[lbo-talk] Narmada Dam (was Arundhati Roy etc.)

[Miles Jackson]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> --- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>"Proven to work"?  Human beings have been around on
>>this planet for many 
>>  millenia; all the hunting and gathering societies
>>that existed over 
>>the past 100,000 years "worked" just fine (otherwise
>>we'd never be 
>>here!). 
> 
> 
> [WS:]  You fail to mention that they survived for
> those millenia when there was no alternative to
> hunting and gathering, and started vanishing as soon
> as alternatives became available.  So if those who
> knew hunting and gathering first hand abandoned it as
> soon as alternatives became available - perhaps this
> life style was not that great as Western intellectuals
> imagine it to be.
> 
> Wojtek

Their way of life is vanishing because of the enroachment of 
industrialization and agriculture, not because they willingly 
"abandoned" their way of life.  Your argument reminds me of the bogus 
claim that capitalism took off in England because feudal peasants 
willingly and enthusiastically gave up their traditional way of life to 
become wage workers in factories (Michael P. nicely demolishes that myth 
in Invention of Capitalism).

Miles