[PEN-L:11653] Role of Total Foreign Trade

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ricardo wrote:
>In contrast to anyone else here, I have put together data that do not
>favour my interpretation, which is/should be the true mark of all
>scientific enquiry.  Science does not consist in the simple gathering of
data
>in justification of one's pre-determined views, but in looking for data that
>may falsify one's interpretation.

Yeah, but you're working with outmoded data. If you are serious about these
questions, you should examine the chapter on slavery and primitive
accumulation in Blackburn's book that I posted from already, including the
devastating numbers pointing out the nearly equal ratio between "triangle
trade" profits and fixed capital investment in Great Britain in 1770.

I don't know what your deal is, Ricardo, but you are stuck in the 1980s on
a lot of these questions. I recall that you posted once on how the Mayans
self-destructed because of anti-ecological farming practices. This too was
an argument based on out-of-date evidence. More recent scholarship has
refuted this claim rather definitively. I might add that Blaut takes up
this question as well. It seems that part of the Eurocentrist arsenal is a
belief that capitalism did not take hold in places like Africa and Central
America because of "shifting agriculture" practices which involve burning
fields and then moving on to new locales. It turns out that such practices
do not damage the soil at all since fires were not allowed to get out of
control and were appropriate to less than fertile soil conditions.

Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)