At 10:40 AM 05/19/2001 -0300, you wrote:
> > I agree with Jim. That's basically the crux of the debate: what is
> > the most important causal mechanism that gave rise to capitalism,
> > i.e., M-C-M'? Not culture, not climate, not environment, not
> > geography, not demography (understood in the Malthusian sense), not
> > quantitative growth of markets & towns, but class struggles that
> > gradually led to free labor & eventually to wage labor.
> >
> > Yoshie
>
>no books, no research, no debate, no history. just jim
We don't need these condescending remarks.
Unlike some, I do not wanted to be treated as an "authority," whose words
are seen as presumed to be true until proven otherwise. However, in the
passage above, Yoshie was not treating me as an authority. Rather, she was
simply agreeing with me.
Further, in some circumstances (but not all), "books, research, debate,
history" are _not needed_. Yoshie was making a simple theoretical point,
about what's important. If one follows Marx's definition and theory of
capitalism -- which is somewhat cryptically summarized as M-C-M' -- then
one can talk about what caused it to arise. If one doesn't -- if one has a
fuzzy non-definition of capitalism as many do or if one defines capitalism
as simply a bunch of markets or as a "rational" attitude or as
individualistic greed -- it's hard if not impossible to draw any lines in
history between different epochs.
In practice, of course, it is hard to draw lines. Even though the 1789
French Revolution, for example, was very dramatic, it can be the result of
on-going trends that didn't change that much of the _ancien regime_ except
at the superficial level. But I think that it's best not to dwell only on
empirical analysis. Theory is needed to understand empirical evidence,
while such evidence can lead to changes in the theory. Seen in those terms,
the 1789 revolution can be seen as tipping the balance toward the
development of a new kind of society in France. I'll leave it at the
abstract level and hope that people won't quibble but will instead try to
understand the point.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
