CB: >Well, no. A culture that goes around destroying and conquering other cultures and peoples is morally inferior to those other cultures.<
Jim Devine:I haven't noticed many cultures refraining from destroying and conquering cultures -- unless they happen to be small and weak and unable to do so. Primitive-communist societies do not so, but they lack the states needed to conquer & destroy. CB: Yes there are many , many cultures in history, most in history, that were not conquering cultures, because most in history were communist or significantly communal. Most did not have states as you say. The vast majority in Africa, America, Oceania , Australia and Asia were not conquering cultures at the time of the European conquest. Those that did conquer, did not conquer on the scale that the Europeans started conquering with the rise of capitalism in Europe. JD:I think it's wrong to assume that Europeans "chose" capitalism (as the above implies). History has a logic that is beyond the volition of individuals and cultures; capitalism has an inner logic that meant that it was a system that most class systems could have spawned. CB: This is a bit too much dismissive of agency and free will. Humans make their own history. Sure they don't make it just as they please, but they make it as they choose to some extent. All is not determined by the past. Some is chance and chosen freely of will. Where is the locus of this "history" this "logic" ? It is in living human beings. Some Europeans did chose capitalism, or else it wouldn't have come about. The logic of the culture of feudalism was not absolutely binding on all to make capitalism. There was a struggle, and the bourgeoisie won in their drive to make capitalism. In struggling for it, they chose it. If there were no choice, there never could occur a Babeuf, Marx or Lenin. ^^^^^^^^ Further, it wasn't "Europeans" who started capitalism: it was the post-feudal upper classes in England. ^^^^ CB: Post-feudal upper classes in England and elsewhere are appropriately referred to as "Europeans" . Capitalism did not start only in England. It also started in Portugal with the slave trade, and elsewhere. Capitalism has a multilocal origin, though it did get focussed in England at some points of time. ^^^^^^^^ JD: Third, if those folks hadn't done it, other cultures would have done so:according to some anti-Eurocentric views, the Chinese had capitalism long before China encountered European capitalism. If Europe had stumbled, in other words, China would have taken up the task of "perfecting" capitalism and spreading it all around the world independently. ^^^^ CB: This counterfactual is a point in dispute. It is not proven that capitalism, with its world historic inferior morality, would have arisen out of other historical traditions ( "ethnic groups"). That's begging the question, asserting as true your side of the issue we are disputing. The Chinese didn't conquer the globe before the Europeans did, and there is no proof they would have,if the Europeans didn't .They didn't use their prior discovery of gunpowder to do what the Europeans used it for. ^^^^^^ >I guess I should add there is no such thing as "capitalism" without the global conquest. Capitalism is inherently imperialistic.< I'd agree. However, pre-capitalist class-based modes of production also involved efforts at world conquest. It's only the development of communication, transportation, and weapons technologies that allowed a more successful effort by the Euros. CB: Not world, in the sense of global , conquest, not nearly. ^^^^^^^^ >We know Europeans have conquered the globe like no other group in history. It's not in their genes. It's got to be because of their culture and history.< JD:This simply repeats what was said before. CB: No. The genes were not mentioned before. ^^^^^^^ >Put it this way. Most of the literature debates why the Western Europeans started capitalism, and other cultures didn't. What is agreed to among most discussants in the literature is that capitalism _did_ start in Western Europe. Most discussions assume some type of "superiority" in this capitalism because of material abundance it has brought. It is technologically superior, but _morality_ has to do with how people are treated, not the level of technological development.< ^^^^^^^ I disagree with the literature. The Europeans invented capitalism simply as a matter of luck. It's a mistake to simply turn a existing (obnoxious) literature upside-down. ^^^^^^ CB: No. It was both chance and necessity, free will and determinism. The way I'm turning it around is not a mistake, but valid. ^^^^^^ >Capitalism has screwed over the most people in history. This means that the Western Europeans' culture, the bearer of capitalism, is pegged as morally inferior rather than superior to other cultures.< This misses another point. European culture isn't an "independent variable" in history. In fact, European culture as we know it is to large extent a _product_ of 300 to 500 years of capitalism. It's not just that people make history. History makes people. JD ^^^^^^^^^ CB: It is also a product of European feudalism and slavery. This is why Marx and Engels put the history of all three European modes of production in _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_. European capitalism ( something of a redundancy) is the product of its prior history. Men (sic) make their own history , but all previous history lays on their brains like a nightmare and thereby has some determining effect on it, and combines with chance in making the new mode.
