Instead of debating counter-factuals, how about answering my question, which is why does it matter? I am serious and asking out of ignorance. I just don't understand why the issue is important to Marxists.
David Shemano From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Walker Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 9:06 PM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Capitalism and slavery No, it seems to me LESS than a parlor game. If David can produce a parallel case in which his counter-factual actually occurred then maybe he could make his argument. Just saying "if things had been different they could have still have been the same" is not quite a "counter-factual" it is simply bullshit. This is not to to gainsay bullshitting. But if one is going to bullshit, it seems to me that one would want to bullshit on behalf of a "moral principle" (or whatever you want to call it) that has some virtue to it. I mean virtue in some classical Roman sense of excellence. Bullshitting on behalf of accumulation has no moral excellence to it. It's bullshitting on behalf of bull shit. Bull shit all the way down. As in "I once saw a creature that was the issue of a cat and a rat..." On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Michael Smith <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > If, however, the point is that the rapid economic takeoff of capitalist > economies in the 19th century was "dependent" on its prior profitable > relationship with a slave economy, I just don't see it. > We can only speculate about counter-factuals, but the notion > that a "necessary" condition to the growth in the North in the > last quarter of the 19th Century was slavery in the South for > the prior 200 years does not ring true to me. Two quite different propositions, aren't they? On the one hand, a factual: 'depended on' -- this is where the money did in fact come from. On the other, a hypothetical: 'necessary condition' -- which we can translate from the hypostatical nominative as 'wouldn't have happened without'. Of course we will never know what would have happened without, so it's a best a parlor game to speculate. -- -- Michael J. Smith [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org 'I understand that you left your University rather suddenly. Now -- why was that?' 'I was sent down, sir, for indecent behaviour.' 'Indeed, indeed? Well, I shall not ask for details. I have been in the scholastic profession long enough to know that nobody enters it unless he has some very good reason which he is anxious to conceal.' _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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