[PEN-L:11648] Re: Pen-l debate

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Paul,
     I hope you don't mind, but I am going to
forward your remarks to pen-l, even though it
may upset michael, given that you make some
harsh remarks about some people, and I know
that he is trying to calm things down.  But I think
you make some very interesting and valid points.
Indeed, I am giving the list the forward by cc'ing
this response to the list.
     To michael:  I agree that it is unfortunate that a
debate that began on a "high level" has acquired
an acrimonious tone.  Given the intensity of the issues
involved, this is not all that surprising.  But I do not think
that it is "at an end."  The hard fact is that there are a
number of loose ends in this debate.  I brought one up
yesterday regarding the beginning point of the enclosures.
The attached message from Paul Phillips addresses that
and says some interesting things (it's not attached, it's just
down below my remarks here).
      I apologize to anyone who is offended by my attaching
Paul's private message to me to this message that will go
to pen-l.  I would urge people not flame, but to deal with the
substantive issues at hand in a substantive manner.
Barkley Rosser

-----Original Message-----
From: phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: rosserjb@xxxxxxx <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, September 24, 1999 1:09 AM
Subject: Pen-l debate


Barkely,
  It is some time since I have taught European economic history
but  I do remember that the enclosures in Britain go back to the
12th century and, by the time of the parliamentary enclosures of
the 19th century, there was little left to enclose.  Much of this is
dealt with in Polanyi whom those on the list seem never to have
read or, if they have, they have never absorbed.  The development
of the self-regulating KAPITALIST market was an evolutionary
process in which the creation of labour, land and capital markets
were all required. The slave trade, colonial trade, etc. was all part of
this process.  Was it a necessary but not sufficient condition?
That I think is really the question we should be debating but I doubt
that it would get a sympathetic discussion given the juvenile
responses of MS and the ideological drivel of Carrol et al.

My own research and those of my students have been from the
other side of the question -- the impact of imperialism on the
colonial economy, specifically on the aboriginal population but also
on the settler population.  Here the articulation of the modes of
production approach appears most fruitful -- the
interaction/articulation of the merchant capitalist (and later the
industrial capitalist) with the arboriginal pre-capitalist "primitive" (a
la Sahlins) mode of production.  My own research/writing has been
concentrated on the role of the primary industries/independent
commodity producers in providing the primitive accumulation.  Also
I have drafted a paper on the role of the first world war and the
creation of government debt and its role in class formation and the
primitive accumulation.  But all this seems to be beyond the
simplistic ideological bounds of the current discussion.
  And now, the most rational presenter in the debate, Mat
Forstater, is threatening to leave the list because of the purile
nature of the discussion that has developed.  This would be a loss.

However,
Regards,
Paul

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba