--- "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [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. -- The Russian Empire managed to do in spades this while it still had serfs and tsars (I know there were capitalist relations too, but they were subordinate to the tsar's decrees). (And they were conquering other Europeans too of course. Further qualification: not all of it was conquest, since certain peoples, e.g. the Georgians, submitted to St. Petersburg in exchange for protection.) ===== Nu, zayats, pogodi! _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Express yourself with Y! Messenger! Free. Download now. http://messenger.yahoo.com
