[lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 8 16:18:47 PST 2008


Huh? The notion that Socrates was illiterate is controversial and is based mainly on that he didn't write anything. It's even less well-based than Sappho's supposed lesbianism.

That five-sixths of the population of Athens was slaves does not mean that they were stupid or had stupid lives.

The Greeks viewed the physical act of writing as being degrading, not literacy, not to mention composition and rhetoric and the stuff the Muses handle. You dictate to slaves.

For somebody who gets mad at Heidegger for saying bad things about manual labor, you sure are hot to talk about how awful it is. :)

--- On Sat, 11/8/08, James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


> From: James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, November 8, 2008, 6:46 PM
> Charles replies to my point that life in primitive societies
> was cruel unrewarding and stupid:
>
> CB: Don't have much data by which we can exclude the
> European imperialists, colonialists and slavers as the main
> cause of the cruelty, an lack of reward. The
> "stupidity" part is racist.
>
> Which I think is a bit of a weird response. Did I say that
> those who lived in those societies were to blame? No. The
> conditions of there existence did not let them rise further.
> And Charles is right that if you are talking about societies
> that were made primitive in the modern era, then yes indeed,
> those who held them back, like colonists, imperialists and
> slavers were responsible. The fact remains that their lives
> were cruel and unrewarding. What should we do? Pretend that
> their lives are rewarding, because we might offend their
> feeling? No. If you cannot recognise the need for change,
> you will not make it.
>
> Charles goes on to say it is racist to say that life in
> primitive societies is stupid. But that is not to say that
> those who live in such societies are innately stupid. Only
> that limiting conditions limit intellectual development,
> too. Should we tell people that illiteracy is OK? No. that
> is why education always played such a major part in
> anti-imperialist struggles. The opponents of oppression
> always understood that subjugation was degrading and
> stupifying.
>
> Chris says Plato was clever, even though his society was
> primitive. So he was. But five sixths of the people around
> him were slaves. Women were subordinate. Plato himself was
> exceptional in being able to read. Socrates could not. Among
> the democratic elite in Athens writing things down had been
> thought to be degrading work.
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