Matthew:
I agree with you totally.
A longer and more detailed piece by Ron Bailey: "Africa, the slave trade,
and the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe and the United States: A
bibliographic review." AMERICAN HISTORY: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW
2(1986)1-91.
Jim B
PB:
c) a "progressive nationalism" (again, a PEN-L phrase) which, in
advocating WB/IMF defunding, takes heart and strength and
knowledge from the potential unity of the variety of particularistic
struggles against local forms of structural adjustment,malevolent
"development" projects and Bretton
Jim Devine:
No, its not "yes and no" regarding the importance of slave production and
slavery. It is "yes."
You forget that the slave plantation system was generating profitss from
1600 (Brazil) and more so from 1650 (Barbados, Jamaica).
The flaw in your argument is this: At that period there
Response to Rod on agriculture:
Rod: " A growing capitalist labour force has to be fed and England did that
many from its home production until the 19th century. Freeing labour from
agriculture requires an increase in agricultural productivity. This came
about mainly from new forms of
G'day Jim,
Terrific thread!
Surely nobody here is talking 'superiority'? I'm going back to residue of
high school history here (I really shouldn't be in this thread but I'm keen
to get a grasp), but is it not true that the Chinese invented/discovered
gunpowder? Does this make their culture
Courage under fire
Do women behave differently to men in war zones? Victoria Brittain talks to
fellow correspondent, Irene Slegt, one of the last three journalists who
stayed to report the violence that has erupted since the referendum in East
Timor
The Guardian, Monday September 20, 1999
Was
Engels' position is that the laws of motion of nature and society assert themselves
amidst a welter of accidents, in the dialectic of chance and necessity ( See
_Anti-Duhring_ and _The Dialectics of Nature_).
As far as applying probability logic to the revolution in the mode of production in
The LAPD, the FBI, the CIA are all trying to
prove that
they are the best at apprehending criminals. The
President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit
into a forest and each of them has to catch it.
The CIA goes in. They place animal informants
throughout the
Fostater,
You must admit that Darity - in what you cite below - is all over
the place, shifting his analysis from the slave trade, to the colonial
trade, to
total foreign trade, and back to the slave trade - presumably hoping
that one of his arguments will hit the right target.
I will try very
"Rod Hay" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/21/99 09:42AM
Jim and Mathew: I am certainly not saying that Europeans were "better,
brighter, bolder" than any one else. There is no doubt that the Chinese (and
many others as well) had a very highly developed societies. But something
sparked the Europeans
Carrol wrote:
Lou believes that this empirical question
is at the source of eurocentrism. I believe the source of eurocentrism
*is in the present*, not the past.
I agree. No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to
Concerning the question of whether or not "New" World slave owners were
capitalists during (say) the 19th century, I had answered unequivocally
"yes no." Yes, they were in the sense that they were in a capitalist
social formation dominated by industrial capital in its core -- but no they
weren't
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/21/99 12:35PM
There have been horrible social disasters in these parts of the
world, but they're not accurately described as recessions or
depressions in the economic sense except for the former USSR. Africa
shows positive GDP growth in the 1990s, and East
I agree that these questions are wrong questions. However, the problem I see with the
one ( and maybe another )is the double question in one, on the model of the old trick
lawyer's question, "When did you stop beating your wife ?". This is really two
questions: Did you beat your wife ? If yes,
Louis Proyect wrote:
Has anyone here read Robin Blackburn's histories of slavery? He argues
that slavery was seminal in the development of Europe. Any comments?
Sam Pawlett
THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800.
By Robin Blackburn . 582 pp.,
I
"James M. Blaut" wrote:
Carrol:
... So questions of the form, "Why didn't China? are, in my
humble opinion, no longer interesting.
Jim, my core point is that such questions *never* were interesting -- or,
more explicitly, that even asking them reflects a false sense of history.
They
Carrol,
I do not reject the role of random accident in
history.
But in this case it was not random accident that
set Columbus to trying to cross the Atlantic. He was
merely the culmination of a long business-motive
driven effort that had been going on for some time,
with the earlier
Carrol writes: But this proposition of Rod's does show that their
objections to his politics are richly grounded. A "universal politics" is
simply another name for support in practice of eurocentrism and western
imperialism.
It should be noted that the "old-fashioned Marxism" of the 3rd 4th
Jim Devine wrote:
No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to 'Europeans.'
is there anyone on pen-l who thinks that non-Europeans are inferior to
Europeans? (I'd like an electronic show of hands.) Yoshie, do you
Actually, much of what not many of us disagree with in "postmodernism," i.e.
rejection of positivism, etc., is in the anti-eurocentric writings of the
19th and 20th centuries. But the larger point is about (and I'll skip the
quotes around every word) frames of reference, world views, conceptual
Carrol wrote:
Lou believes that this empirical question
is at the source of eurocentrism. I believe the source of eurocentrism
*is in the present*, not the past.
I agree. No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to
Yoshie writes:
Apparently, on PEN-L, questions such as 'why China failed to become
capitalist?' are quite compelling (enough to become a long, contentious
thread and to launch related threads) and make listers like Ricardo even
want to speculate on various non-material causes for this supposed
Lou, how could you possible know what kind of person I am. What my
"ideological committments are" What my political committments are. Has your
former heroine Ellen Wood suddenly become "ideologically" committed because
she disagrees with Jim. The debate is about interpretations of what has
FYI--
There are no lack of issues.
This week, the Senate Rules committee plans to address Senator Sam
Brownback's Senate Resolution 172 "To establish a special committee
of the Senate to address the cultural crisis facing America." The
notion of a Culture Committee at all sets
At 05:30 PM 9/21/99 -0400, you wrote:
Jim,
Well, such institutions as accounting and
banking were introduced into England from
Flanders and Northern Italy. They did not
develop them autochthonically, although the
Scottish banks were centers of considerable
institutional evolution in how
Robin Blackburn, "The Making of New World Slavery":
A tradition of British Marxist historiography culminating in Eric
Hobsbawms Industry and Empire (1964) and Christopher Hills From
Reformation to Industrial Revolution (1968) has argued that British
colonial expansion did indeed furnish
Louis Proyect wrote:
Robin Blackburn, "The Making of New World Slavery":
There are many interesting graphs in Blackburn's chapter, but for brevity's
sake and in order not to upset Carrol Cox, I will only cite one which deals
with British important of cotton, essential to the textile
What you can surmise is what would have been in those countries which
produced their own textiles for many centuries before British outlawing of
domestic production in those countries, forcing their own textiles on the
populations instead. It doesn't take much to figure they would have
continued
Mathew Forstater wrote:
What you can surmise is what would have been in those countries which
produced their own textiles for many centuries before British outlawing of
domestic production in those countries,
Mat, what we don't have to surmise is that your politics and mine are
awfully
Jim Devine wrote:
Here's Solidarity's statement. I'll let others decide whether this
contradicts Marxist principles or not.
I think it's a stupid and shitty position and will haunt them in the
future. It's also a sad position because AAC is a pretty good
journal and Solidarity is in many
Phyllis Bennis, "Calling the Shots", (Olive Branch, 1996):
THE FOUNDERS, THE HISTORY
The UN Charter is filled with stirring rhetoric that seizes the heart and
captures the imagination. Written for a world so recently threatened by the
slaughter of fascism, it called for countries to come
Louis writes: ... Solidarity has just endorsed UN troops in East Timor, a
clear violation of Marxist principles.
I may disagree with them on that one, but I'm sure that their justification
for that position is at least highly informed about the subject (rather
than simply applying dogma). (I
BTW, unless things have changed drastically, the guy some have dismissed as
"Eurocentric" (Bob Brenner) is a leader of Solidarity.
Not that one thing has much to do with another, but Solidarity has just
endorsed UN troops in East Timor, a clear violation of Marxist principles.
Louis Proyect
Rob,
Actually it was the Chinese who first figured
out how to use gunpowder to make guns and
cannons. The technology diffused westwards.
Indeed, it was the tremendous edge in cannons
that the Ottoman Turks had that allowed them to
finally conquer Constantinople in 1453. Arguably
in the
A question to Jim Blaut:
I am not quite sure what are you trying to demonstrate in this and related
threads:
- that slavery and colonial exploitation created economic benefits for
slave owners and pludereres? - that seems an obvious and uninteresting
conclusion.
- that slavery and colonial
Jim,
Well, such institutions as accounting and
banking were introduced into England from
Flanders and Northern Italy. They did not
develop them autochthonically, although the
Scottish banks were centers of considerable
institutional evolution in how banking operated.
As a matter of
I think that all but two or three of the pen-l people opposed the U.S.
bombing of Yugoslavia. . . .
More, actually, who e-mailed me privately.
They didn't want to be called imperialists or
"Euro-centric" for supporting the protection
of innocent people, non-"Euro" ones, no less.
Including a
*That* [J. Edgar's outrageous and presumptuous statement and the
normality of that sentiment in the US] -- and even a momentary failure to
note that -- is the serious eurocentrism that, I argue, can't be broken by
debates over empirical history. It can be broken only by a complex
political
Jim Devine wrote:
No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to 'Europeans.'
is there anyone on pen-l who thinks that non-Europeans are inferior to
Europeans? (I'd like an electronic show of hands.) Yoshie, do
Louis Proyect quoted:
He's Got the Whole World in
His Hands
ROGER ALCALY
...a Marxist turned hedge fund operator.
Doug
He's Got the Whole World in
His Hands
ROGER ALCALY
October 7, 1999
Inflation, Unemployment, and Monetary Policy
by Robert M. Solow, John B. Taylor, The Alvin Hansen
Symposium on Public Policy, and edited and with an
introduction by Benjamin M. Friedman
120 pages, $12.00 (paperback)
"Pockets" of full-bore (industrial) capitalism? I would agree. But a mere
pocket can easily be squelched. The Nothern Italian version, for example,
never quite made it. There's some sort of threshold effect (or rather, a
critical mass) needed for a full-scale capitalist explosion. I don't see
the
Jim,
Certainly there were Chinese at various periods
in such Central Asian cities as Samarkand. I also
think you are right that Muslims out of China would
go to Mecca on the Hajj.
Ironically we may have the conclusion that the
Europeans ended up getting ahead because they
were
Jim D.,
On the question of the existence of full-scale
capitalism, I think I agree with Jim B. on this one.
There were pockets, small as they may have been,
of pretty full-scale capitalism scattered about here
and there. There was some in China and in India
and in the Middle East and in
Jim Devine wrote:
BTW, does this "D." refer to Deidre?
I don't know but I presume so. I just forwarded it for the fun of
it. The topic is beyond my competence to have an opinion on.
Carrol
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/21/99 02:06PM
Charles Brown wrote:
Charles: Some questions for the answers:
Why is the whole region of East Asia looked at to determine whether
there is a recession ? Maybe there was a recession in Indonesia but
not one in China. Isn't one conventional
Jim,
This may have added extra oomph to the search
for gold and silver. It is clear that getting gold and
silver was a major fixation of many of the European
colonizers in the early phase, with the Spanish being
the most successful at it. Certainly there was a trade
deficit for Europe with
Charles Brown wrote:
Charles: Some questions for the answers:
Why is the whole region of East Asia looked at to determine whether
there is a recession ? Maybe there was a recession in Indonesia but
not one in China. Isn't one conventional defiintion something like
negative growth for four
Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/21/99 01:43PM
"Why did the Chinese fail to develop capitalism?" The very question
is repellant. The question that is politically important to answer is,
"Why did capitalism develop at all?" I would argue that it was *not*
inevitable. That (to use Gould's
This is interesting, Max.
On 20 Sep 99, at 23:55, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
To me 'nationalism' connotes some kind of conscious notion of collective
self-interest. Progressive nationalism (PN) suggests some kind of novel
departure from the conventional ideas of what is progressive or
I wouldn't say Europeans are morally superior or that they are smarter based on genes
or biological inheritance. But I would say that in the current era, the Europeans have
developed certain areas of science and other thinking better than other parts of the
world. This is not white supremacy.
Rod Hay wrote:
Since Mat brought up the political issue, I will respond. I want a politics
that emphasises the universal nature of human society--the common elements.
"Identity politics", "anti-imperialism" etc., finds enemies where there are
none. All whites are the enemy, all Americans are
No amount of empirical refutations will convince those who think
otherwise that 'non-Europeans' were and are not inferior to 'Europeans.'
is there anyone on pen-l who thinks that non-Europeans are inferior to
Europeans? (I'd like an electronic show of hands.) Yoshie, do you think
that there are
WHY SHOULD SLAVERY DAMN MODERNITY?
By Aidan Campbell
A review of:
--The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 Hugh
Thomas, Picador, £25 hbk
--The making of New World Slavery: from the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800
Robin Blackburn, Verso, £15 hbk
--The Overthrow of
So I always thought that Wade's story was less than fully coherent:
how did the heroes of Act I become the villains of Act II? If it was
U.S. state power that warped Bank research products, why didn't this
warping stop as soon as key bureaucratic posts were filled by people
who had staked
- EH.RES POSTING -
On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, D. McCloskey wrote:
The trouble with the idea of a cycle that long is that we will have had so
few of them. I know I bought a hardback copy of Ravi Batra's The Coming
World Depression of 1990, based on such ideas, for
Sam wrote:
The mercantalists (and physiocrats) also believed that the origins of
capitalism and economic evolution was agrarian. How could anyone believe
otherwise?
There's an old tradition (pushed by urbanites, natch, and still common
among Noo Yawkers) that contrasted the "progressive
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1999
Construction of new private homes rose 0.4 percent in August, Commerce
Department figures show, signaling many home buyers are unfazed by recent
rises in mortgage interest rates, according to analysts. ... (Daily Labor
Report, page D-1; New York
WHY SHOULD SLAVERY DAMN MODERNITY?
By Aidan Campbell
A review of:
--The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 Hugh
Thomas, Picador, £25 hbk
--The making of New World Slavery: from the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800
Robin Blackburn, Verso, £15 hbk
--The Overthrow of
Carrol Cox forwarded from Andre Gunder Frank:
No I do NOT know what you mean in re buying Ravi Batra. Although he
based his analysis on US data etc., 1989-92 WAS the worst recession
in the US since probably 1937 or maybe 31-33, so so far he was right as
far as he went [and in re the
Has anyone here read Robin Blackburn's histories of slavery? He argues
that slavery was seminal in the development of Europe. Any comments?
Sam Pawlett
THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800.
By Robin Blackburn . 582 pp.,
By PETER KOLCHIN
The
Patrick Bond wrote:
Agreed, Doug, that's exactly the point of this definition of what I
take to be a progressive *nationalism* (namely that the power to
regenerate national sovereignties will only be constituted to a
large extent through radical international and more precisely
anti-world-
James M. Blaut wrote:
I'm inclined to think that capitalism in its first, crude stage (after
gaining power over labor in Europe and power to seize slaves in Africa and
work slaves in the colonies) could not exploit wage workers efficiently
enough so that they would be able to survive and
Rod Hay:
Since Mat brought up the political issue, I will respond. I want a politics
that emphasises the universal nature of human society--the common elements.
"Identity politics", "anti-imperialism" etc., finds enemies where there are
none. All whites are the enemy, all Americans are the
Jim and Mathew: I am certainly not saying that Europeans were "better,
brighter, bolder" than any one else. There is no doubt that the Chinese (and
many others as well) had a very highly developed societies. But something
sparked the Europeans to act in ways that these other societies did not.
Jakarta gets its three Hawk jets
Fighters will be delivered in spite of British embargo
Michael White, Political Editor
The Guardian, Monday September 20, 1999
The government came under renewed criticism for the sale of Hawk fighter
jets to Indonesia last night as the ministry of defence
Barkley:
I'll have to delve to find references on Chinese travellers in the --
generic -- West. You may be right that they only got as far as Byzantine
Constantinople. From memory I recall reading that a Chinese envoy resided
in Samarkand around (?) 1400 and maybe in the same period a Chinse
Comment on Ricardo's comment on Matthew:
" the true believer will keep repeating
this, since for the believer there is only 'either-or'."
In other words, those who question the belief that Europeans were better,
brighter, and bolder than everyone else before 1500 are the real "true
believers."
Carrol:
With all due (and lots of) respect for you and Barkley, you're shoving
under the rug what surely is one of the most important problems in history,
let along Marxist historiography.
I insist that we have abundant evidence, most of it recently published,
that all of the variaqbles that
Matthew:
I agree with you totally.
A longer and more detailed piece by Ron Bailey: "Africa, the slave trade,
and the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe and the United States: A
bibliographic review." AMERICAN HISTORY: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC REVIEW
2(1986)1-91.
Jim B
Barkley:
In my discussion I slyly slipped in the word "consequential" --
consequential discovery ("discovery" in quotes) of America. I think only
advanced medeival protocapitalist societies, located on seacoasts of
course, were candidates, because the project involved investment,
technology, and
Ricardo:
Ellen Wood is a believer in Brenner's Eurocentric theory of the rise of
capitalism (it all happened in rural England) and she and I once argued
Brenner by email. She doesn't like my views on history and vice versa.
And by the way you cite the 1989 SS paper but not the 1993 book, in
Responding to Rod:
Rod: "It would be extremely controversial to claim that the agricultural
revolution was the result of demand growth. Where was this demand coming
from. Surely not from those who accumulated gold?"
(a) There was no agricultural revolution, in my mind and that of many
Sorry, in a kind of preview of Y2k, most of South Africa was cut off from international emails and browsing from 16-20 September, allegedly due to the hurricane (so all our ISP claim). Here are three replies on the IMF-reform thread, which seem to be largely semantic at this stage...
On 17
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