SergioL652: Too bad you didn't stay to hear somebody say that he did not understand why we are still studying Marxism because it has been the cause of 100 Million deaths.
Justin Schwartz: OK, and we are studying capitalism because it the cause of how many hundreds of millions of deaths? I mean, Sergio, historical Marxism has a bloody hands, no one can deny it. But it's not like capital doesn't done into the world, covered with filthm dripping blood from every pore, like hideous pagan idol, drinking nectar from the skulls of the slain. (Marx's great images, describing British colonialism in India.)
Mike Davis has a new book on out Late Victorian Holocausts, in which he credibly chalks up around 60 million deaths to capitalism's credit in what we now call the third world in the late 19th century _alone_, leaving out the 15 million in WWI amd the 50 million in WWII, and the odd ten or twelve million attributable to imperialism in Indochian and Korea, etc.
I mean, at a certain point, the numbers game gets ridiculous. The body count of Stalinsim was unspeakable, and condemns it foreover. But Stalinism is gone. The body count of capitalism is higher and, since capitalism is still here, growing. If Stalinism was unacceptable because of its victims, why is capitalism acceptable despite its dead? That is a rhetorical question.
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Numbers like this are ridiculous. The claim of capitalism responsibility for WWI and II deaths is problematic, as any decent historian ought affirm; one grew from the assassination of a visiting imperialist dignitary, in a region with over 800 years (at the time) documentable religious war. This was as much a religious war, at its beginnings, as anything else. The involvement of other nations is complex and not properly factored along economic lines, except by those with an axe or a desire for disingenuity. As some of us directly remember, the other was started by a nationalist socialist state dissatisfied with the outcome of the earlier war. You could say that WWII was attributable to the imperialists who suborned Germany to their greed for purposes of exploitation at the conclusion of WWI, but Taylor argues articulately in Origins of the Second World War that Hitler's actions went far beyond the reasonable escalation of hostilities with neighboring states. His Final So! lution was truly a plan of genocide for those he considered sub-human.
As for Mike Davis, he also wrote "Burning Our Illusions Tonight," "Magical Urbanism," "Prisoners of the American Dream," "99 Surefire Ways to Stay Unemployed." I'm impressed, I wonder at his popularity with the lunatic fringe. The NY Times doesn't yet have a review of this latest work, but does review another work, "Ecology of Fear; Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster." http://search3.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+book-rev+bookrev-arch+23475+0+wAAA+mike%7Edavis The review is good for a chuckle, enjoy. I'd take with a grain of salt, any claims of Davis being convincing re: famines, this other work with weather patterns leaves much to be desired, unless one reads it just for the knee-slappers.
George Thomas
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