From: Hank Roth <odin@halcyon.halcyon.com>
Subject: EUROPEAN EXPORTS--SMALLPOX & CAPITALISM
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The 23:00 News and Mail Service
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 20:32:15 GMT

<<< via P_news and p.news  >>>
{Excerpts from PWW, October 10, 1992}
 
             EUROPEAN EXPORTS--SMALLPOX & CAPITALISM
                           by Tom Foley
 
Historian Francis Jennigs, in his book, THE INVASION OF AMERICA 
(NY, 1976), said the effect of European contact with the Americas 
was a catastrophe. "The American land was more like a widow than 
a virgin. Europeans did not find a wilderness here: rather they 
made one," Jennings writes. 
 
When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, they found a land 
already devastated by the epidemics brought by Europeans. 
Jennings quotes reliable estimates that the death rate among 
Native AMericans was 50-90 percent.
 
Pious, "patriotic" nonsense aside, all the European settlers 
including the Pilgrims came here for capitalist reasons. The 
Pilgrims in fact were members of a capitalist corporation formed 
in England to make profits by the fur trade.
 
In 1763 the French were defeated by the English. Native Americans 
were no longer needed by the Englist as allies. It is precisely 
at this time - although it must have occured repeatedly earlier - 
that we find the first records of the English selling Native 
Americans blankets in which smallpox victims had died. 
 
Genocide, slavery, biological warfare -- all these are part of 
the history of the invasion of America. Some people however, will 
argue they were necessary so that progress could occur. It is the 
old idea of "the cut worm forgives the plow" all over again.
 
In his book, EVER SINCE DARWIN (1977), (biologist, Stephen Jay 
Gould), Gould writes on social Darwinism that "this discredited 
theory ranked human groups and cultures according to their 
assumed level of evolutionary attainment, with (not surprisingly) 
white Europeans at the top and people dwelling in their conquered 
colonies at the bottom." 
 
In order to tackle the problem of the invasion of America, 
Marxists need to go back to basics. Capitalist society, of all 
socieities, has the sharpest of class antagonisms: the working 
class creates all wealth and therefore is responsible for 
material progress, but the gang of criminals known as capitalists 
appropriates this wealth and uses it as it sees fit - for 
genocide, slavery, forcing opium on China, etc. Workers certainly 
have a responsibility to history here, just as Germans born after 
1945 have a responsibility to their history, but neither is 
guilty of crime.
 
(This is an excerpt from "If you ask me...." in PWW. If you would 
like to read the entire editorial and subscribe to PWW, write: 
CPUSA at 235 W 23rd St., NY, NY 10011)
***************************************************
p.news on Peacenet and P_news on Fido are conduits 
for news/articles from the LEFT. If you have any articles, 
news or comments to contribute, e-mail to:
 odin@world.std.com 
or post direct to either conference...
 

Xref: sparky misc.activism.progressive:8552 talk.environment:4680 alt.save.the.earth:1376