Re: [PEN-L] FW: Eurocentrism and capitalism

[Devine, James]

I wrote: > > 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).<<

Louis P writes:
> You are superimposing a value system on Jim Blaut that he never really  subscribed to. He never wrote about how "evil" capitalism was. He assumed that his readers accepted this.<

That he used that kind of assumption implies that he thought that capitalist was "evil."  Similarly, those who believe that capitalism is "good" assume that others agree.

> He was much more interested in correcting the historical record. This was a scholarly endeavor that  involved a critical look at the Oriental Mode of Production and other problematic aspects of Marxist discourse both past and present. This was a debate within Marxism. <

a good thing to do. The "Oriental Mode of Production" is especially problematic. Samir Amin has a good discussion here. (He develops the idea of the "tributary mode of production" to replace it.) Are there any Marxist scholars who embrace the idea of the OMP and have written during the last 20 years or so?

> When he wrote about people such as Jared Diamond or William McNeill, the emphasis was more on the value of Marxism as an explanatory tool as opposed to strictly technological or climatological interpretations that omitted the class struggle.... <

Diamond's explanation is more "ecological" than technological or climatological. I wouldn't call his story "Eurocentric," especially since his "Europe" reaches into Africa and Asia.  He obviously ignores the class struggle, though it's amazing that his conception of the state is straight out of V. Gordon Childe, a heavily Marx-influenced thinker.

 

Why is leaving out class struggle "Eurocentric"? It seems that it would be simply _wrong_, not Eurocentric, to do so.

 

>> Also, unlike Marx, Lenin. and modern Marxian political economy, Blaut and his followers seem to conflate markets with capitalism.<<

> This is not correct. Blaut was not about "markets". He was simply pointing out that commodity production was generalized throughout the world in the late middle ages. There was nothing unique about rural England, <

 

Other countries (outside of Western Europe) had mass waves of primitive accumulation of the sort described by Marx in CAPITAL?

>> 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.<<

> Well, with this definition, neither was Junkers Germany or Meiji Restoration Japan.<

 

right. On the former, that's why Engels and others wrote of the "second serfdom." (Like antebellum slavery, it was embedded in the world market without being capitalist.) I don't know enough about the latter to comment.

 

>As a rule of thumb, if the bourgeoisie cannot produce commodities with the ready stock of free ex-farmers, it will enslave them or a ready-made substitute...<

 

Of course, whether it _can_ enslave them depends on the strength of the resistance of the rural population.

 

Further, mechanization (Marx's "modern industry") means that the bourgeoisie can reduce its reliance on a ready stock of free ex-farmers. He saw modern industry as the full _expression_ of capitalism, a capitalism that no longer had to rely on direct force in production.

Jim Devine