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Current Issue #48
Vol 22, No. 3

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Table of Contents

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48 (Volume 22, No. 3)

Preface

Marcella Bencivenni

Introduction


Articles

Gerald Meyer
, The Cultural Pluralist Response to Americanization: Horace Kallen, Randolph Bourne, Louis Adamic, and Leonard Covello

Susan J. Dicker, US Immigrants and the Dilemma of Anglo-Conformity

Ron Hayduk and Susanna Jones, Immigrants and Race in the US: Are Class-Based Alliances Possible?

LaToya A. Tavernier, The Stigma of Blackness: Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic

Robin Jacobson and Kim Geron, Unions and the Politics of Immigration

Stefano Luconi, Ethnic Allegiance and Class Consciousness among Italian-American Workers, 1900-1941

Héctor Perla, Jr., Grassroots Mobilization against US Military Intervention in El Salvador

Mat Callahan, Immigration in Switzerland: Facts and Phobias

Hugh Hamilton, Reframing US Immigration Discourse for the 21st Century

Poetry

Angel Island Immigration Station Poetry

D.H. Melhem, say french

Alice Ostriker, West Fourth Street

Manifesto

John A. Imani, Regarding Blacks and Mexicans

Reviews

Daniel Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads reviewed by Jonathan Scott

E. San Juan, Jr. Balikbayang Mahal: Passages from Exile reviewed by Charlie Samuya Veric

Notes on Contributors



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3. Consider also the similarity between Marx's projection and Ray Dasmann's call for "a change in attitude toward land. So long as it is regarded as a mere commodity whose value is to be judged only in the market place, we will continue to destroy the earth on which we depend. When land is regarded as the home for people and other living things, as the sole base for humanity's future-then there will be hope" (1975, p. 126).

4. Similarly, in The Housing Question, Engels suggests that "the abolition of the antithesis between town and country is no more and no less utopian than the abolition of the antithesis between capitalists and wage-workers. From day to day it is becoming more and more a practical demand of both industrial and agricultural production" (1979, p. 92). For details on the key role of the town/country division in Marx's analysis of capitalist environmental crisis, see Burkett (1999b, Chapter 9) and Foster (2000, Chapter 5).

5. Foster (1997) and Foster & Magdoff (1998) argue the contemporary relevance of Marx's vision of a sustainable agricultural-industrial system.

6. See Wallis (1993, pp. 147-8) on the issues involved in such an integrative approach.

7. In Capital, Marx again projects "that when the working-class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools" (1967, I, p. 488).

8. The present interpretation follows Bertell Ollman, who speaks of people "becoming conscious of the internal relations between what are today called 'natural' and 'social' worlds, and treating the hitherto separate halves as a single totality. In learning about either society or nature, the individual will recognize that he is learning about both" (1979, p. 76). This intrinsic unity of social and natural science is a logical corollary of the unity of humanity and nature, in Marx's view. As stated in The German Ideology: "We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist" (Marx & Engels, 1976, p. 34).

9. Marx argues that "the fact of the collective working group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of humane development" (1967, I, p. 490).

10. Marx's projection of planned relative overproduction follows the work of Thomas More, whose Utopians do not consider themselves to have a "sufficient store of provision...until they have provided for the two years following, because of the uncertainty of the next year's crop" (More, 1947, p. 100).

11. The fact that Marx's conception of a rationally planned agriculture does not involve complete human control over the vagaries of nature is clear from his response to Lewis Henry Morgan's claim, in his book Ancient  Society, that "mankind are the only beings who may be said to have gained an absolute control over the production of food." Recording this statement in his ethnological notebooks, Marx stressed the words "have gained an absolute control," appending to them only the parenthetical comment: "?!" (Marx, 1974b, p. 99).

12. A similar interpretation is offered by Ollman, who suggests that "when communist people fully comprehend nature they will not desire anything which stands outside their effective reach" (1979, p. 75).

13. With "the means of production in common,...the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community...in accordance with a definite social plan [which] maintains the proper proportion between the different kinds of work to be done and the various wants of the community" (Marx, 1967, I, pp. 78-9).

14. Marx criticizes the Gotha Programme for not making it "sufficiently clear that land is included in the instruments of labour" in this connection (1966, p. 6). As with other conditions of production, this "common property" in land "does not mean the restoration of the old original common ownership, but the institution of a far higher and more developed form of possession in common" (Engels, 1939, p. 151).

15. Ernest Mandel suggests that "the half-workday of four hours, or the half workweek of twenty hours, would provide the ideal conditions for self-administration on a mass scale" (1992, p. 202).

16. Marx and Engels foresee a situation, "in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes," so that each person can "do one thing today and another tomorrow" (1976, p. 53).

17. Marx's rejection of private property and prices places him squarely in the camp of the growing number of social ecologists and activists questioning the ability of monetary and market-based calculations to adequately represent the natural conditions of human production and development. See, for example, Stirling (1993), Booth (1994), Adams (1996), O'Neill (1997), and Nelson (2001).

18. This concern with nature's aesthetic use value extended to Marx and Engels personally. When convalescing in Monte Carlo near the end of his life, Marx penned a letter to Engels, observing: "You will know everything about the charm exerted by the beauties of nature here....Many of its features vividly recall those of Africa" (Marx to Engels, May 8, 1882, in Marx & Engels, 1992, p. 253). "A really beautiful situation," is how he described it to his daughter in a letter written the same day (Marx to Longuet, May 8, 1882, in Marx & Engels, 1992, p. 255). Engels' instrumental conception of nature did not prevent his study of "comparative physiology" from instilling in him "a withering contempt for the idealistic exaltation of man over the other animals" (Engels to Marx, July 14, 1858, in Marx & Engels, 1975, p. 102). For further discussion of Marx and Engels' personal love of nature, see Parsons (1977, pp. 41, 46).

19. "The limit of capitalist production is the excess time of the labourers. The absolute spare time gained by society does not concern it. The development of productivity concerns it only in so far as it increases the surplus labour-time of the working-class, not because it decreases the labour-time for material production in general. It moves thus in a contradiction" (Marx, 1967, III, p. 264).

20. The environmental shortcomings of U.S.S.R.-type "socialism" are well known. See the useful discussions in Foster (1994, pp. 96-101), Mirovitskaya & Soroos (1995), and O'Connor (1998, pp. 256-65).

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