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Monsanto again (long post)
I would like to comment on Tom Allen’s interesting “humanist” view. It is
certainly “natural” for people to find rationalizations for doing that
which benefits themselves and injures others. However, when people have
no pricking of conscience in the face of evidence that their
rationalizations are false, we consider them immoral, and lacking in a
sense of responsibility. Consider that the Nazis believed that their
actions were justified. Byron de la Beckwith still believes he was
justified in murdering Medgar Evers. Letting these people continue to
feel justified has never served any good purpose, except to lower the
moral tone and sense of responsibility in the society in general. As a
Kantian humanist, I could say that they are using other people as means,
and failing to recognize them as ends-in-themselves, and therefore,
humanistically speaking, excluding themselves from the realm of the truly
human altogether.
The “evil junta” is not a secret cabal run by a nameless man who chain
smokes [X-files allusion]. It does not always operate by out right
suppression of information, although it can (see Feb. 1994, “In These
Times” for an example concerning Monsanto). It works by using public
relations to convince people that reasonable voices of opposition are
“radicals” and “liberals” and that their message is dismissed BEFORE it
is heard. In the past, abolitionists were naive, suffragettes were
hysterics, and unionizers were Russian spys. People who oppose the status
quo will be demonized regardless of their rhetoric.
I am on a committee at work which is supposed to warn people about risks
for Repetitive Motion Injury. The management made a procedural change
which increased risk. When I wanted to warn people that they should
resist this change, the other people on the team felt it would injure our
“credibility” if we went against management. “Credibility” has ceased to
be judged by the truthfulness of what you say, but rather what is shows
about your relationship to the power structure. If we buy into that, we
will always find what we can say severely limited.
As for the idea that modern business ideals have been the American
mainstream for 150 years, that isn’t true. At the founding of this
country and for many decades after the dominant attitudes were that
corporate power was either a danger to democracy that was to be
suppressed, or a necessary evil, the bad effects of which could be
ameliorated by social programs and other forms of social control funded
by the prosperity that corporations would generate. Sound familiar? In
the 1930’s 15% or more of some congressional districts were registered
Socialists. Millions of dollars have been spent in the last decades to
convince people that the conservative corporate agenda is now the
mainstream. If you want to know more about this, you might be interested
in reading some Noam Chomsky, Alex Carey or “Selling Free Enterprise” by
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf.
Agribusiness has carried on a perfectly overt campaign to convince people
that we are dependent on their products to feed the world. This flies in
the face of ample evidence that hunger in this world at present is the
result of social problems, many of which were created by using
agribusiness’ methods of production. The primary aim of businessmen is
NOT to feed people, it is to enrich themselves. I think this may be the
meaning of the Zucchini=Assualt weapon anti-pesticide ad. They manipulate
using fear, and that should be obvious to anyone who has been listening
to the ads for Archer-Daniels Midland during the football season.
As for Dr. Clark’s analysis of the weakness of the modern scientific
paradigm, I think that the problem is not an opposition of scientific to
other considerations, but downright bad science. I did some volunteer
work in a research lab last year. The head of the project said that when
his research was not yet the “in thing” he couldn’t publish. Since
scientists with name recognition have “popularized” his line of research
in the “objective” scientific community he has resubmitted papers and had
them published. Fad, fashion and economics rule modern science. If
something cannot enrich someone who already has enough money to fund
research, there is much less likelihood that it will ever be funded, or
funded to the point that it will become a new technology. This creates a
circular logic situation where people are convinced that because nothing
is done without corporate support, only corporate support can do
anything. If it were not for economics, science would not be synonymous
with high-tech, and a lot of us wouldn't be luddites.
Karen