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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