> Devine, James wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> I know this is
dangerous territory, since it will cause explosions in
> certain volatile
quarters.
I'm hoping that any volatile pen-lers stay out.
> But
is "luck" the right word? Something
> happened within Europe that
encouraged conquest and led to the
> reinvestment of surplus rather than
its consumption. I realize that
> historians have devoted their lives to
examining just what this
> something was, but luck makes it sounds like
winning at roulette
> rather than something explicable by social
science.
In my mind, "luck" refers to things that can't be explained,
i.e., where there's no reasonable theory for it. When we can explain it, it's no
longer luck. (It used to be thought that coin-flips were entirely random -- so
that results arose from luck. Someone made a mechanical coin-flipper that
produced long strings of heads (or tails), so one element of coin-flipping is no
longer a matter of luck.)
>Something happened within Europe that
encouraged conquest and led to the
reinvestment of surplus rather than its
consumption.<
Most socioeconomic systems -- including whatever you
call the system that ruled pre-capitalist China -- encourage conquest. On the
other hand, once capitalism was established (partly or entirely by luck), its
"laws of motion" encourage reinvestment in economic might. (BTW, "feudalism"
seems to encourage _military_ reinvestment.)
Jim D.
