Why? More importantly the Militant proclaims that affirmative action has an “overwhelming support…among the majority of the U.S. ruling class,” but does not fully explain why this took place among the U.S. ruling class and what, if anything, it means for working people.

C.C.
Richmond, Virginia
 
 
Defending Morgan
In a letter to the editor in the July 7 Militant (“Morgan or the History Channel”), reader Tom Lobello raised a question about a recent History Channel documentary on human social evolution that apparently challenged Lewis Morgan’s view of the evolution of human social life, from its primitive form of matriarchal clan to its modern patriarchal family form.

Lobello gave the impression that Morgan’s views on this, as well as those expressed by Engels in Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, are somehow the accepted scientific view of modern-day anthropology and that this documentary was challenging these. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As Evelyn Reed explained in her book Sexism and Science, the evolutionary views of the founders of modern anthropology like Lewis Morgan were long ago repudiated and overthrown by apologists for capitalism and women’s oppression who control the academic departments of anthropology today, and that this repudiation of a scientific approach to the origins of human society had led anthropology into a blind alley. Since her death, Evelyn’s judgment continues to be confirmed on this score, as anthropology as a discipline today has all but buried even the mention, much less the serious study, of the pioneering founders like Lewis Morgan and Edward Taylor.

So the documentary Lobello referred to, far from challenging modern-day views, simply repeats the antiscientific prejudices and rationalizations that dominate official anthropology and are the biggest roadblock to its scientific progress to this day.

Finally, on the question of barbarism and the Egyptian Pharaohs. Reed, like Morgan, always explained that it was during the stage of barbarism, a period covering roughly 8,000 years, that human society evolved from the primitive communism of the matriarchal clan to the class-divided society of the patriarchal father-family. It is the key stage to study to learn the roots and evolution of women’s oppression. By the end of that period the social status of women had become degraded and the oppression of their sex codified into the social norms of class society. Properly speaking, however, the great Egyptian society of the Pharaohs marks the end of barbarism and the beginning of civilization.

Mike Galati
New York, New York
 
 
Haddad deported
I just learned from CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) that Rabih Haddad has been deported. (CAIR has been informed that Rabih Haddad, whose closed deportation hearings prompted lawsuits by Detroit-area newspapers, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, and the American Civil Liberties Union, has been deported to Lebanon. Haddad is the co-founder of the Muslim charity Global Relief Foundation—July 15 news release from CAIR.)

I am in shock that this cultivated man is gone, while the liberals talk about Patriot Act II. He really looked to the Calero case, and did the translations into Arabic for it as we corresponded with him in prison in Monroe, Michigan.

According to the Detroit Free Press he was accompanied by two FBI agents all the way to Lebanon where he was put in custody. The Lebanese daily Al-Nahar doesn’t have that news yet. At the same time, the U.S. State Department is making statements about Syria pulling out of Lebanon, and the Lebanese papers are reporting that Syria is pulling out of Baalbeck.

The U.S. government is quietly using him as a pressure on Lebanon to show they are pressing the war on terrorism. It does look like he will now be in prison in Lebanon.

Dennis Hoppe
Ann Arbor, Michigan

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.  
 
 
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