Colin Danby wrote (quoting Ricardo Duchesne's message):
> On the Asian sink question, I clearly misunderstood
> your original post:
>
> > But even if Europe extracted a lot of capital
> > from the colonies, did not Frank tell us that a high proportion of it
> > ended up in Asia or China as the ultimate "sink"?! Whatever happened
> > to Asia's "massive balance of trade surplus with
> > Europe"? Really, this is a major unrecognized problem in
> > Frank's very thesis.
>
> Can you tell me which AGF proposition the sink
> disproves, and why? Or are you arguing that
> there is an internal AGF contradiction and if so,
> what is it?
Green:
I am glad that the discussion on AGF is continuing, and I am also
would like to thank Ricardo for some kind comments on my *very* small
part in this discussion.W
Ricardo:
Kind words from Ricardo? - that must seem strange to pen-l, although
I have learned to be more friendly exchanging ideas in lists
than I was last year with no experience and no one here agreeing
Mind you I have just
been asked to revise a response I wrote someone in the moderated
world history list. I was told it was too confrontational and
"personal" (really sarcastic, but actually very good, as the
moderator also acknowledged). It is also that am going against the
grain. I mean this someone referred to me as "You" - in caps -
countless times throughout his 5 page post, condescendingly citing a
book for me to read so as to "cure" myself from my ignorance.
(The whole exchange is about whether India was feudal or not;
which I don't think it was; an exchange which is part of my
overall critique of Frank).
Not that there is anything wrong with intellectual confrontations -
could Louis Proyect and Doug Henwood have continued the illusion of
cordial intellectual similarity? Do we really want those book reviews
we see often now which read like ads by the same company?
Green: It seems to me that the issue is not whether the colonial trade and
plunder was important in the rise of capitalism or not. I think Marx
was right that this was important. But the issue is that the effect
of this trade on a country depended on internal factors (as Marx
also claimed). Otherwise, Spain would have been one of
the fastest and earliest developers and industrializers, whereas in
fact it stagnated economically while the colonial plunder flowed in
and despite its strong political position in Europe. The colonial
plunder and profits kept up the powerful Spanish state of that time,
but the economy was in trouble. On the other hand, development
elsewhere in Europe was spurred by the increased trade with Spain
allowed by Spanish plunder of the "New World".
Ricardo: Undeveloped Spain has always stood as an anomaly in any
simple Baran-like approach which connects development with the
appropriation of a surplus. One could argue, actually, that while
England, France, and Holland ran trade deficits with Asia, this
deficit was compensated by the fact that they had a trade balance
surplus with Spain, who used its precious
metals to pay for their manufactures. That is, the bullion which ended
in Asia was proportionally paid by Spain.
Green:
But the "sink" in Asia shows that Asia was part of the chain of
commerce (or the intensified chain of commerce) resulting from the
colonial plunder by Europe. Hence the question arises: why wasn't its
development spurred by this just as much as certain areas in Europe
were? The answer would seem to have to depend on internal factors in
Asia, just as the answer to the same question in Spain does.
Ricardo: I think this answers Colin's question. Why Asia did not
industrialize if it was the ultimate sink of (about 40%) of the wealth
extracted from the Americas? Shouldn't this have been the case if
one holds an externalist theory of development? But Frank, as I was
starting to say yesterday, brings in Elvin's "high-level equilibrium
model"...Colin now asks Green how does he differentiate the internal
from the external? So, let's say they are a compound: which element
dominates?
ricardo
