[PEN-L:11630] Re: Re: Re: RE: binary passions

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

At 03:57 PM 9/23/99 -0500, Mathew Forstater wrote:
>right, wojtek, your position of favoring internal factors is "scientific"
>while one who through careful study reaches the tentative conclusion (always
>subject to possible revision) that "external" factors are of primary
>importance must subscribe to some "irrational" worldview of some kind.
>


Exactly.  You see, brigands, plunderers, warlords etc.  existed for
centuries almost since the beginning of history and on every continent -
Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.  Although they all thrived on
plundering other societies - not all of them could turn the plundered
riches to a social-institutional system capable of sustaining and
reproducing itself.  Moreover, even those who could e.g. the Incas or the
Aztecs - built a very different social system form that of the European
capitalism.

It is, therefore clear that it is not the resource availability per se, or
even how those resources were initially acquired, but the internal
(institutional) features of societies that use them that needs to be
examined to explain the differences between the societies in question.

Now, you surely agree with me that if the issue at hand was just an
empirical explanation of economic development in Western European - it
would not generate passions it does.  I lived in the underdeveloped part of
the world long enough to understand the role of ideology and religion to
dupe people with a sense of national pride and cultural superiority.  That
is hardly anything new - religion has always been the opium of the people.
My main objection is that self-styled marxist use marxist rhetorics to that
end.  There is a certain perverted irony in using marxism to create a
religious cult, no?

wojtek


PS. What I really abhor about a great deal of the US leftism is its
cultish, idealistic and moralistic bent.  Yuk!