[PEN-L:11667] RE: binary passions

[sawicky@xxxxxxxxxx (Max Sawicky)]

I've said I'm mostly agnostic on the core
question in the debate, though not on its
possible political ramifications, but the
"way-station" argument looks for all the
world like a crock.  It doesn't take any
historical knowledge to conclude this--
just a little objectivity.

If England plunders gold from Brazil,
gold being an accepted store of value,
this redistributes claims to capital
goods among countries in favor of England.
England can buy more and Germany less.
It also reduces the value of gold but this
is of minor consequence to the nation that has
enlarged its claims by plunder.  (At some
point the scarcity could become a factor,
witness the efforts of South Africa to
cartelize and limit diamond production.  By a
naive marxio-mercantilist view of diamonds, the
thing for SA to do would have been to maximize
their production.)

If England trades gold that it plundered itself
for capital goods, England owes its rise as an
industrial power to plunder, and to some
extent at the expense of other candidates
for that status.

The country that elects to accumulate gold
instead of real capital goods, or uses gold
for a consumption binge, is not the country
that becomes an industrial power.

If Portugal is the country that steals
the gold, then trading it to England
for exports, England is not getting a
free lunch.  It is getting a market for
its output by virtue of Portugals' gold-
based purchasing power.  This is a money
supply effect, not unlike the U.S. lending
dollars to countries so that they buy U.S.
exports.  The fact that the 'money' originated
in plunder is irrelevant; while horrible, Louis,
plunder is not the essence of the process.

A counter-argument might be that in a world
lacking other means than gold of settling contracts,
gold plunder was a unique lever to trade-based capital
accumulation. But nobody has breathed a word in this
direction.

JB's remark about gold as a commodity is
true and irrelevant, his reference to
'econobabble' or social science a sign
of arrogance, though not as overdone as
LP (but who is?).

I don't think my argument hinges on
neocon-versus-marxian economics.
I'd be interested in economic refutations of
it, rather than accusations that I don't think
colonialism was horrible to its victims, or that
Israel is a sub-imperialism.

I'll repeat that I don't think this disables the
core argument that colonialism was the primary
motive force in the rise of capitalism.
Just a piece of it.

mbs