Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 12:19:35 -0400 From: "Dave Dault" <ddault@????????.com> Subject: RE: [CU] Good News! Good News! Good news! To: "Wegrzynowski, Tom" <TWegrzyn@????????.org>, <folks@????????????.org> Mexican Marx vs. Deutsche Marx Around 1864, Marx wrote his infamous "Eleven Theses on Feuerbach," which paved the way for much of the explicit critiques of western political economies that followed. Perhaps the most famous thesis of the bunch was # 11: "Philosophers have thus far only interpreted the world. The purpose, however, is to taste it." His basic contention that, thanks to a bourgeois hegemony through most of the industrial nations, ethnic indiosyncrasies in diet and culinary preference had been suppressed, to be replaced by an alienation, eradicating the peasant, artisan cooks and replacing them with mass-produced flavorings and gestapo-like infrastructure. This was in fact the main focus of analysis in his longer work, the Grundrisse (which in German means *the Cookbook*). Thus for Marx, a specifically ethnic and particularised flavoring is necessary for redeeming both cook and the masses from this cycle of alienation. In an exhausting analysis, he identifies the stages of spice accrual in politicla economies and along trade routes, culminating in the collapse of the Hansiatic league in the early nineteenth century. The resulting suppression of Paprika across the continent pushed trade routes to favor more mediterranean flavorings, which remained stable despite the ecomonic chaos that ensued. It was in fact the new upsurge in red-pepper and cilantro which pretty much drew the political borders for europe. It was the taste of revolution, the juice of blood red tomatoes and the sting of fire on the tongue, that ignited revolutionary movements across the globe. It remained for evangelists of Marx, such as Nikolai Lenin, to develop and refine the salsa recipies which enable us, even now, to hum such stirring anthems as "The Red-Pepper Flag" and "The East is Red-Peppered". I hope that helps explain things a bit.