[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about how the aberrant or catastrophic enters history and how the fate of ‘the people’ is conveniently left out. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–There is a purpose behind distorting history to make it seem like only great men achieve significant things. It teaches people to believe they are powerless and must wait for a great man to act. (Noam Chomsky)
1. The history of the 20th century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. (Yes, but is this reflected in our history textbooks?) The 21st will, no doubt, be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.* We now have to struggle against both. (Eric Schlosser)
*: History is useful, let us not overlook, because in history we read not the past, but the future. (Filippo Pananti, Italian politician, 1952–2019)
2. Conventional history forgets those that died for nothing, those that had nothing to gain from so many wars and perennial misery. It has left them out of history, because they were all expendable, anonymous beings, mere numbers in the balance sheets of history’s generals and politicians. (Isabel Allende, My Name Is Emilia del Valle)
A case in point
3. The history of the last two centuries starkly demonstrates that war has never been a driver of progress for the majority, but rather an immoral tool designed to satisfy the geopolitical and financial appetites of a few, i.e., for the exclusive benefit of elites. (Yes, ‘starkly demonstrates,’ but is this reflected in our history textbooks?) These episodes of war demonstrate that when the interests of a few are placed above the interests of the majority, ‘the people’ pay the price, leaving transgenerational scars that reveal an absolute truth: ‘War never serves the people, never serves humanity’, while wealth is concentrated in the hands of a minority. The children of those in power have and will never set foot on the battlefield while the corporations of the arms industry profit from the prolongation of suffering. War, in its economic dimension, functions as a regressive economic transfer mechanism where the misery of the majority** finances the opulence of a few. (Luis Mesina)
**: Let us not be fooled. The sufferings of the population is presented mostly as a result of abrupt occurrences in history (like wars). But wars are not abrupt; they are thought-out gradually and that is why they then happen.
The aberrant or catastrophic enters history, precisely because what happens is considered aberrant or catastrophic
–In each historical period, a dominant idea of human nature (greed, ambition, supremacy) is created that allow us to conceive, but much less prevent, a historical event from occurring.
4. Modern Eurocentric society has developed the idea that it is for human nature to strive for the irreversible, positive evolution of society: This idea was called progress. But progress has a cost: there is no progress without struggle. This idea is as present in Malthus as it is in Darwin and in Marx. The struggle and the cost of progress has meant that it was not possible to realize the ideals of progress without committing actions that contradicted those ideals. True, but in order for this contradiction not to be politically visible, it was essential to dehumanize the social groups that lost in these struggles and that suffered the corresponding costs (–and this is what you did not learn in school).
5. Constructed in this way, the idea of progress in history has nothing to do with the well-being of populations. (Only those populations that have the power to impose costs without suffering them count as worthy of well-being –and of historical recognition). The latter group may be increasingly in the minority, but this does not affect the idea of progress in any way. In the human/subhuman dichotomy, anyone who disagrees immediately falls into the subhuman category. For example: Turning quantity into a new quality: the six million Jews who died became the Holocaust. In contrast, the Palestinian people can be eliminated and ‘democrats’ of the world stay silent when thousands of children are intentionally killed in a policy of extermination.
In every historical period, the dominant political and cultural context imposes limits on what is determined to be historically relevant
6. In our era, the dominant context in science is considered to be ‘scientist’ i.e., what science does not see is not there. With this in mind, it is possible that many monstrosities occurred, or are occurring, without our knowledge –even when very close to us. Lies are supposedly outside the realm of scientism, but scientism’s promiscuity with the dominant politics causes the latter to resort to lies and pass them off as credible, as (historical) truths.
7. Scientism is based on a central idea: science is neither political nor ethical. The applications of science may have political or ethical implications, but science itself has not, it is said. But, contrary to the dominant scientistic current, in recording history, we must look at reality from a political or ethical perspective.*** One can rightly say that scientism has naturalized Capitalism, Colonialism and Patriarchy …among other. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
***: In our case, scientism fails a HR-based interpretation of history, precisely because it is dysfunctional vis-a-vis the ‘politics of evidence’! (Chris Béné)
Capitalism was born hand in hand with Colonialism. And since then, far from disappearing, this historical origin has only mutated and diversified
8. The classic European models of the 19th century initially strived for a type of ‘extermination colonialism’ (e.g., in the case of US original peoples) and a type of ‘settlement colonialism’ (e.g., in the case of South Africa). Both forms of Colonialism were enforced by the global force of the technological, commercial, and financial power of the colonialist nations, if not, in other cases, by periods of military occupation. This is how transnational corporations and banks entered the scene.
9. In all cases, the extraction of resources and labor exploitation did not require cumbersome bureaucracies or foreign armies, as the hierarchical relationships of unequal exchange, foreign debt, capital flight, and cultural and political subordination created a web that enabled the transfer of raw materials, money, labor, knowledge and moral subordination to the imperial power in a more effective and less costly way than the classic settlement-type occupation.
10. The extraction of wealth abroad, as the influence on political life itself, was and is carried out with the acquiescence of the native political elites and subservient bureaucracies. This is what has come to be called ‘Neocolonialism’ [with its devastating human rights (HR) consequences].
11. Today, the weapon of choice for the subordination of states is tariff wars, blockades, and economic blackmail –namely, a type of ‘hard economic power’ is being applied. In other cases, the threat of armed intervention is enough to control the main spheres of the local economy. Faced with this, countries that want to oppose this fate of subjugation have to embark in an anti-colonial struggle with a renewed agenda of national sovereignty and of South-South regional cooperation. (Alvaro Garcia Linera)
History must not yield to power
—Over centuries, reactionary forces have tried to bend reality to their will. But reality does not yield to force, memory does not fade on command and justice cannot be indefinitely deferred.
12. Historical omissions are not random; they form a pattern. At their core, they are about recording competing claims to justice. One philosophical truth stands out: Nations have never secured their future by their history indefinitely denying how people’s fundamental rights were trampled. Power can suppress, contain and even dominate, but it cannot forever extinguish a people’s collective aspiration for freedom and self-determination, among other, by hiding their history. Power may yield temporary outcomes, but it cannot confer historical legitimacy. A second, equally important truth is relevant here: People’s historical suffering does not confer moral license to historians to perpetuate the suffering by silencing their plight.
13. At this critical juncture, the moral imperative is compelling for historians. Kant argued that human beings must always be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means. (Another case in point to ponder here is: Any political future that denies either Israelis or Palestinians their fundamental dignity and rights violates the above principle at its core).
14. Judging HR issues in history is, therefore, not simply a matter of historical expediency; it is a moral necessity.**** As said, history cannot bend to power. It must be unforgiving for recognition, for demanding the truth and justice about, as well as demanding dignity for those left out. (adapted from Alon Ben Meir)
****: As historians purport to present to us the history of a given period, they inform us about how the phenomena they recount came about and what the assumptions were at the time. This is a hazardous affair, for in such an undertaking, historians tacitly place some things in light, others in shade. (paraphrasing Goethe)
Bottom line
–There are far too many people who lack even the most basic understanding of the world’s history, and, even worse, feel no curiosity or concern about it. There comes a point when ignorance about history is no longer an excusable flaw. (Dan Brown, Inferno)
15. What is described here is not a historical inevitability. Rather, it is a specific context that Antonio Gramsci called interregnum: the old world in which the most unthinkable horrors became increasingly frequent and deemed ‘natural’. The old world has not completely died, while the new world of solidarity, peace, and justice among human beings and between them and nature has not yet been fully born. We lack gravediggers for the old history and midwives for the new. (B. de Sousa Santos)
16. Particularly at moments like this, history is not just to tell us what we ought to believe –it must move us ‘to show up’ and make a real difference to change its course. The time is now. (Popular Democracy)
17. History must be addressed as a starting point when aiming for change; it must not be looked-at as nostalgia. It is not to be seen as the convenient narrative of those who look-in from the outside. It must not turn poverty into an icon. True history involves challenging the status-quo. (Esteban Gonzales Perez)
18. Susan George (1934-2026) thought that the job of the responsible historian as a social scientist thus is first to uncover the forces of wealth, power and control, to write about them clearly, without jargon… and finally… not to forget to advocate for the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice.*****
*****: Susan believed that the system has cracks, and “we just have to get out there with our pickaxes and work along the fault lines”. She wielded the pen as her pickaxe and fought her battle to the last. Here an homage to her.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City:
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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Postscript/Marginalia
–The Spanish poet León Felipe (anti-fascist Spanish poet, 1884-1968) once said: Whoever reads ten centuries of history and does not close the book / upon seeing the same things over and over again, only with different dates? / The same men, the same wars, the same tyrants, / the same chains, the same charlatans, the same sects. / and the same, the same poets! What a pity that everything is always like this, always the same way!
–We need to pause for a moment and remember that the driving force behind the history of economic ‘progress’ is neither cold statistics nor the intellectual capacity of armchair entrepreneurs. All the wealth we see –every building, every home, every road, and every commercial or financial service– is the result of the efforts of men who made the existence of Capitalism possible –with all its drawbacks. (L. Mesina) ..and passed that wealth on to their heirs.