[PEN-L:11243] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
As far as i know, China did not need to go around the cape of good hope,
Barkley. In the earlier period, the advantage of sea rout to India was mainly on
account of 'internalizing the security cost'. Prior to Vasco da Gama, the goods
from India went to Europe through the land rout to the mouth of Red Sea. This
rout was full of small chieftains who demanded high and unpredictable "safe
passage" charges. The sea rout cut out this big cost of transportation, though
they did have to spend money on their own guns etc. to deal with the pirates,
but this internalized the security cost and so was predictable. Cheers, ajit
sinha
J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
Jim,
Blaut argues that it was the fact that the
Atlantic is narrower than the Pacific that accounted
for the crucial ability of the Western Europeans to
get to the Americas to do the exploiting before the
Chinese (some Asians having already gotten there
earlier but who lacked sufficient immunity or technology
to resist a later invasion from either Europe or East Asia).
Of course this does not answer the crucial question as
to why the Chinese did not go around the Cape of Good
Hope in the 1400s while the Portuguese did in 1497 with
Vasco da Gama. Thus we had the Portuguese in Goa
and Macau rather than the Chinese in Cadiz and Lisbon.
Barkley Rosser
-Original Message-
From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 12:38 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:11192] Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
Rod writes:
The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their
continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer
everyone in their path.
Bill writes:
In a nutshell, if I remember Blaut correctly, they luckily stumbled
upon America where they plundered with the aid of genocidal policies
and germ warfare (against which the Native Americans had no defense),
enriching themselves and laying the groundwork for a colossal Western
Imperium.
It's unfair to criticize Blaut on the basis of Bill's precis. (Obviously
such a short summary _must_ be simplistic.) But here goes. Just remember
that I'm not criticizing you, Bill.
The fact that the Europeans (actually the Castilians, led by some guy from
what is now called Italy) stumbled upon America suggests that they had (a)
the means to do the stumbling, e.g., the technology for sailing across the
Atlantic rather than hugging the shore; (b) the opportunity to do so, e.g.,
the finalization of the war against the Moors so that they could turn to
new worlds to conquer; and (c) the motive, i.e., the lust for gold and
power, plus the proselytism of religion.
To my mind, the first is most crucial, since there were a lot of nascent
empires that have lusted after gold and power (e.g., the Arabs) before
Queen Isabella's and the victory over the Moors seems more a determinant of
the timing of the deed. Perhaps the rise of capitalism (with this
grow-or-die economics) had something to do with motivating Spanish
aggression against the world, but I doubt it -- since the Iberian peninsula
was hardly fully capitalist at the time. If anything, the attack on the
"New" world helped stimulate capitalism's rise.
(The fact that the Norse and maybe the Irish (and maybe other Europeans)
stumbled on the Americas before Colombo indicates that it's important to
have the technology to sustain an invasion and to stumble on an area that
provides sufficient profit to justify sustaining it.)
Columbo (who should rank among the biggest of criminals in history) led his
ships to the Americas, which unfortunately for the locals were less
technologically advanced and organizationally resilient than China. When
Cortez invade Mexico, the Aztecs were deterred by his troops' use of
_horses_ (which is surely a matter of historical luck) not to mention
rudimentary firearms. Further, my reading suggests that the Aztec empire
was already in trouble, so that it would have had either a revolution, a
take-over by another ethnic group, or a simple collapse. Cortez was lucky,
coming in at the time he did, so he could prevent those kinds of results,
which would have led to a perpetuation of rule of one sort or another by
native Americans. The Spaniards and their imitators then used their initial
advantage to destroy all Indian civilization and to widen any existing
technological gaps, creating haciendas and similar forced-labor mining and
agriculture.
Once the Americas were conquered (along with a bunch of Portuguese and then
Dutch trading colonies along the coasts of Africa and south Asia) they
could be used as bases for invading China, etc. By building on such
advantages, the Europeans could either create advantages vis-a-vis China or
widen any that existed in 1492. (Linked to the purely military advantages
of position, European expansion encouraged further development of military
technology. If
[PEN-L:11245] Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
Charles: In other words, you would have to be claiming that the European total work hours of the European workers was greater than that of the non-European slaves and semi-slaves at the rosy dawn of capitalism. Do you have studies comparing the numbers of person hours worked by both ? LNP: This is the main bone of contention Blaut has with Brenner. Brenner does not view slave labor as indicative of capitalist property relations. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11246] Blaut's response to the discussion
Lou: I just read the archive of pen-l from Sept 15 through today. I didn't find any arguments that really need to be answered . . . I appreciate your throwing in gobs of my book. The folks should be advised to look at Gunder's ReORIENT, Jack Goody's THE EAST IN THE WEST, There's a huge new literature on China's progressiveness, especially stuff by Ken Pomeranz, Bin Wong, Dennis Flynn, and Arturo Giraldez -- the arguments about Europe's superriority to China in politcal, cultural, technical etc. matters BOTH for the Middle Ages and modern times down to about 1800 -- have simply been refuted with facts. A non-issue. Several of the folks mentioned my argument about Europe's location vis-a-vis America, but they got it all muddled up. I didn't say its due to the Atlantic being narrower than the Pacific. (Its on pp. 180-183 of The Colonizer's Model.) I've written a short informal paper on these matters that I'm going to read next month at a conference on the rise of europe that might be relevant. I've put it below this message. If you want to repost it to pen-l, be my guest. . . Abrazos Jim A NULL HYPOTHESIS J. M. Blaut Europe did not rise until modern times. To be precise, Europe in 1500 AD was not more developed than several other civilizations; was not more progressive than these other civilizations; and had no inner developmental potential -- mental, social, or environmental -- that these other civilizations lacked. I have advanced and defended this (so to speak) null hypothesis in several publications, and I will sum up the argument here, very briefly, as a discussion piece for our conference.* If one denies that Europe had actual or potential advantages over other civilizations before 1500, one must of course produce an alternative theory for the rise of Europe after 1500. My general theory includes three propositions: (1) In 1500, a number of mercantile or protocapitalist centers, mostly maritime-oriented, in all three Eastern Hemisphere continents, had rough parity in all of the traits that we consider to have been crucial in the process of economic and technological development. (2) The reason why (part of) Europe began to rise after 1492 (or 1500) was the immense wealth obtained from America, first in the form of precious metals, later in the form of agricultural commodities produced by coerced labor of slaves and peasants. The wealth that was extracted from America was a "windfall" (as Walter Prescott Webb described it in _The Great Frontier_) that was wholly unprecedented in history: the acquisition by Europeans of most of the world's gold and silver resources and of a territory six times the size of Europe itself. (3) The wealth from colonialism came to Europe, and not to other protocapitalist regions, for two reasons, neither of which implies any superiority or priority of Europe over the other regions. First: America was vastly more accessible to Western Europe than to all non-European centers. And second: the regions within America that were potentially the most valuable to Europeans were quickly and easily conquered (because of America's historically recent settlement by humans and its isolation from Old World populations), and Europeans therefore quickly acquired the power needed to guarantee their monopoly over the hemisphere's wealth. My argument that the rise of Europe resulted from colonialism, not from internal forces or factors unique to pre-modern Europe, is made in two quite different ways. One of these is a critique of each of the reasons that historians commonly put forward at present to assert and explain Europe's superiority or priority over other civilizations in ancient and medieval times. (A convenient checklist of these reasons is provided in Appendix I.) The other is a rethinking of the historical geography of the world between 1492 and, roughly, 1700. This latter consists of, first, a survey of the characteristics of late-medieval civilizations across the Eastern Hemisphere, showing (as I maintain) that levels and rates of development were relatively even among these civilizations; second, a demonstration that factors of accessibility made it very unlikely that non-Europeans would reach and exploit the New World before the Europeans did so; and third, a re-telling of the process by which Europe rose during the 16th and 17th centuries, incorporating colonial accumulation as the basic external cause of this process. In the following paragraphs I will summarize the three arguments. Since this is a short paper, I can only lay out the arguments as a set of bare propositions. The reader may consult my other writings for the reasoning, evidence, and citations required to support these propositions./1 (No citations will
[PEN-L:11247] Economists searching for reality
NY Times, September 18, 1999 Students Seek Some Reality Amid the Math of Economics By MICHAEL M. WEINSTEIN On my first day as a graduate student in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the professor introduced the discipline by intoning, "All of economics is a subset of the theory of separating hyperplanes." (You don't want to know what that mathematical term means.) I started to giggle. But then I looked around. Everyone else was scribbling notes. So I wiped the smirk off my face and muttered, only to myself, that I had thought economics was about the plight of people living in sub-Saharan Africa or the impact of technological change on living standards. Apparently I thought wrong -- and wondered whether I had made a terrible career choice. Decades later, I find economics graduate students asking themselves the same question: where is the economic substance in graduate economics programs? I recently joined several dozen first- and second-year students at a conference in Airlie, Va., that was convened to help them find their way toward applied economics -- analyzing problems that real people face. During the weeklong conference, organized by the Social Science Research Council and paid for by the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, eminent scholars presented lectures on applied topics, ranging from the plight of low-income mothers under the 1996 welfare law to the long-term determinants of innovation. To noneconomists, these lectures would no doubt appear heavily theoretical, laced with mathematical and statistical derivations. But at least since the writings of Paul Samuelson, Nobel laureate from MIT, in the 1940s, economists have used large doses of mathematics to create insight and clarity. The difference at Airlie was that the object of the lectures was to improve understanding of the relationships among people rather than among mathematical symbols. After the lectures, students met in small groups to pose follow-up questions and design research strategies. The idea was to motivate them to do applied work and give them a head start in developing an applied focus for their Ph.D. theses. David Weiman, the former director of the council's program, hopes that the summer conference and research grants that the council provides can offset what he sees as a lamentable tendency among young graduate students. Too often, he says, they allow mathematical technique to dictate the questions they ask rather than first seizing a pressing social question from which the choice of appropriate technique would then follow. Graduate programs, he says, "emphasize teaching students how to prove theorems, misleading them into thinking that economics is a deductive exercise, the mere application of mathematical logic." Prof. Alan Blinder of Princeton University considers it damning to some of the country's most prestigious graduate programs that their students need to flock to summer camp to find an outlet for their interest in applied work. Blinder, a former member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and a driving force behind the council's efforts to promote applied economics, said in a recent interview that too much of what young scholars write these days is "theoretical drivel, mathematically elegant but not about anything real." He attributes the problem in part to the first year of training, which he calls mathematics boot camp, during which students are handed a steady diet of theory but not taught to connect it to the real world. They soon forget the issues that attracted them to economics. Blinder makes an important distinction. He remains scrupulously agnostic over whether graduate training is overly theoretical. "That's a tough issue." But he is unwavering when he criticizes the training as "increasingly aloof and self-referential." Indeed, the students at Airlie confirmed Blinder's fears. Chatting at lunch with a half-dozen of so of the graduate students, one of the guest lecturers referred to the earned-income tax credit as the EITC, the country's most successful anti-poverty program next to Social Security. "What's that," one student asked. Nor could many of the students distinguish Medicare from Medicaid or demonstrate familiarity with simple facts about the American economy. They had studied the theory of financial markets, but not its connection to the crisis sweeping through Asia. Many of these students admitted that they do not read newspapers. Nor do they see much of a connection between knowledge of economic reality or government policies and their chosen course of study. Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution lectured the group about the economic factors that determine when people decide to retire. I joined a half-dozen students in their follow-up session. The students were asked what interesting questions Burtless' lecture provoked. After a slightly awkward silence, one student launched into the speculation that the group could
[PEN-L:11253] Re: Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
There are lots of debates about whether the Enslavement of African peoples in the U.S. south, for example, was capitalist or not. Two points: 1) Enslaved Africans were producing *commodities.* 2) This production was responsible for capital accumulation This is strong evidence supporting the position that this was capitalist slavery. Very important differences between things called the same name, "slavery." Slavery in Greek Antiquity was not the same, for example, as Enslavement of Africans on plantations in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. Other important differences, too. This is why some use the term Enslavement with a capital E to indicate this experience. mf Louis Proyect wrote: Charles: In other words, you would have to be claiming that the European total work hours of the European workers was greater than that of the non-European slaves and semi-slaves at the rosy dawn of capitalism. Do you have studies comparing the numbers of person hours worked by both ? LNP: This is the main bone of contention Blaut has with Brenner. Brenner does not view slave labor as indicative of capitalist property relations. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11256] Re: Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
There may have been a lot of debate about the capitalist nature of American slavery, but I think those are old debates. Most everyone doing research in the area agrees that it was capitalist. The problem arose from a misreading of Marx by some of the old CP members who insisted that to have capitalism you had to have wage labour. No one actively researching the area doubts that slaveholders were capitalists. The more relevant question to the debates that have taken place here is "Was the US part of the periphery or part of the core during the early half of the nineteenth century?" Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:11259] Re: Capitalist development
But when one da Gama and those who followed him returned from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic they faced the same problem. There is a variation of easterlies and westerlies in the Indian Ocean, depending on where one is. The easterlies help one to get from Asia to Africa and operate all through the zone between the Tropics. Da Gama had to go against those to get across the Indian Ocean to India from Africa. The only point where Chinese or other Asians would have had a problem with the prevailing winds would have been at the Cape of Good Hope itself. But by no accounts that I am aware of did any of them ever get down there to encounter that problem even. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 7:19 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11231] Capitalist development Of course this does not answer the crucial question as to why the Chinese did not go around the Cape of Good Hope in the 1400s while the Portuguese did in 1497 with Vasco da Gama. Thus we had the Portuguese in Goa and Macau rather than the Chinese in Cadiz and Lisbon. Barkley Rosser Blaut argues that sailing from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic one sails against prevailing winds, while from the Canaries to the West Indies (Colombus's route), there blow the trade winds, and the return voage is made northward into the westerlies. Columbus knew that the trade winds (or easterlies) would assist him outbound and had good reason to believe the westerlies would assist the return voyage. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11261] Re: 2 random questions
1. Is Hoffa doing much damage to the Teamsters or is it business as usual? 2. While most religions have created vicious theological dictatorships, have the Buddhists so far avoided such excesses? Have any dictators claimed to ground their abuses in Buddhist principles? Hard to see much difference so far. I know two fellows that work there. I expected Junior to empty out the building when he took over. My friends still work there and tell me there have been hardly any changes at all. On the other hand, we may not see the likes of Carey's UPS campaign again. From the outside business as usual is not remarkable. there could be other things going on or not going on that I don't know about. I've heard nothing at all about a Hoffa/Feldman move on the leadership, contrary to some talk of that. Though it may be early for any such signs to show up. mbs
[PEN-L:11262] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
Ajit,
I fully agree. But why was it not Chinese merchants
who felt the need to take advantage of these potential
savings rather than the Portuguese da Gama?
For that matter, why do we have the Venetian Marco
Polo traveling to China across land about the time
of the emergence of imporant elements of nascent
capitalism in Northern Italy while we see no Chinese
traveling even as far as Constantinople, although I think
some may have made it to Persia?
Barkley Rosser
-Original Message-
From: Ajit Sinha [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Saturday, September 18, 1999 2:40 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:11243] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
As far as i know, China did not need to go around the cape of good hope,
Barkley. In the earlier period, the advantage of sea rout to India was
mainly on
account of 'internalizing the security cost'. Prior to Vasco da Gama, the
goods
from India went to Europe through the land rout to the mouth of Red Sea.
This
rout was full of small chieftains who demanded high and unpredictable "safe
passage" charges. The sea rout cut out this big cost of transportation,
though
they did have to spend money on their own guns etc. to deal with the
pirates,
but this internalized the security cost and so was predictable. Cheers,
ajit
sinha
J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
Jim,
Blaut argues that it was the fact that the
Atlantic is narrower than the Pacific that accounted
for the crucial ability of the Western Europeans to
get to the Americas to do the exploiting before the
Chinese (some Asians having already gotten there
earlier but who lacked sufficient immunity or technology
to resist a later invasion from either Europe or East Asia).
Of course this does not answer the crucial question as
to why the Chinese did not go around the Cape of Good
Hope in the 1400s while the Portuguese did in 1497 with
Vasco da Gama. Thus we had the Portuguese in Goa
and Macau rather than the Chinese in Cadiz and Lisbon.
Barkley Rosser
-Original Message-
From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 12:38 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:11192] Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
Rod writes:
The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their
continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer
everyone in their path.
Bill writes:
In a nutshell, if I remember Blaut correctly, they luckily stumbled
upon America where they plundered with the aid of genocidal policies
and germ warfare (against which the Native Americans had no defense),
enriching themselves and laying the groundwork for a colossal Western
Imperium.
It's unfair to criticize Blaut on the basis of Bill's precis. (Obviously
such a short summary _must_ be simplistic.) But here goes. Just remember
that I'm not criticizing you, Bill.
The fact that the Europeans (actually the Castilians, led by some guy
from
what is now called Italy) stumbled upon America suggests that they had
(a)
the means to do the stumbling, e.g., the technology for sailing across
the
Atlantic rather than hugging the shore; (b) the opportunity to do so,
e.g.,
the finalization of the war against the Moors so that they could turn to
new worlds to conquer; and (c) the motive, i.e., the lust for gold and
power, plus the proselytism of religion.
To my mind, the first is most crucial, since there were a lot of nascent
empires that have lusted after gold and power (e.g., the Arabs) before
Queen Isabella's and the victory over the Moors seems more a determinant
of
the timing of the deed. Perhaps the rise of capitalism (with this
grow-or-die economics) had something to do with motivating Spanish
aggression against the world, but I doubt it -- since the Iberian
peninsula
was hardly fully capitalist at the time. If anything, the attack on the
"New" world helped stimulate capitalism's rise.
(The fact that the Norse and maybe the Irish (and maybe other Europeans)
stumbled on the Americas before Colombo indicates that it's important to
have the technology to sustain an invasion and to stumble on an area
that
provides sufficient profit to justify sustaining it.)
Columbo (who should rank among the biggest of criminals in history) led
his
ships to the Americas, which unfortunately for the locals were less
technologically advanced and organizationally resilient than China. When
Cortez invade Mexico, the Aztecs were deterred by his troops' use of
_horses_ (which is surely a matter of historical luck) not to mention
rudimentary firearms. Further, my reading suggests that the Aztec empire
was already in trouble, so that it would have had either a revolution, a
take-over by another ethnic group, or a simple collapse. Cortez was
lucky,
coming in at the time he did, so he could prevent those kinds of
results,
which would have led to a perpetuation of rule of one sort or another by
native
[PEN-L:11263] Re: Blaut's response to the discussion
Lou, Well, I have already responded to some of these points in other posts. One thing I would agree with Blaut on is that Europe was not scientifically or technologically superior in any significant way in 1500, or certainly not in say 1450. Actually the world's technological leader in 1450 was probably Korea. What is questionable is his claim that in non-European societies there was a parity of "mercantile" interests with Europe. It would seem that the aggressiveness of the European merchants, backed by nascent institutions of capitalism already in existence since the 1200s, played a very important part. Wind patterns did not keep the Chinese from crossing the Indian Ocean or rounding the Cape of Good Hope, nor did they keep them from crossing the Pacific, althought there the great distances involved were certainly very important. Nor do we have an explanation why Chinese did not visit Europe by land or even get well into the Middle East. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Saturday, September 18, 1999 8:46 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11246] Blaut's response to the discussion Lou: I just read the archive of pen-l from Sept 15 through today. I didn't find any arguments that really need to be answered . . . I appreciate your throwing in gobs of my book. The folks should be advised to look at Gunder's ReORIENT, Jack Goody's THE EAST IN THE WEST, There's a huge new literature on China's progressiveness, especially stuff by Ken Pomeranz, Bin Wong, Dennis Flynn, and Arturo Giraldez -- the arguments about Europe's superriority to China in politcal, cultural, technical etc. matters BOTH for the Middle Ages and modern times down to about 1800 -- have simply been refuted with facts. A non-issue. Several of the folks mentioned my argument about Europe's location vis-a-vis America, but they got it all muddled up. I didn't say its due to the Atlantic being narrower than the Pacific. (Its on pp. 180-183 of The Colonizer's Model.) I've written a short informal paper on these matters that I'm going to read next month at a conference on the rise of europe that might be relevant. I've put it below this message. If you want to repost it to pen-l, be my guest. . . Abrazos Jim A NULL HYPOTHESIS J. M. Blaut Europe did not rise until modern times. To be precise, Europe in 1500 AD was not more developed than several other civilizations; was not more progressive than these other civilizations; and had no inner developmental potential -- mental, social, or environmental -- that these other civilizations lacked. I have advanced and defended this (so to speak) null hypothesis in several publications, and I will sum up the argument here, very briefly, as a discussion piece for our conference.* If one denies that Europe had actual or potential advantages over other civilizations before 1500, one must of course produce an alternative theory for the rise of Europe after 1500. My general theory includes three propositions: (1) In 1500, a number of mercantile or protocapitalist centers, mostly maritime-oriented, in all three Eastern Hemisphere continents, had rough parity in all of the traits that we consider to have been crucial in the process of economic and technological development. (2) The reason why (part of) Europe began to rise after 1492 (or 1500) was the immense wealth obtained from America, first in the form of precious metals, later in the form of agricultural commodities produced by coerced labor of slaves and peasants. The wealth that was extracted from America was a "windfall" (as Walter Prescott Webb described it in _The Great Frontier_) that was wholly unprecedented in history: the acquisition by Europeans of most of the world's gold and silver resources and of a territory six times the size of Europe itself. (3) The wealth from colonialism came to Europe, and not to other protocapitalist regions, for two reasons, neither of which implies any superiority or priority of Europe over the other regions. First: America was vastly more accessible to Western Europe than to all non-European centers. And second: the regions within America that were potentially the most valuable to Europeans were quickly and easily conquered (because of America's historically recent settlement by humans and its isolation from Old World populations), and Europeans therefore quickly acquired the power needed to guarantee their monopoly over the hemisphere's wealth. My argument that the rise of Europe resulted from colonialism, not from internal forces or factors unique to pre-modern Europe, is made in two quite different ways. One of these is a critique of each of the reasons that historians
[PEN-L:11269] RE: Re: IMF to become autonomous?
Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/17/99 04:57PM . . . Question: do you think there can be progressive nationalism for the U.S., and if so, what might it look like? (( Charles: Honoring treaties with the Indigenous peoples. CB
[PEN-L:11272] Re: : finanz kapital
Lenin's analysis of monopoly is directly based on Marx's , only contrary to treating it like dogma ( that dogmatic and false refrain of liberal commentators on Lenin) , Lenin develops it to the changes in conditions that had come about since Marx's era, the complete opposite of what you say below. The whole project of _Imperialism_ was to compensate for the fact that Marx's ideas could not be applied in some "frozen" way to the new conditions of world captialism. There would have been no reason to write the book if he was going to apply frozen ideas to the present. Lenin's writing in _Imperialism_ and otherwise does not at all "freeze" Marx's ideas, but quite clearly creatively develops them. The whole book is an effort to modify Marx's ideas, but remain true to them. In fact, I am pretty sure that at the time it was written, the "establishment" Marxists criticized it for breaking with orthodox Marxism, precisely unfreezing it. Perhaps most directly , none of the main elements of imperialism that Lenin defines are in Marx as they are in _Imperialism_ . They are all modifications of Marx's discussions. To call it freezing Marx's ideas is a total misrepresentation. Where in Marx does he discuss a shift from a predominance of export of goods to an export of capital to the colonies ? Where in Marx's writings is the concept of state-monopoly ? etc., etc. It is patently false that Lenin is freezing Marx's ideas in this book. He is exactly giving to them new life and motion. Lenin knew as much you about treating Marxism as a guide to action not a dogma. This is the opposition that Marx himself placed to dogma: action ,not ceaseless motion of thought. Your focus on the socalled ceaseless motion of Marx's thought as opposed to its dynamism in its relation to action is the type of thing Marx criticized in his Theses on Feuerbach. Marx didn't want people to use his thought as ceaseless motion in itself but as a guide to motion in being , the world, action, practice. Ceaseless motion of thought is interpretation , but the thing is to change the world, which Lenin did. Charles Brown Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/18/99 12:09PM Charles Brown wrote: Besides that , Vol. III of _Capital_ is older than _Imperialism_ ,but somehow you seem to think it has some contemporary validity. You're absolutely right. There's a lot in K vol 3 that's very enlightening on credit and the joint-stock company, to take two relevant examples. In fact, there's something on almost every page of Marx I've ever read that's enlightening and even inspiring. I think one reason for that is that his thought is in ceaseless motion, while later Marxists tended to freeze certain moments of Marx into dogma. Doug
[PEN-L:11275] ICTSD caqlendar for WTO events in Seattle
http://www.ictsd.org/html/seattlecalendar.htm Events Around WTO Seattle Ministerial Conference (30 November-3 December) To submit an event or correction to this list, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICTSD will be using this space in the forthcoming months to announce events that will take place around the WTO's Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington, from 30 November to 3 December. The list will cover the three-week period from 16 November to 10 December and will include events from all areas, including government, inter-governmental organisations, civil society, the business community and academia. Please bear in mind that there are also many other events taking place in the coming months that will address Ministerial issues; these will be listed on our regular calendar. 27 November, Seattle: THE INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON GLOBALIZATION (IFG) TEACH-IN ON THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION. The event will take place at the 2,500-seat Benaroya Seattle Symphony Hall. It will focus on the problems of economic globalisation and, specifically, on the activities of the WTO and other international agreements and institutions. For information contact the International Forum on Globalization, 1555 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94109, tel: (1- 415) 771-3394, fax: 771-1121, web: http://www.ifg.org 28-29 November, Seattle: 1999 PEOPLE'S ASSEMBLY/MARCH-RALLY AGAINST WTO/GLOBALIZATION IN SEATTLE. Main convenor is Sentenaryo ng Bayan, a Filipino organisation in Seattle. The conference will be held on and will culminate in a rally on 30 November. Both events will serve as counterpoint and alternative to the WTO 3rd Ministerial Meeting. A special half-day session is being planned to focus on the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, peasants and rural women. Invited are organizations, groups and individuals, whether within or outside of the Peoples' Campaign Against Imperialist Globalisation (PCAIG) network, who have been active in resisting TNCs/MNCs, APEC, NAFTA, WTO-IMF-WB, globalisation and monopoly capitalism. It is expected that BAYAN networks in the US and Canada will participate. For information contact CAOA Secretariat, Bayan/Amihan/KMP, fax: c/o Gabriela (63-2) 374-4423, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 29 November-3 December, Seattle: CITIZEN'S TRADE CAMPAIGN EVENTS. The CTC will host a Citizens Summit in the United Methodist Church, located in downtown Seattle. Each day of the week will be devoted to a different set of related issues and will include symposia, plenaries, panels, skills-sharing, strategy sessions and dramatic press events. See below. 29 November, 11:30-13:30, Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Seattle: TIME TO TALK: FORUMS ON RACE SERIES. TOPIC: "BUILDING GLOBAL RELATIONSHIPS FOR LOCAL BUSINESS SUCCESS." Sponsored by the Urban Enterprise Center and Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Roundtable discussion with luncheon speaker, Q A. For registration or information contact Herman McKinney, GSCC, (1-206) 389-7231, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 29 November-3 December, 11:30-13:30, Seattle Space Needle: EUROPEAN UNION TRADE FORUM. TOPIC: "EUROPEAN-U.S. TRADE ISSUES AND WTO." Sponsored by the Council of European Chambers. Daily WTO briefings and luncheon for businesses, chambers, and public. A panel discussion, "Managing Issues Under WTO Rules: Genetically Modified Products," on 1 December with moderator Barry Mitzman. For registration or information contact Malte Kleutz, CEC, tel: (1-206) 352-9020, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 29 November; 1 December, Seattle University, Seattle: AFRICAN DAY BUSINESS FORUM. The forum will address the "Africa Trade Bill and WTO Impacts". Sponsored by the African Chamber of Commerce. Evening reception on 29 November; Business Forum on 1 December. Speakers include Heads of State, Ambassadors, US Government and US Trade Representative officials. For information contact Therese Kunzi-Clark, King County Office of Trade, tel: (1-206) 296-7421. 30 November, Seattle: AFL-CIO RALLY AND MARCH AT THE WTO. Worldwide Fair Trade networks will be marching with them. 2 December 10:00-20:00, Seattle: THE AMERICAS, REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS AND THE WTO. To be held at the Seattle Center. Sponsored inter alia by the US-Mexico Chambers of Commerce, Consuls of Canada, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Uruguay. Includes a day-long Trade Education Exhibition, a Reverse Trade Mission, panel discussions, and an evening reception with WTO briefing. For information contact Therese Kunzi-Clark, King County Office of Trade, tel: (1-206) 296-7421. 2 December, 18:30-22:00, University Plaza Hotel, Seattle: INDIA, TRADE OPPORTUNITIES, AND WTO. Reception and dinner with guest speakers Ambassador Naresh Chandra (invited) and Congressman Jim McDermott (invited). Sponsored by the Indo-American Friendship Forum. For information contact: Jagdish Sharma, IAFF, tel: (1-425) 489-0510, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3 December, 10:00-20:00, Westin Hotel or Sheraton Hotel, Seattle: A SALUTE TO SMALL BUSINESS ASIAN PACIFIC TRADE.
[PEN-L:11278] Re: colonialism
This is only partially true of the 16th and 17th centuries. The period of the great price revolution. It is true that the gold did not elicit the inflation that might be expected from the volumes that were imported, because large amounts were re-exported to India. But it did cause inflation in Europe. Ecobabble or not money is money, whether it is a commodity money or a paper money or fictious money. An increase in the supply will increase price levels unless the amount of commodities also increases. This did happen but not to the extent that the money supply increased. The usual story from Hamilton to Keynes to DeVries is that because the distribution of the gold within Europe was unequal prices of output went up faster that prices of inputs (both labour and materials) therefore profits increased in real terms. This stimulated production. There is no doubt that this happened to some extent, but to the extent that overall growth did is debatable. The gold is irrelevant, what is important is the volume of the trade in commodities with the colonies. If Europe ran a current account deficit with the rest of the world, it gained by the trade by the amount of the deficit, because they had stolen the means of paying for it. (We can add to this the utility that Europeans obtained from holding gold.) First: Barkley, like others on this list, is missing the fact that gold and silver in the 16th century didn't mean the same as money does in the 19th-20th. Gold and silver were COMMODITIES, simply the most valuable (and valued) commodities in all economies. If you had most of the gold and silver -- and the Europeans did have that! -- you had some stuff that you could trade for other commodities at a HUGE profit, since the cost of acquiring the metals in America was very low -- measured any way you want to -- in comparison to their value in all E hemisphere markets. Second: All the economumble about velocities of circulation, transaction costs, monetarism, etc., etc., is a matter of using characteristics of modern industrial capitalist economy and assuming falsely that things worked that way in precapitalist times. As Marx said (somewhere) you shouldb't use 19th century criteria to explain 13th century facts -- or words to that effect. Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:11276] Early economists and the origin of capitalism
I don't have any trouble with the proposition to that both the exploitation of British workers and the rape of the colonial lands contributed to the development of capitalism. In a sense, the debate is starting to concede the peripheral point that Brad made, to which I originally objected. I don't recall his exact phrasing, but the idea was something like adopting more modern technology would have allowed China to have become capitalist. I questioned the association between progress and the inevitability of capitalism in successful economies. When I look at the literature of mercantilist thought, I see that the early economists believed that the accumulation of gold was the key to development, until the London fire of 1670 (?) when the idea that domestic demand could also spur development. Also, profit meant the sale of a good for more than it cost, suggesting that Third World trade was important, since domestic trade could not add value through profit upon alienation. Finally, this literature put great emphasis upon keeping people working for his little as possible. Marx always suggested that the early economists were on to something. I agree. The early economists, as I read them, argued that both domestic and colonial exploitation were central to economic growth and the development of early capitalism. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11274] The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 17 Sep 1999 -- 3:75 (#333)
__ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 17 September 1999 Vol. 3, Numbers 75 (#333) __ ANTI-FASCIST WEB SITES OF INTEREST Heartfield versus Hitler http://brasscheck.com/heartfield/ Nazis Among Us http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2163/ FALANGE: The Right WIng In the Spanish Civil War http://hal.csd.auth.gr/~hkosmidi/Anarchy/Spain/falange.html -- QUOTE OF THE WEEK: For those who believe that fascism is only a thing of the past From:ipm [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WINmail] Smash the Racemixers Date:Mon, 13 Sep 1999 21:24:38 -0400 Several of us have discussed infiltrating some of the racemixer mailinglists hosted by ONEList. In case you haven't checked some of these sickening lists, you definitely need to. Most ostensibly operate as meeting places for degenerates who want interracial sex. Typically, its Black men looking for White women, but there's also the reverse too. Also a few are devoted to White men and Black women. Either way, its disgusting and should be an affront to every decent White person. I'd like to ask anyone who's think thinks they might be interested in disrupting a few of these lists to go look through them and report which one's you think make the best targets. Just go to the ONEList website and enter some keywords into the site search engine. That will turn up dozens of related lists, some of which are dead or only have sporadic postings. Don't take any action yet, since we need to coordinate our operation for maximum effectiveness. I advise everyone to go set-up a Hotmail or Netscape email address for use in this operation. For those who don't already know, our tenative activity will involve setting up phony sex dates with these racemixers. But before we do that, we need to select a mailing list and get a feel for its operation. Then we can devide a more specific strategy. -- For White Unity, ipm - - - - - IPM'S TACTICS: INSIGHT INTO THE MURDER OF ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISTS IPM's tactic of "setting up phony sex dates with these racemixers" throws enormous light on the murders of Las Vegas anti-fascists Daniel Shersty (Black) and Lin "Spit" Newborn (white). Regular TINAF readers know of this event; there's a list of references below for new subscribers. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) believes that two women made dates with both of them the night they were murdered. This came after racist skinheads were organizing in the Las Vegas area and had been confronted many times, particularly by Newborn. But we also have reports that other anti-fascists speculated that the murders were the result of a drug-deal turned bad. These suppositions create difficulties for the creation of a broad, pluralistic, coalition against hate-based action. They first introduce a sectarianism, as if any drug user is not moral enough to fight against the next Holocaust. We would all be dead if successful anti-fascist work required everyone in the coalition to agree with everyone else. In reality we are divided by differences -- some deep and some not -- that so many of us have invested with tremendous emotional impact. Anti-fascists can argue endlessly about, e.g., the decisions of the Second World Zionist Congress or wearing leather. Even readers will have their own differences about whether my reference to the Congress or leather was the buffoonish one. One central principle around anti-fascist organizing is that "an injury to one is an injury to all." This is vital to the anti-narcissistic pro-tolerance philosophy that must guide our actions. This principle occasionally creates anxiety for some who would rather not defend other victims of fascist violence. Unfortunately, the presentation of unconfirmed hypotheses of the victim's wrongdoing contributes to a breach in our unified defense and creates a slippery slope where one can always find reasons to withhold defense. Is the Black man hanging from the tree really a victim of a KKK lynching or is the whole thing the result of a rape gone bad? Not surprisingly, the latter interpretation has always been one the Klan put forward. Was the attack on the Jewish couple really the work of anti-Semites or that of indignant tenants against a slumlord? One need not be very creative to imagine what the fascists would maintain. Certainly the IPM document does not in itself prove that Shersty and Newborn were set up for assassination by fascist skinheads. But it does confirm -- as ARA has long maintained -- that "phony sexdates" with anti-fascist activists are part of today's fascist tactics. This alone should spur the Las Vegas Police to deepen their investigation into the murders. And, in an
[PEN-L:11273] finanz kapital
I don't at all agree that the WSJ has honest reporting. Whenever , I read it it has the same slick demogogy that the rest of the monopoly media does. Here's an article in 9/13/99 "If Detroit Rebounds, Robert Slattery Can Claim Some Credit" . The story doesn't seem very honest to me. Sounds like making a hero out of real estate ripoff artist. It has the same big lie that "Detroit is rebounding now that Coleman Young is out and Dennis Archer is in ". That's the fundamental demogogy of this article. There has been all kinds of real estate development in Detroit over the years of Coleman Young's years. The Eastside had lots of new housing. That isn't in the article. Take my word for it, this WSJ article on Detroit is disceptive and misleading. What the WSJ may report accurately is the business news. because the business class needs to know the truth. I mean they can't misreport that Motorola acquired General Instrument. But the politcal and cultural stuff is as much bourgeois propaganda as the NYT: "True but false". What I meant by gems are not rare is the "gems" of the type that you sarcastically referred to in the article by Jarvis Tyner. You didin't really mean that was a gem did you ? Well , the WSJ is full of such false gems. Plus, a lot of discussion of actual "precious stuff". Anyway, the WSJ certainly seems loaded with news of monopolization and big financial institutions, how is _Imperialism_ off on that ? How are Hedge Funds not financial capital as Lenin analyzed ? Of course, we can't freeze Lenin's thought, but must ceaselessly move it to the present - and move based on that fresh thought. But just as Marx's ideas are a basis, extrapolated, for understanding today, so are Lenin's. Charles Brown Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/18/99 12:12PM Charles Brown wrote: Whereas in the Wall Street Journal gems are far from rare. True. It's a great newspaper. Even the tension between the editorial and news pages is interesting; it's fascinating to speculate why the monied want clear, honest reporting of the news, but when it comes to reflecting on the news, they prefer such tortured, dishonest crap. Doug
[PEN-L:11271] hello
Hi everyone! Lou Proyect conned me into joining the list. However, I swear under oath that I am not now and never have been an economist. I think I can counter Barkley's thoughtful (as usual) arguments. Will try to do so in the next post. Here I'll support Charles on the matter of colonial labor vs. European labor in the early-modern period (before the industrial revolution), taking the liberty of reproducing the argument in my book. My calcvulations are very speculative, but so are the other statistics being cited in this discussion. Before I quote myself (ego!), one basic point: If you're talking pre-industrial revolution times, you can't claim that the organic composition of capital in European eeconomies was higher than in colonial enterprise. So you can't say that slaves et al. were somehow less valuable (per hour of labor) than Europeans. The most advanced industrial technology in the world was in the sugar mills, if I'm not mistaken. Jim Blaut Effects. There seem to be two particularly good ways to assess the real significance for the rise of capitalism of 16th century colonial production in America and some other areas along with trading, piracy, and the like, in Asia and Africa. One way is to trace the direct and indirect effects of colonialism on European society, looking for movements of goods and capital, tracing labor flows into industries and regions stimulated or created by colonial enterprise, looking at the way urbanization flourished in those cities that were engaged in colonial (and more generally extra-European) enterprise or closely connected to it, and the like. This process overall would then be examined in relation to the totality of changes which were taking place in Europe in that century, to determine whether, in Europe itself, changes clearly resulting from the direct and indirect impact of extra- European activities were the prime movers for economic and social change. This task still remains undone. The second way is to attempt to arrive at a global calculation of the amount of labor (free and unfree) that was employed in European enterprises in America, Africa, and Asia, along with the amount of labor in Europe itself which was employed in activities derived from extra-European enterprise, and then to look at these quantities in relation to the total labor market in Europe for economic activities that can be thought of as connected to the rise of capitalism. This task has not been done either; indeed, as far as I know little research has been done on 16th- century labor forces and labor markets in American settlements or indeed in Europe. So the proposition which I am arguing here, concerning the significance of 16th century colonialism (and related extra-European activities) for the rise of capitalism in Europe, perhaps cannot be tested as yet. Still, there are suggestive indications. Some of these have been mentioned already: matters of assessing the quantities and values of colonial exports to Europe. We can also speculate about labor. One approach is through population. The population of Spain and Portugal in the mid-16th century may have been around nine million.34 Estimates of 16th-century populations for the Americas vary widely and there is much controversy about population levels and rates of decline,35 but for the present, highly speculative, and essentially methodological, argument, I will ignore the controversies and play with global estimates. The population of Mexico at midcentury may have been around six million, a population that was undergoing continuous decline from its preconquest level of perhaps 30 million down to one-tenth of that figure (or perhaps less) in 1600.36 Populations in the Andean regions involved in mineral and textile production for the Spaniards may (speculating) have totalled five million in the late 16th century. Perhaps we can add an additional two million for the population of other parts of Ibero-America that were within regions of European control and presumably involved, more or less, in the European-dominated economy. Let us, then, use a ball-park estimate of 13 million for the American population that was potentially yielding surplus value to Europeans in the mid-to-late 16th century. The population seems larger than that of Iberia. Granted, the comparison should be made with a larger part of Europe, certainly including the Low Countries, which were intimately involved in the exploitation of America (and Asia) at this period, along with parts of Italy and other countries. Assume then a figure of 20 million for Europe as against 13 million for America. I see no reason to argue that the European populations were more intimately involved in the rise of capitalism than the American populations -- that is, the 13 million people who we assume were in European dominated regions. It is likely that the proportion of the American population that was engaged in labor for Europeans, as wage work, as forced labor
[PEN-L:11270] Re: Re: Capitalist development
Wojtek Sokolowski [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/17/99 05:57PM At 01:42 PM 9/17/99 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: If one blames all of E's rise on exploitation, then in some ways it's a critique of the periphery that allowed itself to be conquered and exploited. If, on the other hand, one blames it all on capitalism's (or Europe's) internal dynamic, it's quite a critique of capitalism and/or Europe, considering what that dynamic did to the rest of the world. I don't think the blame game should guide historical understanding. This was precisely the point I tried to make by objecting to the "exploitationist" explanations of the European development. (( Charles: Wojtek, my militant materialist, an "exploitationist" explanation does not have to be moralist or blaming. Can't you see that ? "Exploitation" is a scientific, political economic term in Marxism. You know, surplus value is exploited. We are scientifically explaining the primitive accumulation of European capitalism , in part, by the exploiting of surplus value that from its early colonies and slave enclaves, without referring to the moral dimension. It is no more of a blaming or moral explanation than to say it exploited surplus value from its own working classes as part of its primitive accumulation of capital. Below you follow your usual theme of accusing some critques of capitalism of relying on or focussing on morality. But this is backward. It is the proponents of capitalism , such as Weber, who seek to attribute European economic supremacy to European moral and rational superiority who we are critiquing. Not by substituting moral censure for moral bragging, not by replacing taking credit for laying blame. Rather by substituting the materialist explanation of EXPLOITATION OF SURPLUSES FROM THE COLONIES for the European supremacist claim of rational superiority and hard work ethics. Not by attributing ruthlessness to Europeans to blame them, but to see it a "knowledge" or "mental" factor that had political and econmic consequences. The hindsight or looking back is not to affix blame, but to look for insight on how to undo this system from understanding of how it got put together. As to other civilizations conquering and all, sure. But, those other civilizations are not ruling the world right now. We need to figure out how to get the capitalist monkey off of our backs right now. That is what is relevant to changing the world today. So, what if some plunders didn't succeed. The plunder that succeeded is the one we are interested in breaking up, so we focus on that plunder. CB ( Wojtek: As in case every historical "event" or "development" - it was a dialectical interaction of past institutional history and accumulated knowledge (from all over the world, to be sure), geo-political location, accident, and opening opportunities. Oftentimes, it was impossible to predict the future consequences of current events, e.g. the nclosures in England. Howver, when viewed form the hindsight, these events can be ex-post facto arranged into logical trends that suggest the existence of some some master plan (or conspiracy) which is then attributed to the actors who "produced" these events. This is teleological thinking, akin to attributing purposefulness to evolution. IMHO, the key to understanding historical events is the analytic separation of the actual motives and intentions of social actors form the unintended, latent consequences of their actions. To illustrate that, th elords enclosing the comon lands in England were unlikely to be motivated by a desire to start an industrial revolution. However, their action led to the creation of the proletariat which, with the combination of other factors, was instrumental in the industrial revolution a hundred or so years after. But there was neither necessity not master plan (or "conspiracy") in that development - just a series of coincidences. In the same vein, it is easy to ex-post-facto blame Soviet leaders like Stalin for the deaths resulting from their policies. But people who do so, basically fail to perform a rather difficult intellectual task to ascertain whether these policy makers had sufficient knowledge to fully predict the consequences of their policy or what were their actual intentions. It is easy to speculate from the vantage point of the hindsight, attribute what we know today to the state of mind of historical actors, and either glorify or condemn them ex-post-facto. That may have some psychotherapeutic or ideological value - but beyond that, it is witchcraft not science. wojtek PS. virtually every known historical civilization engaged in some form of plunder, exploitation, and systematic killings of their adversaries. Sometimes these plunders paid off, sometimes it did not, sometimes were irrelevant. Take for example Spain - the conquistadores plundered virtually all gold of the Andes - more then everyone else at that time - but despite all
[PEN-L:11267] Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
Nathan, The difference between Kosovo and the other cases is that the aggressor is a client state. We have no need to call for military intervention. All the U.S. needs to do is to call off its dogs and they will comply. Several of us have mentioned that we think that the introduction of foreign troops will not help. In the case of Kuwait, if April Glespie had told Saddam not to invade, I suspect that it might not have happened, especially if the U.S. would have agreed to support some of Saddam's grievances concerning oil. In the case of Kosovo, intervention was a total and ongoing disaster. The U.S. and the EU countries had put pressure on Yugoslavia, weakening the state and supporting seperatist movements. We have had all of this discussion before. What can be gained from repeating it? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:11268] Re: Capitalist development
Barkley writes: Blaut argues that it was the fact that the Atlantic is narrower than the Pacific that accounted for the crucial ability of the Western Europeans to get to the Americas to do the exploiting before the Chinese (some Asians having already gotten there earlier but who lacked sufficient immunity or technology to resist a later invasion from either Europe or East Asia). Of course this does not answer the crucial question as to why the Chinese did not go around the Cape of Good Hope in the 1400s while the Portuguese did in 1497 with Vasco da Gama. Thus we had the Portuguese in Goa and Macau rather than the Chinese in Cadiz and Lisbon. In a book I read many many years ago, EAST AND WEST, by the ultrareactionary C. Northcote Parkinson (he of "Parkinson's Law" fame), argued that the Chinese didn't continue sailing around the Cape of Good Hope because they lacked what he saw as superior Western organization techniques. My thoughts are that the Chinese empire was more interested in ruling and protecting what they had already (an area occupied mostly by Han Chinese) rather than extending their Imperial rule in a radical way. (New territories would have been hard to integrate into the Empire if they were significantly distant from Beijing.) International exploring was a function of imperial _policy_, as opposed to the "Western" business of political-economic competition encouraging radical expansionism at the expense of the rest of the world. The historical accident of the Pacific being wider than the Atlantic of course explains a lot (including the nature of the Chinese empire and the way in which Western European countries related to each other). In line with counterfactual thinking, we should go back in a time machine to either narrow the Pacific or widen the Atlantic and see if it changes the course of history. In a separate message, Barkley writes: One can make a serious argument that a nascent form of capitalism was in existence in Northern Italy (and in Flanders not long thereafter) from the 1200s on. Even Marx recognized this, labeling it "merchant capitalism." T-balance sheet accounting dates from this period from Pisa and Florence and the first urban public bonds also, which many identify with the origins of modern banking. Also, the first industrial strike by a propertyless urban proletariat occurred in a textile mill in Douai, Flanders (now northern France) in the late 1200s. I don't know enough about this history, but it's important to emphasize that for Marx merchant capital is not a nascent form of capitalism as much as an incomplete form of capitalism. Under merchant capitalism, the ability to get an M' (revenue) that's large than the M (the initial investment) is dependent on noncapitalist producers creating a surplus-product. Because noncapitalist modes of production are less able to produce a surplus-product without driving down the living standards of the direct producers below subsistence, this limits the growth of merchant capital. It ends up mostly a matter of buying low in one place and selling high somewhere else. Double-entry bookkeeping, bonds, and banks are part of money-dealing capital or interest-bearing capital. It faces similar limits. Unless a surplus is produced, interest cannot be paid. It's true the state can tax people to pay the interest (one of the oldest forms of surplus-extraction, by the way), but there are clear limits to this in a precapitalist society. Merchant capital and interest-bearing capital become the more complete form of capital_ism_ when a proletariat is created, as with the enclosure movement in England. I understand that this process was very limited in Flanders, being hamstrung by traditional "feudal" relations, absolutistic restrictions, and guilds (all of which interacted which each other hand and are thus hard to separate). There might be some kind of threshold below which there isn't enough of a proletariat to allow capitalism's development. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/17/99 04:42PM Charles writes: Do you think that if all this [capitalist development] had occurred except none of the Europeans ever left the land mass of Europe, capitalism would have developed in Europe ? (( Jim: It's really hard -- if not impossible -- to tell. Charles: This is a rather blatant couterfactual. (( Jim In world history, as far as I know, all other areas that had attained some sort sociopolitical edge vis-a-vis their neighbors took advantage of that edge to expand and exploit. The Arabs spread out of what is now Saudi Arabia. The Aztecs conquered their neighbors. The Romans spread out of Italy, etc. So the slight military advantage of the Europeans in 1492 meant that the option of _not_ expanding was extremely unlikely to be taken. So the possibility of Europe not expanding seems extremely unreal. (( Charles: Yes. I am trying to get at the theme of this thread which is on the uniqueness of
[PEN-L:11266] Re: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
I don't know how one could get a dependable nose count on the questions Nathan raises, but I will report on my own count among those whose history I know. Without exception (that is, among those with whom I am still in contact) the people I worked with in Central America Solidarity in the '80s have all agreed with me in condemning all three of the interventions. There is no instance since WW 2 in which U.S. intervention of any sort and of any kind outside its borders has not been disastrous both for those attacked and those allegedly aided. I see no reason that this should change at any time in the foreseeable future. A study of any give U.S. intervention in the future should not be for the sake of reaching a judgment on it but for the sake of gathering ammunition with which to attack it. Carrol
[PEN-L:11265] Re: Capitalist development
There is a theorem in the theory of cultural evolution ( might have been lifte from Trotsky) about the areas that are least developed or most backward have the most potential for revolutionary advance to the next level. It is a last will be first idea. The rationale is that those most successful now are more conservative, and those least successful now have less to lose in going to something new, and thereby have more potential or motivation for the new. Europe had been, in a sense, the backwater of the world for most of previous history, and sort of were "due" to make a hit. However, I am also thinking that Europe's conquering rise was based on a sort of opposite of the Weber theory of unique rationality, technical inventiveness and work ethic. Europeans world conquest was based more on a unique willingness to use cutthroat measures, ruthless use of force and violence, irrationality and forcing others to work actually. This is not a moral judgement , as Wojtek will jump up and say. It is treating this cultural characterisitc as a critical political and economic factor, the differentia specifica that this thread is searching for. Charles Brown Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/17/99 09:01PM It may be something as weird as that the Chinese--living in the "Central Country"--didn't have the crusading habit. By contrast Europeans were used to the idea that there were other richer guys with interesting stuff in other parts of the world--and had acquired the crusading habit half a millennium before. Brad DeLong By contrast Europeans were used to the idea that there were other richer guys with interesting stuff in other parts of the world? Er... Um... Okay. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11264] East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
To avoid a bit of the beating the dead horse thing, I will try to be as unpolemical as possible in this post and hope for the same in the responses. With East Timor, Kosovo and Kuwait, we have three key situations of a larger local power seeking to dominate a smaller region with aspirations of independence, followed by some sort of multilateral intervention with US involvement. Now, there are folks out there who have supported interventions in all three cases - although only a marginal number would identify as leftists. There are also folks who opposed all interventions, even sanctions, in any of these cases - a few stray pacificists and maybe Pat Buchanan. Most self-identified leftists have opposed at least one of these interventions (most predominantly Iraq) and support some form of intervention against Indonesia over East Timor, if only economic sanctions against Indonesia (similar sanctions against Iraq being deemed forms of mass murder by many of those same leftists). I frankly see large similarities in Kosovo and East Timor, where many of the leftists who condemned any NATO intervention as inherently unjust are denouncing FAILURE of the US and other Western countries to strongly intervene as a terrible thing. That some urge economic sanctions only goes so far as a difference, since economic sanctions against Iraq are denounced as imperialistic. Now, of course there are many views and ways to make consistent stories out of these differing positions, but it would ease polemics if folks could admit that the distinctions are confusing and often complicated, so we could all be a little less quick to denounce as a betrayal either calls for intervention or a reluctance to support intervention in specific cases. But in the name of focusing discussion, I made up the following table comparing some aspects where the interventions in question differ, with some hope that might explain some of the differences in reaction. Note: "Local Power" means Iraq, Indonesia and/or the Serbian government respectively, "population" refers to population in Kuwait, East Timor, and/or Kosovo KUWAIT EAST TIMOR KOSOVO Historical claim of distinct societyLow Medium High Contempory Desire of population for Independence *High High Military Brutality of Local Power MediumExtreme Medium to High (disputed) Cultural Repression by Local Power ?High High Ties of population to US activists None-Low High Low Socialist tradition in Local Power High Low High Self-interest of US in Intervention High Low Low-to-medium (disputed) * Note that in Iraq, Kuwaiti CITIZENS had strong desire for independence, but many of the much larger category of residents such as Palestinians welcomed the invasion. ? Little time to see what kind of cultural repression Iraq might have imposed. Kuwait has obvious failings as a sympathetic symbol of independence, from its exploitation of its internal foreign workers, its artificial history and role in promoting inequality of resources within the region, and the relatively low level of violence by Iraq when it conquered the country (despite the propaganda). With the naked self-interest of the US intervention, the general left revulsion against the Gulf War is pretty clear. In some areas, on the other hand, Kosovo has a greater claim to independence, since the Kosovar Albanians have a long history as a distinct society, while the East Timorese like the Kuwaitis are more a product of artificial colonial divisions of the map than more historic divisions (although the high levels of Catholicism in East Timor give it a distinct cast from Muslim-dominated Indonesia). On the other hand, the extremity of Indonesian violence there gives Kosovo one of the strongest bases for claiming "irreconcilable differences" with a home country. But I think it is also fair to highlight issues such as the "ties to US activists" as explaining some of the differences in attitudes towards the two areas. Given Chomsky's writings, the East Timorese figures of resistance are much more in left consciousness than folks like Rugova ever were, despite the fact that the Kosovar nonviolent resistance in the 90s has much that was admirable. The US and other left activists' sympathy for the socialist tradition of the Serb regime versus the distaste for the more capitalist Indonesian regime also play a role in this reaction, despite the fact that for the Timorese and Kosovars, the official ideology of the Local Power mattered little for the repressive police apparatus that really governed their lives. I would be interested to hear more general
[PEN-L:11260] 2 random questions
1. Is Hoffa doing much damage to the Teamsters or is it business as usual? 2. While most religions have created vicious theological dictatorships, have the Buddhists so far avoided such excesses? Have any dictators claimed to ground their abuses in Buddhist principles? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11258] Re: Capitalist development
Louis, All the talk of gold and silver really doesn't amount to much. Most of this flowed into Spain, but there it either ended up in fancy churches or flowed out to the rest of Europe where it stimulated inflation. As Adam Smith long ago realized, money is a veil, it is not real wealth. Now I do happen to think that the Europeans got a lot of real value out of the colonization and imperialization of the Americas, with the sugar plantations being one along with the cotton production and a lot of other stuff, irrespective of how the numbers play out in Ricardo's sources. With regard to the Europe/China issue, you may remember that Blaut and I had a rather extensive discussion and debate about this on the old marxism-international list back in its heyday before Godena and Adoflo led it off a Stalinist deep end. I think you even praised the discussion, if I remember correctly. The question is very far from simple, very far indeed. BTW, although I think the Europeans did gain a lot from the Americas, thus lending at least some credence to the Blaut argument about the width of the oceans being a crucial factor, if one wanted to argue that colonialism/imperialism was irrelevant the place to look might be Germany which did not have any colonies in the Americas ever and only got some in Africa in the late nineteenth century, but developed a high-powered industrial capitalism quite well, thank you, anyway. Of course one might argue that it gained from the gains of the other colonializing and imperializing Europeans, but this is not such an easy or obvious argument to make. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 7:06 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11230] Capitalist development Jim Blaut, "Colonizer's Model of the World": Precious Metals We notice first the export of gold and silver from the Americas and its insertion within the circuits of an Eastern Hemispheric market economy in which gold and silver already provide the common measure of value, directly or indirectly, in almost all markets. The flow of precious metals began immediately after the European discovery of America, and by 1640 at least 180 tons of gold and 17,000 tons of silver are known to have reached Europe.21 (The real figures must be at least double these amounts, since records were poor for some areas and periods and since contraband was immensely important.22) Additional quantities of gold came from colonial activities in Africa. In the period 1561 to 1580 about 85% of the entire worlds production of silver came from the Americas. The simple quantity of gold and silver in circulation in the Eastern Hemisphere economy as a whole was profoundly affected: hemispheric silver stock may have been tripled and gold stock increased by 20% during the course of the sixteenth century as a result of bullion brought from America.23 The fact that much of the pre-existing stock must have been frozen in uses not permitting direct or indirect conversion to money suggests to me that American bullion may have as much as doubled the gold- and silver-based money supply of the Eastern Hemisphere as a whole. (In Europe, the circulation of metal coins increased eight- or ten-fold in the course of the century.24) This process must be seen in perspective: it is money flowing constantly and in massive amounts into Europe, through Europe, and from Europe to Asia and Africa, constantly replenished at the entry points (Seville, Antwerp, Genoa, etc.) with more American supplies, and constantly permitting those who hold it to offer better prices for all goodsas well as labor and landin all markets, than anyone else had ever been able to offer in prior times. The importance of these flows of gold and silver is routinely underestimated by scholars, mainly for three reasons (apart from implicit diffusionism, the simple tendency to undervalue causal events in non-Europe). First, the process is seen somehow as purely primitive accumulation. But the metals were mined by workers and transported by workers; the enterprise overall involved risk capital and all of the other familiar traits of the sorts of protocapitalist productive enterprises which were characteristic of that time (that it was partly state-controlled does not alter this argument, nor does the fact that some of the labor was unfree); and very major economic and social systems were built around the mines themselves in Mexico, Peru, and other parts of America. Second, the argument that precious metal flows significantly affected the European economy is dismissed by some scholars as "monetarism" (roughly, the theory that changes in money alone are very significant for changes in the economy overall). The error in this charge is a failure to see the sixteenth-century economy in its own, appropriate, geographical and social context, and to impute to the economy of that time the liquidity of
[PEN-L:11257] Re: Re: Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Mat wrote: There are lots of debates about whether the Enslavement of African peoples in the U.S. south, for example, was capitalist or not. Two points: 1) Enslaved Africans were producing *commodities.* 2) This production was responsible for capital accumulation This is strong evidence supporting the position that this was capitalist slavery. Very important differences between things called the same name, "slavery." Slavery in Greek Antiquity was not the same, for example, as Enslavement of Africans on plantations in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. Other important differences, too. This is why some use the term Enslavement with a capital E to indicate this experience. To add to the above points, capitalist techniques of organization of production (be it on fields, in mines, or at sugar-refining factories) can be said to have been elaborated under conditions of modern slavery and other forms of forced labor, even before the labor of white artisans became subsumed and transformed under capitalism. I've been swinging back and forth on this for 30 years. There is no doubt that the use of slavery for commodity production has a profound impact on the treatment of slaves. (The worst slavery of the ancient mediterannean world was in the gold and silver mines.) And does anyone want seriously to argue that slavery in the u.s. south would have been so important had it not been for manchester's need for cotton? On the other hand, the organization of daily life in the South was profoundly different from that in the north -- and one way at least to explain that difference is the difference between capitalist and non-capitalist social relations. Barbara Fields, *Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland in the 19th C.*, explores in some depth this contrast as it showed up in just one state. Carrol
[PEN-L:11255] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1999 RELEASED TODAY: Regional and state unemployment rates were generally stable in August. All four regions posted little change over the month, and 44 states recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less. The national jobless rate was essentially unchanged at 4.2 percent. Non-farm employment rose in 36 states and the District of Columbia. ... Hurricane Floyd lashed the East Coast with rain, wind and waves, but it won't likely dampen economic growth and may actually have churned up some extra economic activity. Like meteorologists, economists are quickly trying to focus their forecasts to reflect changing conditions. According to the chief economist at Donaldson, Lufkin Jenrette Securities Corp. in New York, one of the most powerful storms to surge out of the Atlantic this century may actually give the economy a boost. ... However, some labor-market indicators are expected to bend under Floyd's influence in the weeks ahead. Some economists expect the evacuation of 2.6 million people to lift weekly jobless claims, perhaps above 300,000. More significantly, the September payroll report could be disrupted since the data are collected for the pay period that includes the 12th day of the month. "The number we get for September will be a little squirrelly," said the chief economist at High Frequency Economics Inc., a New York research firm. That view is countered, however, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Alerted to Floyd's advance, the Bureau identified certain counties in the hurricane's path where data collection will be postponed until the skies clear. Said bureau economist Richard Rosen: "We're sensitive to the weather" (Tristan Mabry in Wall Street Journal, page A2). Coming down from an unusually strong weather-related gain in July, the production of U.S. factories, mines, and utilities rose 0.3 percent in August, according to figures released by the Federal Reserve Board. The 0.3 percent gain was less than half the July increase of 0.7 percent, which the Fed attributed in part to a surge in utility output related to hotter than usual weather in much of the country. In August, more seasonal weather patterns prevailed, and utility output declined 1.6 percent after jumping a revised 2.3 percent in July. Mining continued its modest rebound with a 0.6 percent rise in total output for August. The Fed attributed that gain, plus the 0.9 percent rise in July, mainly to the continued recovery in oil and natural gas drilling, as well as a rise in coal production. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). New claims filed with state agencies for unemployment insurance decreased by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 288,000 in the week ended Sept. 11, marking the eighth consecutive week that initial claims have remained under 300,000, the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration announced. ... ETA figures showed that the four-week moving average was 288, 750 as of Sept.11, a decrease of 250 from the previous week's revised average. Analysts watch the four-week moving average more closely than the weekly numbers because it smoothes out data subject to weekly fluctuations. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-6). Industrial production rose 0.3 percent, paced by surging demand for automobiles and trucks. The increase, which was the seventh straight monthly gain, surpassed analysts' predictions that there would be no change. Separately, the Labor Department reported that first-time claims for state unemployment benefits fell 4,000 last week. The reports suggested that the economy remained healthy, with improving productivity helping to keep inflation in check (Washington Post, page E2; Wall Street Journal, page A2; New York Times, page C2). A proposed $1 increase in the hourly minimum wage would benefit 12 million U.S. workers, 7 million or 58 percent of whom are women, according to a new report jointly released by two research organizations. The Minimum Wage Increase: A Working Woman's Issue, released by the Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for Women's Policy Research, provides data on the share of female workers among minimum wage recipients and the parental status of minimum wage workers nationally and by state. ... As a group, women earn lower wages than men; therefore a minimum wage hike would reduce the overall pay gap between women and men, EPI said. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-8). application/ms-tnef
[PEN-L:11254] Re: Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
Mat wrote: There are lots of debates about whether the Enslavement of African peoples in the U.S. south, for example, was capitalist or not. Two points: 1) Enslaved Africans were producing *commodities.* 2) This production was responsible for capital accumulation This is strong evidence supporting the position that this was capitalist slavery. Very important differences between things called the same name, "slavery." Slavery in Greek Antiquity was not the same, for example, as Enslavement of Africans on plantations in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. Other important differences, too. This is why some use the term Enslavement with a capital E to indicate this experience. To add to the above points, capitalist techniques of organization of production (be it on fields, in mines, or at sugar-refining factories) can be said to have been elaborated under conditions of modern slavery and other forms of forced labor, even before the labor of white artisans became subsumed and transformed under capitalism. Yoshie
[PEN-L:11252] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development
Chinese people were in East Africa 2000 years ago (evidence available on request). There is evidence of Africans in the Americas (Olmec, and other evidence) pre-Columbus. Some assume contact must mean conquer. This tells a lot. Some travel without any intention of conquering or slaving, even if that is possible. mf Ajit Sinha wrote: As far as i know, China did not need to go around the cape of good hope, Barkley. In the earlier period, the advantage of sea rout to India was mainly on account of 'internalizing the security cost'. Prior to Vasco da Gama, the goods from India went to Europe through the land rout to the mouth of Red Sea. This rout was full of small chieftains who demanded high and unpredictable "safe passage" charges. The sea rout cut out this big cost of transportation, though they did have to spend money on their own guns etc. to deal with the pirates, but this internalized the security cost and so was predictable. Cheers, ajit sinha J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote: Jim, Blaut argues that it was the fact that the Atlantic is narrower than the Pacific that accounted for the crucial ability of the Western Europeans to get to the Americas to do the exploiting before the Chinese (some Asians having already gotten there earlier but who lacked sufficient immunity or technology to resist a later invasion from either Europe or East Asia). Of course this does not answer the crucial question as to why the Chinese did not go around the Cape of Good Hope in the 1400s while the Portuguese did in 1497 with Vasco da Gama. Thus we had the Portuguese in Goa and Macau rather than the Chinese in Cadiz and Lisbon. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 12:38 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11192] Re: Re: Re: Capitalist development Rod writes: The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer everyone in their path. Bill writes: In a nutshell, if I remember Blaut correctly, they luckily stumbled upon America where they plundered with the aid of genocidal policies and germ warfare (against which the Native Americans had no defense), enriching themselves and laying the groundwork for a colossal Western Imperium. It's unfair to criticize Blaut on the basis of Bill's precis. (Obviously such a short summary _must_ be simplistic.) But here goes. Just remember that I'm not criticizing you, Bill. The fact that the Europeans (actually the Castilians, led by some guy from what is now called Italy) stumbled upon America suggests that they had (a) the means to do the stumbling, e.g., the technology for sailing across the Atlantic rather than hugging the shore; (b) the opportunity to do so, e.g., the finalization of the war against the Moors so that they could turn to new worlds to conquer; and (c) the motive, i.e., the lust for gold and power, plus the proselytism of religion. To my mind, the first is most crucial, since there were a lot of nascent empires that have lusted after gold and power (e.g., the Arabs) before Queen Isabella's and the victory over the Moors seems more a determinant of the timing of the deed. Perhaps the rise of capitalism (with this grow-or-die economics) had something to do with motivating Spanish aggression against the world, but I doubt it -- since the Iberian peninsula was hardly fully capitalist at the time. If anything, the attack on the "New" world helped stimulate capitalism's rise. (The fact that the Norse and maybe the Irish (and maybe other Europeans) stumbled on the Americas before Colombo indicates that it's important to have the technology to sustain an invasion and to stumble on an area that provides sufficient profit to justify sustaining it.) Columbo (who should rank among the biggest of criminals in history) led his ships to the Americas, which unfortunately for the locals were less technologically advanced and organizationally resilient than China. When Cortez invade Mexico, the Aztecs were deterred by his troops' use of _horses_ (which is surely a matter of historical luck) not to mention rudimentary firearms. Further, my reading suggests that the Aztec empire was already in trouble, so that it would have had either a revolution, a take-over by another ethnic group, or a simple collapse. Cortez was lucky, coming in at the time he did, so he could prevent those kinds of results, which would have led to a perpetuation of rule of one sort or another by native Americans. The Spaniards and their imitators then used their initial advantage to destroy all Indian civilization and to widen any existing technological gaps, creating haciendas and similar forced-labor mining and agriculture. Once the Americas were conquered
[PEN-L:11251] WSJ
Doug Henwood wrote: True. It's a great newspaper. Even the tension between the editorial and news pages is interesting; it's fascinating to speculate why the monied want clear, honest reporting of the news, but when it comes to reflecting on the news, they prefer such tortured, dishonest crap. For years I have been attempting to find the metaphor that will communicate this tension to non-readers of the WSJ. What synonym or metaphor for liar will catch up the feel of the editorial pages. The sheer extravagance of those pages is breath-taking. Carrol
[PEN-L:11250] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: finanz kapital
Charles Brown wrote: Whereas in the Wall Street Journal gems are far from rare. True. It's a great newspaper. Even the tension between the editorial and news pages is interesting; it's fascinating to speculate why the monied want clear, honest reporting of the news, but when it comes to reflecting on the news, they prefer such tortured, dishonest crap. Doug
[PEN-L:11249] Re: : finanz kapital
Charles Brown wrote: Besides that , Vol. III of _Capital_ is older than _Imperialism_ ,but somehow you seem to think it has some contemporary validity. You're absolutely right. There's a lot in K vol 3 that's very enlightening on credit and the joint-stock company, to take two relevant examples. In fact, there's something on almost every page of Marx I've ever read that's enlightening and even inspiring. I think one reason for that is that his thought is in ceaseless motion, while later Marxists tended to freeze certain moments of Marx into dogma. Doug
[PEN-L:11248] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Social structue and hierarchy of capital:superprofiteers at the top
RO: I'm not sure I understand your question. A fundamental problem I am raising is that because foreign gross product type data isn't caclulated, foreign profit numbers are as reported by corps only, without the adjustments the BEA does to have the numbers better refelect economic reality. . . . I'm saying even if you had these numbers, you wouldn't know where to cut them if the firm's operations (and implicitly its profits) were spread over multiple nations, including the U.S. . . . In taxing multi-state corps, state governments don't even try to estimate profits by state; they use simple formulas to apportion them for tax purposes. You mean for a state income tax?. As I'm sure you know, corporate headquarters are often in a different state (e.g., Delaware) than are their production and sales. On what basis is the taxable revenue apportioned, if you know? Yes, state income tax. States use apportionment formulas based on some weighting of payroll, sales, and property in the taxing state. So if IBM's national profits are X, the taxing state's weighted share of the three factors applied to the company are is apportioned profits. mbs
[PEN-L:11244] Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Before I sent O'Brien's numbers, Ajit speculated that, if we assume that the take-off to industrialization requires an investment of approx 8% of the GDP, and that the domestic savings contributes 5% to 6% of that, whereas the colonies contribute 2% to 3%, then one cannot deny that that 2% or 3% played a critical role in allowing the take-off. But, clearly, what O'Brien numbers (cited below again) say is that "the colonial profits [in the best possible scenario] re-invested would have amounted to 10% of gross investment" - implying that the domestic savings would have contributed the other 90%!! "Among the many claims of this article is the highly damaging one that, if we agree with Bairoch's data that commodity trade between core and periphery amounted to no more than 4% of the aggregate GNP for Western Europe, and if we assume that core capitalists made such large profits as 50% on the trade turnover, and that they re-invested as high as 50% of their profits, the colonial profits re-invested would have amounted to only 1% og GNP, or 10% of gross investment." _ Just a few points. First, I would be very hesitant about buying his data. Look into all kind of biases there could be in his data collection. The categories such as "Western Europe" are usually fuzzy. In the context of hard data, I would rather stick with a better defined category as Britain. Second, as i have mentioned earlier. Trade data may not be all or even most important one that you need to look at. One needs to look at the data on plunder. As I said "home charges" would not figure in import-export data. They were direct transfers. Third, in international trade the international currency is of paramount importance. As i had suggested earlier, Britain couldn't have gone on buying from rest of the world, including the USA and China, unless Indian surpluses were there to pay for it. These relationships then become of critical importance. I think you need to give O'Brian's revisionist thesis as hard a run as you are trying to give to the so-called progressive thesis. Only then a serious product would come out of this. Cheers, ajit sinha ps. I think counterfactuals are mostly waste of time, and only designed to make ideological points. You cannot go back in history or do some sort of historical experimentation that would show you that 4 or 5% was not critical. All a historian can do is to show how things hung together. Counterfactuals are designed to make predictions. I think historians shouldn't be involved in the predicting game. Thus, for me, even the question that could Britain industrialize without its Indian Empire is a meaningless question. When you are dealing with real movement of time, you are dealing with total uncertainty, and wise men and women should shy away from getting into predicting game in such situations. That's why I think serious theorization can only deal with a given point in time rather than movement along time. Cheers, ajit sinha
[PEN-L:11190] Re: Re: Re: recession?
G'day Jim, I expect that Alan G. will try to keep the Wall Street/Main Street bubble economy growing as long as possible. But do you really think he cares about Gore? He's an erstwhile follower of Ayn Rand after all, while Gore embraces a totally technocratic ideology. Well, Rand was a bit all over the place, wasn't she? Greenspan is the fountainhead to whom all look for guidance - no more one of Rand's 'men of the mind' than a technocrat (an untenably thin distinction, anyway), reputed to be unrivalled in his manipulation of the technology of interest rates (and his ability to speak for great lengths of time without conveying meaning, but I digress). - And his 'mebbe we're in a new economy' line (as committed a claim as he has made in 12 years, I suspect) is nicely in line with the brand differentiation Al 'father-of-the-Net' Gore has chosen for himself ... - And both men obviously went to the same surgeon for their personalitectomies ... - And the new Gore has been very much the development-by-free-enterprise-even-if-that's-not-how-the-Net-actually-came- into-being-or-became-popular-in-the-first-place man these last four years or so ... - And isn't the new Greenspan the man with his all-knowing hands on the levers - and isn't that what a technocrat does? And George Dubya may draw the all-important Greenspan vote by endorsing school vouchers, killing more prisoners, etc. I wouldn't have thought issuing vouchers or cooking prisoners were particularly/definitively Randian manouvres. Anyway, doesn't *The Fountainhead* tell us it's okay to blow up the Fed and the IMF? After all, both are structures we originally built, only to have them rudely transformed at the hands of techno-bureau-crats. And doesn't *Atlas Shrugged* tell us that the bureaucratic manipulation of interest rates is nought but a feather aimed at the armpits of the god-like Soroses and Buffets who hold our world aloft? Isn't that sort of thing more particularly/definitively Randian? Al and Al are two of a kind, surely? Yours absolutely time-wastingly, Rob.
