Well, all-righty then, sounds close to reasonable on both our parts. Which makes me very uncomfortable.
-----Original Message----- >From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: May 9, 2007 1:21 PM >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: [PEN-L] More on Transition, Brenner, Allen, Productivity > >>Louis, >> >>I thought your original point was that Allen's article was a definitive >>refutation of the "Brenner thesis." I think it's been made clear that >>Allen's work in part and in whole is no such refutation and actually >>supports Brenner's analysis of agricultural productivity in Europe. > >Definitive? No, it is just food for thought. Just like G.E. Mingay's >"The Size of Farms in the Eighteenth Century" that appeared in The >Economic History Review in 1962. Mingay states that only 18 percent >of British farms were over 100 acres, a generally agreed upon >definition of a large farm. > >>Now in reference to your contention that "they were all capitalists, >>identical in modes of expropriation; we were all proletarians bonded >>together in our exploitation," it is abundantly clear that Marx held >>to no such uniformity of capital, and in fact, understood the "uneven >>and combined development" nature of capital even as he analyzed concretely >>the essence of industrial capital. > >I don't think that there is such a thing as "uniformity of capital". >When the Belgians colonized the Congo and dragooned the natives into >harvesting rubber for tire companies in the mother country, there was >no "uniformity", but it is all part of the capitalist system. When >slaves picked cotton in Mississippi that was turned into textiles in >Birmingham, that was all part of the capitalist system, even though >"uniformity" does not really describe it. > >>Did the same economic laws of capital that applied to the US North, >>the English, Dutch, 19th century economies function internally and >>identically in the US Southern,Philippine, Latin American, Caribbean, >>and Russian plantation, manor, great house economies. Absolutely not. >>The class relations were different. > >Of course they were different. Capitalism is a complex system. > > > >-- > >www.marxmail.org
