>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/21/01 10:23AM >>>
>Mike Davis in his new book on 19th c genocides describes how British
>laisser-faire policies guaranteed famines + colonial subjection in India;
The things which guarantee colonial subjection are called armies. The invisible
hand doesn't. As to famines, there are obviously multiple factors and everyone has
a different explanation.
((((((((
CB: The technical name for armies is "the state" , standing bodies of armed men,
prisons, guns, and other repressive mechanisms. The invisible hand and laissez-faire
policies are expressions of the bourgeoisie, the ruling class in this colonialism,
which owns the basic means of production as private property, which ownership is
enforced and protected by the state, controlled by the bourgeoisie. The refusal to
give starving people food because it is private property and they can't buy it from
the owners, is the direct way in which the bourgeoisie and bourgeois private property
( laissez-faire, invisible hand) causes the famine through the enforcement of the
state.
(((((((((
>imperialism, in this view, worked to consolidate and entrench the
>core-periphery divide which is still accelerating today and is still at the
>heart of the modern - imperialist- world-system.
>
>Here is quite a different view, by an authoritative *Indian* economist, which
>argues that it was the fault of the caste system. This, not the Brits, stopped
>Indian take-off in its tracks.
It seems to me that colonial subjection, industrialisation, and famines are related
but different matters. Why are you lumping them together, Mark? The abstract talks
about growth in per capital incomes... Whatever the level of aggregate per capita
incomes, not enough food and/or too unequal distribution means famines. It comes
down to who gets the income. One can imagine industrialisation plus colonial
subjection and famines. Isn't it precisely what happend?
BTW, he's not an *Indian* economist but an Indian *economist*. Do economists
have a country? :-)
Julien
_______________________________________________
CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
_______________________________________________
CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
