[PEN-L:11387] Re: Re: Re: Re: colonialism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley,

I thought you probably had this approach, but I wanted to make sure.

When you say:


     Again, there is no approving in my arguments here.  I have
described the Europeans as "aggressive and rapacious."
But I don't think positing some inherent degree of greater
aggressiveness or rapaciousness to Europeans is either
useful or even necessarily accurate.  If they were so, it was
because of something going on inside of Europe, not some
random accident.

Charles: I agree that the European difference originated inside Europe.

I don't think the European use of force and violence was inherent in the sense of biological or genetic.

However, I tend to think that inherent European "thing" or culture was more "ruthless use of force and violence " than Weber's rationality, work ethic and respect for the individual's self-determination.

 As others have said, other civilizations had ruthless use of force and violence. So, I am not saying this was the origin of use of force and violence by any means. But it seems it might be a new level of use of force and violence. Marx's description of the primitive accumulation seems to imply this. On the debate on this thread, I am not contradicting my support of the idea that the external labor was a critical factor ( in combination with the internal labor) in building up the wealth to critical masses of accumulation to do the capitalist thing.

But it seems to me that the critical internal discovery was wage-labor, as Marx claims. No one seems to claim that the Chinese or anybody else in history thought of the institution of wage-labor, labor-power as a commodity. So, it would be the discovery of this form of relations of production that is the qualitatively different thing the Europeans came up with. It was necessary to combine it with the external brutality, but that was not a qualitatively new thing (although Marx seems to give some hint that it may have been a quantitatively new level of ruthless use of force and violence.), so I agree with you.

What do you think of "wage-labor" as the discovery ? (Not original with me of course).

Charles




>>> "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx> 09/20/99 05:18PM >>>
Charles,
     Well, if you prefer, there is one and the same
question here: why did the Europeans do what the
Chinese/Koreans/Japanese did not do?  I most
certainly have not put forward any of my attempted
explanations, with which I am not fully satisfied, as
implying any sort of justification.  Slavery and imperialism
in the Americas at the hands of the Northeast Asians
would have been no better than at the hands of the
Europeans.
      Saying that the Northeast Asians were "satisfied
with what they had" may be correct, but it is also  not
very satisfying.  There had been earlier efforts, as noted
by Jim Blaut, by the Chinese certainly to at least trade
with fairly distant peoples.  More nearby peoples were
occasionally subjected to contributing tribute to the
emperor and occasionally nearby territories were
conquered and colonized, e.g. Taiwan after the Portuguese
had already gotten control of it.
     Clearly there was something that was pushing the
Europeans to have more "desire" to travel long distances
to try to gain profits in various forms than other peoples
at that time.  I am not sure what that was, as I accept Jim
Blaut's argument that there did indeed exist elements of
nascent capitalism in India, China, and other locations,
although perhaps lacking banking and related finance.
And other groups had missionary zeal, most notably the
Muslims who spread their religion into Indonesia and
other places via the influence of merchants.
     Jim Blaut presents a coherent argument, although I
have questioned certain elements of it.  This may be
unfairly brief, but it is that getting the gold and silver was
crucial and it was essentially a lucky break for Columbus
that he caught the wind currents right to get across and
back the relatively narrow Atlantic to the bullion-bearing
zones of Central and South America before the Northeast
Asians did.
    I have questioned that both in terms of was bullion all
that important, was it really all that more difficult to get to
the Americas, if not necessarily the bullion-bearing zones,
and was it not in fact this hunger or drive for profit in Europe
that was pushing them to go systematically to places such
as around the Cape of Good Hope and to the Americas
that was not somehow operating in the East Asian societies.
     Again, there is no approving in my arguments here.  I have
described the Europeans as "aggressive and rapacious."
But I don't think positing some inherent degree of greater
aggressiveness or rapaciousness to Europeans is either
useful or even necessarily accurate.  If they were so, it was
because of something going on inside of Europe, not some
random accident.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, September 20, 1999 4:14 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:11357] Re: Re: Re: colonialism


>
>
>>>> "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx> 09/20/99 03:36PM >>>
>Louis,
>     The argument is not that Columbus had some
>great love of exploring.  The argument is that
>capitalism was more insitutionally developed in Europe
>and that there was thus a greater motive force from
>a desire to make profit in Europe than in Northeast
>Asia, where certainly there was a technical capability
>to go to the Americas.
>      The question remains:  Why didn't they?  The
>Russians went there later from a much greater
>distance.
>
>((((((((((((
>
>Charles: When you say the question is why didn't they, isn't the answer
that they didn't change from the way they had been before ? What is the
mystery about their retaining their status quo ?
>
>The question seems somewhat loaded, because it sounds like maybe you are
saying "they should have", i.e. they should have developed capitalism as the
Europeans did.
>
>But if somebody thinks the change that took place in Europe has turned out
to be a disaster for humanity , then the obvious answer to the question "Why
didn't the Chinese travel to the Americas and establish slavery and
colonialism ?"  is they thought it would be a bad idea, or such a horrible
idea never occurred to them.
>
>The more pertinent question seems to be "why did the Europeans ?", why did
the Europeans open the Pandora's box of capitalism ?
>
>CB
>
>