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Patrick asked
>
>What's at stake in this discussion?
For me it's that Marxists understand contemporary problems in terms of
their true history--the displacement of millions of people as slaves and
coolies, the devastation of an entire continent through slave raids to feed
the growing demand (see Catherine Coquery Vidrovitch), and the racial
ideologies to which the capitalist use of formally unfree labor has given
rise. On this last question, there is a rather interesting book edited by
Jan Breman, Imperial Monkey Business: Racial Supremacy in Social Darwinist
Theory and Colonial Practice (VU University Press, Amsterdam, 1990). As
Alfredo may have been suggesting in an early post, putatively Marxist
attacks on world system theory have led to unsaid dismissal of any attempt
understand formally unfree labor and racism as crucial parts of our history
under capitalist domination as somehow diversionary from real capitalism. I
would imagine that this is how it seems to Patrick and a few others (Alan
Freeman is one) on this list.
Yours, Rakesh
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