>Why should a
>society of generalized commodity production
>necessarily entail a demonization of one specific
>ethno/religious group?
Chris, this was my first reaction to Angelus's (Novus's?) statement. But in a rare moment when Occam's razor is actually applicable, it seems to me that the most obvious answer is the best one: Because it always has. Trying to show that such demonization is not essential to capital when it has always relied on it reminds me of leftists who try to shrug off racism and sexism as somehow ancillary to capital's functioning, claiming that capitalism could survive without those prejudices even though they have always been a part of it. How do they know that? How can they know so much about a social form that has never existed? Why denigrate struggles against them as being secondary, or even, as is frequently leveled against feminism, distracting?