Sartesian wrote:
It is one thing to recognize slavery as providing a critical input to the growth of industrial capitalism. It is quite another thing to claim that a)the class relations, the relation of labor to property expressed in slavery, is the source of the social relations that define capital or b)identical to the social relations that define modern capital.
I don't know about Brenner, because I haven't read it, but S's points sound very right to me. I think Louis fails to see this out of stubbornness. He clings to the idea that the issue is historical. It is not. As a result, what could be an enlightening discussion can easily degenerate into a waste of emotional energy. The issue of the *local*, specific transitions to capitalist relations is not only about past history. It is also about current history. As we speak, there are regions of the world and entire areas of social in which the transition to capitalist relations (as the transition to germinal socialist relations) is a disputed, ongoing process. But the debate pivots on logic, not history. The historical details of the transitions to capitalist relations, local and/or global, will remain *unresolved* (or will be resolved only tentatively) for as long as new evidence is found or new events force a reinterpretation of the old evidence. Louis is right that one cannot map from views on this debate to political views on X or Y issue of the day. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about method or logic. That's pretty much all we have to orient ourselves in specific historical situations. A slight initial difference in method can translate into a huge divergence down the political road.
