Re: Biological Reductionism/Ideology

On the "useless eaters" point, Arno Mayer's analysis (in "Why Did the
Heavens Not Darken") is that the camps were overwhelmingly slave labor
camps until the very last phase of the war, when many became extermination
camps.  Which fits a marxist analysis in the sense that the main
(functionalist, not that they were conscious of it) purpose of the Nazis
was to save German capitalism, and superexploiting millions of people to
fuel the war effort was one way to try to do that.

On Alan's analogy between Nazi experiments on humans and current genetic
engineering, it's not necessarily a good analogy in the sense that all the
Nazis accomplished was torturing and killing people.  Today, with the
unlocking of the human genome, actual SUCCESSFUL genetic engineering of
humans may become possible, as indicated by the already rapidly increasing
applications in agriculture.  And as I keep saying, that worries me much
more than ideology.

RH