At 07:36 04/08/00 +0200, you wrote:
>I just heard about that on the radio. Google then found an URL for me:
>
>http://www.u-paris10.fr/ActuelMarx/depmed.htm
>
>It's in French. It shortly presents a book of Guy Bois (a medieval historian)
>comparing the depression of 1300 et 1460 with the current crisis.
This is a very interesting historical period. A recent series on Channel 4
(UK) has demonstrated that much more detailed historical evidence is emerging.
The abstract on the web-site looks typically vague and suggestive, rather
than tight. But the period of history allows us to look at a precapitalist
formation in Europe, at a period of great change. It should therefore help
us to move away from a simple linear reductionist model of economic
development to being able to see the economies of societies in a more
systemic way.
The period covered came at the end of an enormous growth of the productive
forces of early mediaeval Europe. This led to the point where as in other
civilisations it was hovering on the edge of an industrial revolution. Some
of the features had accidental forms: eg the Channel 4 series emphasised
the role of certain monastic orders in promoting the efficient use of
labour in combination with technological development.
But the decisive rate-limiting step was the Black Death, which shook the
whole basis of the feudal social compromise between serf and lord.
There are no signs that a population collapse is the rate-limiting feature
of the present global economy.
Chris Burford
London
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