[Fwd: [PEN-L:11394] Re: Re: Re: colonialism]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:43:47 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Subject: Re: [PEN-L:11394] Re: Re: Re: colonialism
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"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 usually, in fact, conceal the premise (explicit of course in Adam
Smith) that 'men' [sic] are naturally traders and dealers and that any
society which does not take the fetters off that natural impulse are
somehow deficient. So bending the stick perhaps too far, may I suggest
that trying to answer the question, whether the answer is your answer
or Rod's answer, is a sort of giving in to eurocentrism. The argument
as such, regardless of content, suggests that "letting capitalism develop"
is "natural," and there is something wrong with a people or a culture
or what have you that "fails" to allow this natural process to go on.

"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 metaphor for contingency in evolution)
if one played the tape of human history over again, that after 500,000
years (instead of 100, 000 as of now) human culture would still be
paleolithic or feudal or what have you. Because capitalism *did*
develop, we know that it was *possible* for it to develop. We do
*not* know that it was either a necessary or even probable
development.

The debate, also, and despite the intentions of the debaters is apt
to produce rhetoric with unfortunate implications. I assume that you
are not making moral judgments -- but (as Jim Devine noted) the
rhetoric often suggests that. And the problem with making moral
judgments of imperialism is that it implicitly treats imperialism
as a *policy* rather than as the mode of existence of capitalism.
And treating imperialism as a policy formed the root of Kautsky's
errors. It is also at the root of the errors of those leftists or
would be leftists who support humanitarian bombing. (Rod,
in suggesting that anti-imperialism finds enemies where there
are none, obviously sees imperialism as merely a policy of
a given government that one can tinker with.)

Carrol