[was: RE: [PEN-L] Panglossian economics] It looks to me as if the basic story is that the Western Europeans enjoyed some sort of luck that has nothing to do with genetic or cultural differences between Europeans and Asians. This luck allowed them to (1) conquer the Asians and other non-Europeans and (2) get beyond mere market economics to develop the capitalist mode of production before the Asians and other non-Europeans did so. Then, the conquests of non-Europeans and the development of capitalist became a mutually-reinforcing process, with conquests feeding capitalist development and capitalist development allowing further conquest.
Blaut and his followers seem to see this kind of story as being somehow "Eurocentric" even though it's based on luck -- and as JKS suggests, there's nothing good about foisting capitalism on the world, so it doesn't made Europe look good vis-a-vis non-Europe. To my mind, a Blautian criticism that rejects theories as "Eurocentric" would point to a genetic and/or a cultural explanation as central to those theories. And it might praise non-European areas for _not_ developing capitalism, especially if capitalism isn't some sort of prerequisite for the development of a future humane society (socialism). Also, unlike Marx, Lenin. and modern Marxian political economy, Blaut and his followers seem to conflate markets with capitalism. On the last, someone on the list said that the idea that antebellum Southern slavery is "not very controversial." It is with me. Slavery -- even when embedded within a capitalist social formation and dominated internationally by capitalist social relations -- is not capitalist. It is not an example of the capitalist mode of production. The direct producers were not "free in the double sense," which Marx saw as the _differentia specifica_ of capitalist social relations. That is, though the slaves were free from direct ownership of the means of subsistence and production (one type of freedom), they were clearly not free from bondage (the other type). The slave-owners may have thought like capitalists (as Fogel & Engerman argued) but that doesn't mean that they _were_ capitalists. Instead of considering ways to control workers via mechanization, for example, they thought about the costs and benefits of whipping the slaves (at least according to F&E). One's status of being a "capitalist" depends on the societal context, not on one's self-perception or way of thinking (at least in Marxian political economy). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine > -----Original Message----- > From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doug > Henwood > Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 8:58 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Panglossian economics > > > andie nachgeborenen wrote: > > >I never understood your enthusiasm for that book. > >Blaut seems to say (1) these authors don't recognize > >that capitalism is utterly evil and without redeeming > >value, and (b) they are racists because they don't > >recognoze that other cultures that are not European > >invented capitalism independently of the Europeans. If > >(1) is true, why is (2) supposed to be to the credit > >of the nonEuropeans? > > There's also the weird "prevailing westerlies" theory of the rise of > European imperialism. The European domination of the planet can be > explained entirely by the fact that wind patterns made it easier for > the white folks to sail their colonizing ships towards foreign > climes. I never understood how they got home if that were the case. > It also implies, like your query about (2), that had non-Europeans > had the same windy luck, they'd have done the same to the rest of the > world. > > Blaut also claimed that there was no boom in East Asia. > > Doug >
