Grapes With Seeds

[zachwolff]

Late summer and early fall is such a wonderful time of year for vegetarians. There's a cascade of fruits and vegetables coming into season. Right now grapes are at their peak. They sell for a peso fifty per kilo which works out to about twenty cents US per pound. And they're fantastic

Comments

Don't abandon capitalism just yet.

[anonymous]

Zach

Re: Don't abandon capitalism just yet.

[zachwolff]

I always laugh when capitalists quote Orwell, because it makes it pretty obvious that they know little about him and don't really understand his works.

Animal Farm is an attack on Stalinism, but decidely not an attack on socialism in general, nor a vindication of capitalism. At the end of Animal Farm, when it is clear that the revolution has failed, Orwell portrays the pigs (who represent the Bolshevik Party Bosses) as just as bad as the capitalist bosses

In 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight against Franco with the POUM (non-Soviet socialists) and the anarchists. Later, in the essay "Why I Write", Orwell wrote, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it."

I'll comment on the substance of William's article soon, for now just wanted to point out that he seems to have not done his homework.

The International Story

[zachwolff]

The study Williams cites, The Greatest Century That Ever Was, discusses twentieth century progress in the US only. This is terribly short-sighted. Not only have the advances in the US not been extended to poorer nations, they have been made at the expense of poorer nations. Proponents of capitalism often refer to "the capitalist countries" and talk only about the imperialist capitalist powers like the US, Germany, and Japan. It is seldom mentioned that Haiti, Nigeria, and the Phillipines are capitalist

Good or Bad?

[zachwolff]

Two of the supposed improvements Williams cites aren't necessarily improvements in my book: "agricultural workers fell from 41 to 2.5 percent of the workforce; household auto ownership rose from one to 91 percent". The elimination of the family farm and of sustainable agriculture in the US is, in my opinion, one of the worst things capitalism has done to the country. The proliferation of automobiles and the ensuing environmental destruction and political mess resulting from oil dependence is one of the other worst things capitalism has done to the country.

Forgot to sign

[anonymous]

Zach,

I noticed I forgot to sign my response. You probably guessed who it was from.

Tim Wolff

[soraljuset]

wha...? are there truly no seeded grapes in the US? we have both at home. i think i always abstractly thought they pulled them out through the hole or something. clearly deluded. thanks for elucidating how foggy my skull's internals are, yet again. you're very good at that.

[soraljuset]

maybe it was an 80s fashion.

[zachwolff]

I really can't remember grapes with seeds from my childhood. Maybe we just never ate them in my family, but it seems unlikely that I never would have crossed paths with them in a friends house, a restaurant, etc.

I think I had a similar foggy vision of seed removal at some point.