Wow! What an extensive answer to base upon a basic misunderstanding. When
Cell talks about Japanese model, he's not talking about antebellum south.
He's talking aobut the south in the 20th Century, and how it compares to
Japan post-WWII.
I was just suggesting reading the book, the intent being to spark interest,
not debate.
A couple of quotes:
"...although segregation was not of course realted to state formation, as
in the autonomous nation of South Africa, it was related to the political
consolidation of the power elite in the Democratic Party. The timing of
that consolidation varied somewhat from state to state, depending on the
relative strength and relationship of the planter and industrial factions,
as well as on the intensity of the populist insurgency. From the
Mississippi Plan in 1890 until the last formal exclusion after 1900,
disfranchisement was usually a political response to the internal political
challenge of populaism. There is no doubt that it succeeded. The
artificial reduction in the size of the electorate confirmed the economic
and political hegemony of the Southern power elite for more than half a
century."
"The South was following a different path, one that was far less
spontaneous, far less natural to those who regard industrial capitalism and
free enterprise as the norms. Its economic system was much more closely
controlled and much more carefully orchestrated. The political factor was
far more decisive. In some ways, the revisionists [historical
revisionists] argue, the South's political economy had less in common with
the North than it did with the economies of Germany or Japan [today!!!].
Its pattern was modernization from above, what Barrington Moore has called
the Prussian route."
>Truly serious ruling classes do always keep a vigilant eye on the past. The
>association of the South with the Prussian model, no matter how materialist,
>even "Marxist" (particularly so if "Marxist") the analysis may sound, look
or
>even _be_, fits like glove to hand with the historic (that is, past, present
>and _future_) interests of the English bourgeoisie.
>
>Because what is lacking in the Prussian model is the foreign power leading
the
>march of the South towards full fledged slavery engaged in production of
cotton
>_for the British mills_, that is, in the end, as an export oriented
economy.
>The confusion is not an innocent one, as we shall see later.
>
>The reactionary features of the Prussian model, of course, and particularly
>some aspects of the relation between Junker and peasant, can sometimes
appear
>to be formally similar to those of the Antebellum South (mention not made of
>the fact that German peasants were _not_ property of the Junker).
>
>The objective situation and the consequent culture of the ruling classes,
>however, are absolutely different. The Southern gentleman (particularly the
>lady) was an admirer of French culture in the classical division of labor of
>mid 19th. Century Europe (while the British made business, they kept
themselves
>in hiding, smartly allowing the French to gather the glory of European
spirit,
>and the hatred of the oppressed masses when they realized the facts of
European
>domination, such as was the case in the River Plate Basin!).
>
>This was a direct consequence of the obvious fact that this class depended
on
>British manufacture to realize their capital. The Junker, much to the
>contrary, depending primarily on the consumption of German towns,
developed a
>strong German chauvinism on which, at a particular historic circumstance,
>modern Germany was built. The South would have never been able to generate a
>Bismarck, nor the local dinasty that put Shogunate to an end in Japan.
Much to
>the contrary, its nearest neighbours are the rotten, semi-feudal, old
regimes
>of Austria or the pre-Meiji Japan.
>
>Marx's ideas on the American Civil War and the German Unification are very
>important here. When this point is missed, then one easily falls into the
(of
>course, never outspoken, but always lurking) association of "non-Anglo
>capitalism" and "authoritarian state". This is precisely why this thesis,
>which puts into a dark shade the essential role played by the British
>metropolis in destroying not only any trace of humanity but also large
tracts
>of natural landscape in Antebellum South, is so favored with British
academics.
>
>Let us transport the equation to our own times. What the author states, if
>valid at all, means that there is ONLY ONE "SANE" WAY INTO MODERNITY,
which is
>the way that was followed by Britain. Other ways, which may of course
bring a
>country to modernity, will do so but at the terrible price of some
horrendous
>dictatorship (Hitler, Mussolini, the Japanese "Fascists", even De Gaulle
if you
>press me too much!) and of course World War.
>
>In fact, the actual simile for the Southern planters is not to be found in
>Europe, not even in Eastern Europe, but further South, in the West Indies
and
>in tropical Latin America. But of course, this way to look at the thing
implies
>to lay the fault of the tragedy at the adequate door, that of the then only
>hegemonic, now imperialist, bourgeoisies at the core.
>
>That is, it implies to return (once back again!) to Vladimir Illitch
Lenin. Too
>much for Cambridge, I presume.
>
>Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>_______________________________________________
>Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
>
"Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar
I have not slept.
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or hideous dream.
The Genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of a man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection"
-Brutus
_______________________________________________
Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
