role of cultural practices in either maintaining oppression or emancipation. _you_ have drawn the connection between the two, and in a dubious manner, preferring to locate explanations according to a one-dimensional notion of progress and culture.
> the workers are not forced to the satanic mills at gunpoints or by the
> threat of starvation - then how do we explain what amounts to their
> willingness to participate in the reporduction of their own oppression - if
> not their own cooperation. An if they cooperate, in a way, in their own
> exploitation - we need to explain whac causes them to do so (absent the use
> of force) - social-cultural institutions come very handy in that
> explanation. Burawoy in his _Manufacturing Consent_ makes a good case for
> that.
with this is don't entirely disagree, but I would certainly add the qualifier that this process of capitalist socialisation can never be neatly separated into consent and coercion: the two go hand in hand.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au