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One of the big polItical debates on the left has been around the ‘Brenner thesis’. Robert Brenner is part of a school of Marxists who concentrate on changes within Europe, especially changed social relations on the land, to explain the rise of capitalism. While Marx pays a lot of attention to this in ‘Capital’, particularly in his discussion of primitive accumulation, Marx also emphasises the role of foreign plunder, including the enslavement of many millions of Africans (a substantial number of whom died while being taken across the Atlantic by European slave merchants), in the rise of capitalism. One of the good things about this article is that it deals with the central role played by plunder of what is now the Third World in the rise of capitalism. Uneven development of different parts of the world isn’t just a natural occurrence but a *necessary prerequisite* for the emergence of industrial capitalism in the West, while the rise of imperialism copper-fastens such uneven development, ensuring that huge swathes of the world get permanent under-development. Well, permanent as long as capitalism remains. https://rdln.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/how-capitalism-under-develops-the-world-2/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
