By these standards, Brenner isn't Eurocentric at all. But then again, definitions are arbitrary. Bagchi combines the concepts of Eurocentrism and pro-capitalism.
> From chapter 2 of "Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of > Capital" by Amiya Kumar Bagchi (a review of this book by Immanuel > Wallerstein is scheduled to appear in an upcoming MR.) > > As we have seen, the Eurocentric historians portray the record of Europe's > internal ascent and its outdistancing of the rest of the world as a much > more ancient history than it actually is. There is little evidence that > European records of human survival, health, consumption, or incomes were in > advance of major Asian countries before the nineteenth century. Most of the > advances in the crude indicators of human development were registered in > Europe only from the late eighteenth century. Even in England, the homeland > of the first industrial revolution, the changeover to factory methods was > not attended immediately with an improvement in consumption and nutrition of > the ordinary people. The grandiose invocation of a "consumer revolution" in > eighteenth-century England by McKendrick has not stood up to serious > empirical scrutiny. As far as ordinary men, women, and children working in > the fields, factories, and mines were concerned, the Industrial Revolution > turned out to be an "industrious revolution" (to use a characterization of > De Vries 1993, pp. 117-18). The industriousness was induced by poverty as > well as the prospect of making a living by producing goods for the expanding > market. The greater industriousness of workers was in many instances > associated with worse states of nutrition, poorer physique, and shorter > lives. In the phase of domination of merchant capital and so-called > protoindustrialization, this also involved more work by women and children > working under a putting-out system. etc. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
