Re:Spain

["dms" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, this certainly is the case with the history of the lack of development
of Spain and serves to prove that the mere extraction of wealth does not
equal nor ignite automatically capitalist development.  That England,
France,later the US could drain the wealth from Spain, absorb it  to
reproduce its system indicates to me that the social relations of capital
existed prior to the colonial expansions.

Capital is marked by this tremendous ability to absorb wealth and create it
anew as  equivalent values by nature of its circulation of commodities and
its organization of labor as wage labor.

Allow me to refer to another example of the ability of capital, having
accomplished in part at least the capitalization of agriculture to absorb
the wealth of other formations, providing an exchange of the new with the
old:

If I read Hugh Thomas' work right.....

After the war of 1812, and the outlawing of the slave trade, and England's
attempt to police the trade, including boardings of suspect ships of other
countries, the Yankee clipper ships took to providing slaves to Cuba and
other slave colonies.  Where were the ships built?  For the most part New
England.  Where was home harbor? Massachussetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut.
Who owned the ships? Traders, merchants from  New England, New York.

The North, and not the South was able to sustain, provision, and absorb
these commercial ventures based on its existing organization of  labor.

While slavery as extraction can be reproduced, slavery as production is
incapable of reproducing itself.  The history of the Caribbean shows just
how incapable of this expanded reproduction the slave economies were.

Been a highly fruitful discussion, don't you think?