It's been almost 2 months since I received this, but it's still useful to reply (when I have time, like now).
I wrote:>>To extend the motor/fuel metaphor, in the case of Spain, much of the "fuel" was useless and simply evaporated. On the other hand, the fuel was more useful to England, which had a proletarianized work-force (and a certain elasticity to supply) so that the increased demand could realize some extra surplus-value rather than simply causing inflation. >>(Of course, the first individuals who received the gold and similar Loot got >>a good deal for themselves.)<< LP:>This does not square with D. A. Brading's account in "Miners and Merchants in Bourbon Mexico: 1763-1810" (Cambridge Press, 1971). He claims that Mexico City was as advanced as Boston. Manufacturing was financed with profits from gold and silver mining. >"In 1804 the corregidor of Quer�taro counted 18 factories (obrajes) and 327 >workshops (trapiches) in his town, the former group operating 280 looms and >the latter up to 1,000. The larger firms wove woollen ponchos, blankets, >serges, and sarapes while the smaller produced coarse cottons. In addition, >there were another 35 workshops making hats and ten treating leather and suede >goods. Estimates as to how many people were engaged in this industry varied. >In 1803 the factory owners admitted that they kept over 2,000 men shut up >within the walls of their prison-like establishments. In the same year the >corregidor stated that some 9,000 persons of both sexes were occupied in the >spinning, weaving and finishing of cloth. The industry's consumption of wool >averaged about a million pounds and the value of its product was later >reckoned to reach over million pesos a year. These figures, moreover, excluded >the 3,000 workers employed by the tobacco monopoly."(6)< Obviously, there were "pockets of capitalism" outside of England (the aggressor homeland of capitalism). But it was in England that capitalism first had the "critical mass" of proletarianization of the sort that Marx described in the last section of CAPITAL. Further, in 1804, capitalism had been fully established for more than 100 years in England. You could say that Mexico City was a latecomer (though maybe not: I just don't know). Being a latecomer -- and/or being dominated by an imperialist power -- puts a country at a disadvantage: places like Argentina retreated economically once they became dependencies of England. Mexico had problems of being dominated by Spain (until 1810), instability and war with the U.S. (1846-48), a civil war (1858-61), the French invasion (1864-67), and eventually domination by the U.S. (when Porfirio Diaz ruled). It was only a Revolution that ended that (though the Revolution itself ended). >The same kind of evidence exists for Spanish cities. Gold and silver were not >used wastefully in Spain. They helped to fuel a mercantile capitalist system. >Spain was eclipsed by England not because it had different class relations but >for other reasons that are too complex to go into here. I will say this, >however. Spanish agriculture was based on tenant leasing, just like England. >Even Robert Brenner admits this.< I don't know anything about this topic, especially what Brenner thinks of it. Jim Devine, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/
