Here's a Brenner-type rational choice answer. The urge to rob, oppress, exploit, and pillage is old and comes up a lot. But when you get the right set of circumstances -- labor shortage and declining feudalism(thus free labor), appropriate legal institutions that promote economically rational use of resources rather than letting feudal oligarchs tie things up for the benefit of their ne'er-do-well descendents (thank you, common-law judges and lawyers), and a combination of technical and military innovations that permit intensive exploitation of those resources both at home and aboard, you develop a class of people whose grasp of arithmetic is focused on addition, if not multiplication. That forces everyone else to play if they want to stay players.
--- Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Devine, James wrote: > > >It's capitalist competition that encourages > reinvestment in economic might. > > Well, yeah, I knew that. Where'd it come from in the > first place? > Where'd the urge for primitive accumulation itself > come from? > > Doug > _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com
