Re: (fwd from Mark Lause) RE: Spain: colonizer and colonized

["dms" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My understanding of Comrade Huato's statement, for which I bear sole
responsibility, is that history can be interpreted differently, but it can
only be comprehended if the determining characteristic of the social
relations of production beneath that history is clearly identified, and the
logic, the essence, of that specific social relation is traced, identified,
in each historical example.

That being said, and while I think that is correct, human beings don't as a
rule apprehend, identify, or define that logic, that social relation,
without sorting through interpretation after interpretation, example after
example, "thinking out loud," and exercising the critical, itself a word
meaning essential, power of disagreement.

For that reason I think the information brought forward in the discussion by
both JP and LP was remarkable for its depth, clarity, thoroughness.  My own
ideas on this problem were formed in and in opposition to the analysis of
Eric F. Williams in his "Capitalism and Slavery," "From Columbus to Castro,"
and "History of the Peoples of Trinidad and Tobago," and obviously, my
knowledge of Japan, China, and the history of Latin America benefitted from
their discussion. My objection to Williams' thesis is that he identifies the
extraction of wealth with the accumulation of capital.  He goes so far to
show the relative shift of commercial activity from the slave trading ports
of Liverpool, Nantes, Bordeaux, to the "industrial" centers of Manchester,
Paris, etc., and the shift in focus of the mercantilists to the industrial
enterprises.  However he attributes this to the accumulation of wealth by
these traders and mercantilists who then decide to invest in industrial
production.  That's the part I don't buy. Literally.  Investing does not
create a new mode, a new social relation of production.  Revolutions do.
Land foreclosures and enclosures can.  Turning landed estates into paper
trades as part of a revolution does.

This discussion itself is the calculus of communism, where successive
approximations and differentiations bring forth a more perfect presentation
of the problem if not the answer.