Re: [Marxism] The Brenner thesis and L* P*

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> CB: Right. Part of the hisorical specificity of the rise of capitalism comes
> from resurrection of the Greaco-Roman ideology of slavery and colonialism ,
> which had been relatively quiescent during the European "Dark Age".  It is
> this historically specific, European ( the self-designation of the
> bourgeoisie)ideology that is just as real ( and non-biological or non
> -"natural") as the wage-labor relation invented in the English countryside.
> _Both_ are historical specifics of capitalism. _Not_ just the historical
> developments in the English countryside. The merchants going all around the
> world, in the historical spirit of the Greeks and Romans ( that's what they
> had in their heads, that's the history they had in their heads; it wasn't
> "natural"), starting colonies and slave gangs was a critical historical
> specificity of the emergence of capitalism.

Charles, ideology is driven by material social and economic conditions, not
the other way around. When Europeans obeyed economic imperatives to find an
alternative route to Asia and bypass Middle Eastern merchants, they
happened on the New World. Once they were there, they developed racial
ideologies that dovetailed with the need to exterminate or enslave
indigenous peoples. When indigenous peoples, especially in North America,
proved unsuitable for plantation labor, they brought in slaves from Africa.
To explain this injustice to themselves, they once again resorted to racial
myths. When the British invoked Rome,  it was like Hitler invoking Teutonic
legends. The drive for profits explains colonialism and racism, not myths
and legends.


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