Date: Fri, 6 Mar 1998 12:38:21 -0700 (MST)
From: Martha Gimenez <gimenez@csf.Colorado.EDU>
To: Louis Proyect <lnp3@columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: Charles Ostenle and the Manifesto
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19980306135059.01271e04@pop.cc.columbia.edu>

On Fri, 6 Mar 1998, Louis Proyect wrote:

....... snip......
> 
> I find all this discussion rather fascinating, I must say, and I am rather
> leery of Martha's remonstrations about world systems theory being "out of
> place." 

Louis,

Please note:  I forwarded Carl Dassbach's message - those "remonstrations'
are his very own.  

Martha
gimenez@csf.colorado.edu

***************************************************************************

After all, Andre's paper was one of the core texts recommended for
> discussion in the seminar. I am in the middle of an intensive study of
> Incan society based on Murra, Stern, Patterson et al. in preparation for an
> article on Mariategui, as part of a series I have been writing on Marxism
> and the American Indian. I have a strong affinity with the viewpoint
> expressed in "The Communist Manifesto in Light of Current Anthropology" by
> Eugene E. Ruyle.
> 
> On the other hand, I have spent five years promoting the use of high
> technology in Nicaragua and Southern Africa in the 1980s. I feel repelled
> by Marx and Engel's concept of "rural idiocy" but by the same token I
> believe that socialism can only be created on the basis of the most
> advanced technology. The reason for this is simple. The world's economy has
> become much more interwoven than it was in the days of the CM and it is
> impossible to turn back the clock. Urgent problems of ecology, energy
> reserves, farming and fishing, etc. can not be resolved on a local basis,
> no matter how seductive the call is to live a simpler life. Capitalism has
> opened a pandora's box and the only way to close it is with the tools and
> weapons it has put at our disposal.
> 
> Louis Proyect
> 
> 
>