Re: [A-List] Truth about Gold and Braudel

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert,

I am aware of the limitation of Braudel's perspective.
I wrote: "Fernaud Braudel noted that the value of silver increased from
13th to 16th century until 1550, which he called the age of gold
inflation, which lasted 6 centuries.  In 1595, Enrope had 20,000 tons of
silver.  By 1650, another 16,000 tons had been added to the money supply.
The gold
inflation was replaced by ilver inflation as the value of silver fell, a
phenonoenon which supported Gresham's Law.  The basic fact is that
capitalism cannot survive stable prices.  Any government or monetary
system that maintains price stability for long would evetually face
political upheaval."
What I used was Braudel's data to show that any government or monetary
system that maintains price stability for long would evetually face
political upheaval.
Money is created to facilitate economomic growth, not to enhance its own
value.
Henry

ewc wrote:

> Hi Henry
>
> First to say I strongly agree with your definition of money, and a
> good number of the things you put as facts.  So I will just focus on a
> couple of matters where we differ
>
> I would distance myself from 'Greshams law' - Thomas Gresham himself
> was concerned with the relationship between pure and debased currency
> in Elizabethan England.  To pull his comments out of that context and
> make them a law seem to me to be a mistake.  If you seek definitions
> rich enough to make the 'law' work in diverse historical situations
> you end up with either a vacuous statement (people prefer the money
> they prefer) or a false one (eg 'silver is better than gold' etc etc).
> Paper, copper, silver and gold etc all can and have been dominant.  In
> my judgement talk of 'Greshams law' is usually at base a ruse to
> pre-empt and side-track discussion about how one form of media becomes
> dominant, rather than offer a genuine insight.  It blocks
> understanding rather than assists it.  I guess I would generalise this
> point further, to say that historically the monetary media is an
> important aspect of the political and social structure of a society,
> and that much of modern economic dogma exist to deflect our attention
> into a desert of superficialities and unanswerable questions, away
> from the richer realities of past situations.  (Am not decrying all
> economic theory here - just bad economic theory)
>
> And I am fascinated to find you apparently quoting Braudel as a kind
> of bible of economic historical fact.   Braudel's theories of economic
> history are almost all fictions.  He constructed a fake version of the
> past - very much like the fake past that Orwell postulated in '1984'.
> Braudel himself was Febvre's creature.  Febvre started negotiations
> with the Rockerfeller Foundation as far back as 1927, but the real
> push to produce a de-politicised (dumbed down) version of the economic
> past began in earnest in 1946, and was funded primarily by the Ford
> Foundation.  (As Febrve was manoeuvring himself into a plum job at
> UNESCO)  About 10 years back I wrote out a couple of pages of
> criticism of Braudel's account of 17th cent India (Braudel's
> speculation on monetary media are all bunk, but those on India are
> especially shoddily constructed).  I sent them off to Wallerstein at
> the Braudel centre.  His comment came back that Braudel did not know
> anything about 17th century India.  Does not it strike anyone on
> a-list as odd that a man becomes the world's greatest 20th century
> historian by writing standard reference books on things he knows
> nothing about?
>
> Of course Wallerstein is a Ford Foundation creature too - writing his
> 'core-periphery' thesis at Ford Foundation's Palo Alto retreat, and
> getting Ford Funding to 'perpetuate' (actually further mangle)
> Braudel's heritage at Binghamton.
>
> Andre Gunder Frank's continued silence on these matters is surely a
> matter of note
>
> I am out of station for the next couple of weeks - so if anyone wants
> to comment on these issues, please ensure to put 'Braudel' on the
> subject line
>
> Robert