Yoshie:
>Why should you be bothered if the author of a book you criticized on
>an e-list doesn't write back? It seems you are the only one who is
>bothered by an absence of a response. Lots of us have already
>responded to your criticism of Ellen Wood from various perspectives
>(and this is not the first PEN-l debate on her work), to take just
>one example. Do responses from the PEN-l rabble fail to satisfy you?
Generally speaking I find PEN-L very unsatisfactory because they consist of
abstract declarations such as "the key is M-C-M'" or "Marx understood all
this as mercantile capitalism" which are conversation-stoppers when you
stop and think about it. Who needs to examine social relations in 17th
century Peru if you are happy quote-mongering from Capital, v1 or v3.
I tend to ignore this kind of talmudic recitation and concentrate on
reading scholarly material like James Lang's "Conquest and Commerce" or
William Darity's "A Model of 'Original Sin': Rise of the West and Lag of
the Rest" in the American Economic Review. In a few days I will have my
final word on Wood-Brenner, using much of this material. As you should know
by now, Yoshie, I don't enjoy tit-for-tat exchanges when it comes to 16th
and 17th century history, but prefer to go into the woodshed until my
project is ready for prime-time.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
