Why is that the relevant point of view to take if we want analytical understanding? We are now facing global capitalism. It kills people sure as the Argives did. But we need to know who it works, not just from curiosity, but ti fight it effectively. If we run together modern global capitalism and ancient wars of conquest, we are going to miss something important. In fact, we will miss something important morally. The ancient wars had an in-tour-face intentional character morally speaking. The Athenians killed the med of military age and enslaved the women and children. Global capitalism operates behind the backs of the producers, in a faceless, anonymous, and morally "shielded" way. The capitalist is not a spear-carrier who pushes the blade through the neck till black death mists the eyes (paraphrase of Homer), he's more likely than not nice fella in an office with a view of the lake who causes people to die by setting in a motion a chain of events
starting with a call to a broker. Unlike the ancient hero,. he'd actually rather not cause any deaths, he counts his gains in dollars, not bodies. The victims are equally dead, but to miss what killed them, is, to indulge in a metaphor, to say that it doesn't matter whether you are murdered or die of malaria. But it does. it does.
--- On Sat, 4/19/08, Percival Myers <permaceaem at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Percival Myers <permaceaem at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] What Have We Learned, If Anything?
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, April 19, 2008, 7:53 PM
> That seems almost too fine a point. If the actions are
> grossly similar
> but the motivations grossly different, is there ultimately
> any
> difference - from the victims point of view?
>
> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:39 AM, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Or what Alexander did to to Tyre, the Athenians to
> Melos, Ghengis Kahn or Tamerlane to just about anything?
> OK, all of the named were colonialists in some sense, but
> they were not capitalists. And the practice of razing your
> enemy's city, killing the men, and enslaving the women
> and children was standard and old in Homer's day:
> Hector says to Andromache:
> >
> > I see you there in Argos, toiling for some other
> woman at the loom, or carrying water from an alien well
> ...'There goes the wife of Hector' they will say
> when they see your tears. 'He was the champion of the
> Trojans, when Ilium was besieged.' And every time they
> say it, you will feel another pang at the loss of the one
> man who might have kept you free." . . .Ah, may the
> earth lie deep on my dead body before I hear the screams
> you utter as they drag you off. Iliad 6.456-464.
> >
> > Their son Astyanax was thrown from the battlements of
> Troy by the Argives to prevent his attempted revenge on his
> maturity in the almost unbearable depiction Euripides gives
> to the aftermath of ancient war in The Trojan Women.
> ("O Danaans, your strength in in your spears, not in
> your minds," Andromache says over the broken body of
> her son, presented to her in her husband's shield. --
> (I paraphrase from memory; the only on-line translation I
> found had no line-cites and was wretchedly Victorian.))
> >
> > Thucydides is much more terse and ambiguous in the
> "Melian Dialogue."
> >
> > "The place was now closely invested, and there
> was treachery among the citizens themselves. So the Melians
> were induced to surrender at discretion. The Athenians
> thereupon put to death all who were of military age, and
> made slaves of the women and children. They then colonised
> the island, sending thither 500 settlers of their
> own." The Peloponnesian War 5.116. Plato's Phaedo
> was a Melian slave, having been one presumes younger than
> military age during the destruction of Melos.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 4/18/08, Chris Doss
> <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> > > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] What Have We Learned, If
> Anything?
> > > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > > Date: Friday, April 18, 2008, 11:52 PM
> >
> >
> > > You mean like what the Romans did to Carthage and
> the
> > > Hebrews to Jericho?
> > >
> > > --- dredmond at efn.org wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > The historical record suggests total war
> was
> > > > invented by colonialism,
> > > > which was itself just a stage of capitalist
> > > > accumulation -- the point was
> > > > to destroy entire societies, via
> enslavement and
> > > > commodification.
> > >
> > > Mataiotes mataioteton, eipen ho Ekklasiastes,
> > > mataiotes mataioteton, ta panta mataiotes.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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