Re: Maddison critique of Pomeranz

["dmschanoes" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Was not endorsing Maddison's critique of Pomeranz-- although I do endorse
Brenner's-- for what it's worth-- my view on the piece as sent to Brenner:
___________________________________________________________

 Took me awhile, but finished the critique of Pomeranz.

In order, and briefly:

1.  This is an exceptionally strong critique, in which the logic of the
argument is established by the data itself, and flows to, not from, the
conclusion.

2. What most forget is that Marx's analysis pivots on the primacy of the
social relations of production-- that actual organization of labor and
appropriation of surplus-- and that this conclusion of Marx's is extracted
from concrete analysis of exactly those productions, that organization.
Labor, production, property is NOT  "after the fact" of trade,
colonialization etc.

3.  Pomeranz claims (p.3 of your article) that there is "ultimately no
substitute for having many people within affordable physical or cultural
distance."  But what makes distance affordable?  That's an economic
category, based on production and property, that can support the traversing
of distance.  Consequently demographic expansion can make distance, any
distance, unaffordable.  Proximity can be a negative if the organization of
production is on a constantly diminishing, fractalization basis.

4. Pomeranz then flips his script to say that the fortuitous presence of
coal, the inorganic organic, thus comes to the rescue.  But as you point
out, it is not the presence of coal, for it existed for centuries (and coal
has existed for centuries in China), but the production of coal that is
significant.  And production is a social process.

5. The notion of mercantile expansion as the prime mover, is truly
ass-backwardism, as mercantilism was indeed common, and not country
specific:  the ability of merchants wealth to be converted into capital is
something else altogether, requiring a social relation to effect the
conversion.

6. Data does not, as you and CI clearly establish, support the critical
foodstuff and raw material requirements of Britain being satisfied by the
colonies. What a reversal of mercantilism!  Here Pomeranz does a neat trick
on the usual argument, about the wealth (values) of the colonies being
transferred to industrial capitalism by arguing that the USE-VALUES allow
for the social change.  Sorry Pomeranz, see Marx, Capital Vol1 Chap1.

7. Great discussion of the downward spiral of agricultural production in
China, and the role of domestic manufacture in this perpetual decline.
Makes the point clear that in manufacture and in agriculture, individual
possession on a non-alienable basis, is a measure of backwardness, and in
fact is a reflection of the non-economic expropriation of surplus, and the
irreproducability of the system-- where the economic classes do not engage
in a productive exchange that expands the system as a totality.

8. One item I would emphasize more, is not just that indirect market access
to means of subsistence, enforces, or expands a market discipline on
production, thus reproducing the need for capital inputs, but that it also
establishes labor as useful only in its capacity for exchange-- thus
alienable labor becomes the pivot for production, and thus for wage labor.
Domestic agricultural  manufacture as practiced in China serves only to
maintain the direct form of labor to immediate, direct, subsistence, to use.

9.  Your examples of the deployment of animals in China, and the application
of fertilizer as a measure of declining productivity, are perfect example of
number 8.


10.  Agricultural productivity growth in England and population growth,
accompany a social differentiation, or actually are both product and
producer of the social differentiation.  And thus, I say we reverse the
argument-- England's mercantile superiority is derivative of the emergence
of capitalist relations of production in the countryside.  Indeed, England's
winning of the Asiento and the growth of its colonial trade, and plantation
expropriation proves that.

11. Finally, here it is:  Wealth, trade, in of itself, themselves is not
capable of supporting, igniting a transition in social relations of
production-- it is struggle, conflict in the economy over production and
appropriation of surplus that determines that transition, growth, decline,
and eruption of the new and old.

12. Thanks for the article.  Had great fun reading it.




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