Treacy: You can read many British economic histories that talk about
capital formation that never mention profits of slaving. Indeed,
when you read about Liverpool, and Bristol wealth it seems that
"Black Birding" was never the main source of maritime profits.
The inclusion of Japan to this thesis is strange given the way
things were run in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] copyrighted
On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, James Michael Craven wrote:
> I picked up a book the other day "Centuries of Economic
> Endeavor:Parallel Paths in Japan and Europe and Their Contrast With
> the Third World" by John P. Powelson, Univ of Michigan, 1997 ed. On
>
> "Why do Japan, western Europe, North America, and Australia and New
> Zealand lead the world in economic development, and why are their
> prosperity infrastructure, and standards of living far, far greater
> than those of the less-developed zones?
> This book offers an answer to this puzzle." (p1)
>
> This book offers "an" answer to this puzzle? I questioned to myself.
>
> So after reading this extraordinary statement I went immediately to
> the index of the book--a habit of mine to get an early fix on the
> working paradigms of the author. I looked for "imperialism"--nothing;
> I looked for "colonialism"--4 pages on Africa and 2 pages on India; I
> looked for "aboriginal peoples"--nothing; I looked for "racism"--
> nothing; I looked for "gender or sex discrimination"--nothing; I
> looked for "dualism or disarticulation"--nothing; I looked for
> references to domination/selective uses of internatnational
> organizations like IMF and World Bank by so called "developed
> nations"--nothing; I looked for references to "covert operations and
> social systems engineering by DC's in LDC areas"--nothing; I looked
> up "De jure--and/versus--"De Facto"(Institutions etc); I looked for
> "unequal exchange"--nothing;
...
> So the author gives his main thesis on page 1:
>
> " In both Japan and northwestern Europe, the methods, rules, and
> instruments of policy and exchange were fashioned primarily by
> bargaining among the parties concerned: farmers, landowners,
> producers and traders... As the parties negotiated with each other
> and with the sovereign, they built into their systems ways of holding
> each other accountable for performance and for efficient use of
> resources, both public and private. On these foundations, economic
> development took the form of millions upon millions of positive-sum
> transactions, agreed upon by thousands upon thousands of people and
> groups, acting separately, often independently of superior authority.
> While the sovereign attempted to interfere with economic endeavor at
> all times, for the most part the people resisted, and for the most
> part the people won."
> In the rest of the world by contrast, economic endeavor and its
> rules and instruments were conducted or fashioned primarily by the
> sovereign, using the weight of superior authority and military
> command. Here the people either could not resist, or they lost. These
> areas are now the less-developed zones." (p1)
>
> So here we have a litany of tautologies and worse than "revisionist
> history" basically rationalizing some very ugly historical processes
> and structures of imperial domination; e.g. only "western"
> institutions and concepts of "economic freedom" promote economic
> development "therefore" the western countries are developed because
> they developed "western" institutions--a monstrous anti-historical
> tautology. Of course no mention of inequalities within these western
> countries; no mention of wholesale slaughter of aboriginal peoples
> and national minorities; no mention of widening inequalities of
> wealth and income; no mention of widening gaps between De jure rights
> and promises versus de facto realities; no mention of the fact that
> many of these deleterious--to development etc--institutions,
> structures and regimes in the Third World were created, installed and
> supported by imperial powers in the developed countries to promote
> economic surplus creation/appropriation and expanded reproduction of
> a globalized imperial system for the advantage of imperial interests;
>
> Again all this fancy language hiding some ugly sophistry reminded me
> of the poem by Bertolt Brecht:
>
> Those who take the most from the table,
> teach contentment;
> Those for whom the taxes are destined,
> demand sacrifice;
> Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry
> of wonderful times to come;
> Those who lead the country into the abyss,
> call ruling difficult,
> for ordinary folk.
> (Bertolt Brecht)
>
> Jim Craven
>
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