[Wood] like Brenner, thinks that capitalist class relations, in
>farming particularly, is the main explanation for Great Britain's
>phenomenal success--an absurd idea of course.
Nothing in what you say suggests that this is an absurd idea. What is absurd
about it? The other historical materialist candidate is the development of
the productive forces--Cohen's answer--but this is a nonstarter, as the
productive forces didn't actually develop much from, say 1550 to 1700, in
which time capitalist social relations had taken firm root in England.
>This leads us to a key question which I find practically ignored in Brenner
>and Woods. Namely, does the growth of agrarian capitalism ensure a happy,
>upward path toward the industrial revolution and well-fed wage workers?
>Frankly, most of what I have seen in Brenner and Woods seems innocent not
>only what I have read in recent ecological analysis of capitalist
>agriculture but what Marx himself wrote. For Marx, capitalist agriculture
>is filled with contradictions.
Where do you get this stuff? You have confused Brenner--I haven't read
Wood--with the neo-Smithian view he expressly attacks, and maybe even with
Hayek, who argued in a long discredited piece that the English working class
was better off in every way at the end of the 18th c than at the start.
Brenner believes no such thing. Indeed, I don't know who does. Of course he
knows that capitalist agriculture and development is filled with
contradictions. In England, it did lead to industrial revolution--and
Dickensian poverty. But this is a cliche, if a true one, and one that
Brenner is fully aware of. Sheez, Lou, you may be enjoy being you, and God
bless you, but can't you make being you accurate as well?
--jks
--jks
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