Re:Zapatistas -- culture not capitalism
JAMES BENTHALL (st26h@rosie.uh.edu)
6 Dec 1994 21:02 CST
In article <Pine.HPP.3.91.941206115417.5999A-100000@gaia.ecs.csus.edu>, gardnerm@gaia.ecs.csus.edu (Milo Gardner) writes...
>
>James Benthall seem to agree on several points. That is good, but
>which ones are they. A private email would be interesting.
>
>Yet, James and I seem to disgree on three points.
>
>1. Marxism never having been tried ---
>
>What trash that is. It is like the ideal state of democracy has
>not been tried. The bugs of Cuban or Hanoi Marxism are so great
>that it should be clear that any system with no checks and
>balances will eventually be run by a despot. QED
I never said Marxism had never been tried, I said it had never been PRACTICED!
This is not opinion but fact. Do you believe the *workers* controlled the
means of production in the Soviet state? I assure you they didn't. The Soviet
Union was an example of State Capitalism; it was NOT a socialist state.
>2. Pre-Columbian cultures never did exist, nor do they now.
>
>More Marxist bull! All cultures exist, even when the peoples that
>knew their inner workings have died. Look at teh Middle Kingdom
>of Egypt. Hieratic writing and unit fractions was very different
>--- intellectually and thus culturally -- than hieroglyphics
>and Horus-Eye.
>
>The same is true concerning Mesoamerica. Olmecan sense of time,
>even though not proven to be sidereal, far exceeded the lowly
>sense of Aztecan solar worship -- Aztecs even lose use of zero,
>a fantastic pre-Aztec discovery, right?
Again you mischaracterize what I said. I didn't say that pre-Columbian cultures
_never existed_--only a fool would assert such a thing! I said that pre-
Columbian cultures DON'T EXIST NOW! To say that pre-Columbian cultures exist
in post-Columbian times is a LOGICAL ABSURDITY! Its logically impossible! I
hope you can see this...
And are you saying that cultures never cease to exist? If so, are you a
religious nut or something? Of course they die--especially when the people
that "know their inner workings" are dead! The Maya of the Classical Maya
culture are not presently on this planet, nor are they likely to appear any
time soon. (And where do get that this is a Marxist belief? It is elementary
logic.)
>3. james seems to say that truth only exists in the present,
>another Marxian view that history is a step child of politics.
>Truth, be it the application of zero in a base 20 positional
>number system that calculated time within 6 seconds of our
>atomic clocks, and 8 second better than Greporian calendars
>is worth teaching in 1994.
Actually, "truths" have existed throughout all times and still exists in
virtually every corner of the planet. "Truth" has never existed and never
will. :)
!Vivan los Zapatistas!
james b.
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