I appreciate Ted's reproduction of Smith's comments on this process, but... Brenner shows how Smith has to assume capitalist relations in order to explain these capitalist relations. Brenner goes into this pretty extensively in several works....I would recommend Property and Progress: Where Adam Smith Went Wrong; I would recommend it but I'm not sure it's been published yet. Shame on me.
Anyway, Jim makes the critical point, raising it as he usually does, as a question. This is not to say that no sale, no distress sale, or "foreclosure" took place until capitalist relations had conquered the entire countryside-- nothing springs full blown and all at once out of the forehead of the yeoman farmer, the squire, or the merchant-- but the sale of land, the transformation of landed estates into moveable property requires the existence of the market relations, of the production for exchange inherent in and primary to capitalism. In my personal view, this transformation takes its most acute and "exemplary" form in the French revolution with the transformation of landed estates into collateral, assets, vehicles, values behind the assignats. And another thing, in all good humor-- If potatos were so crucial in the development/creation of capitalism, I wish we would hurry up and find the tuber that would create socialism. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 1:00 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] I say po-tay-to, you say po-tah-to >
