Re: Max Weber's Genteel Racism (was Re: weber)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

>  >But why enclosure? Why travel abroad and steal people? Why did it
> > occur to people to enclose common land for the first time? Why didn't
> > they think of it before?
> >
> > Doug
>
> Enclosing land is utterly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
> Spain enclosed land all through the 15th and 16th century but did not "take
> off". I just finished reading Adolfo Gilly's splendid history of the
> Mexican revolution 1910-1920. The original Zapatista movement was sparked
> by enclosures in Morelos, when sugar producing haciendas were created at
> the expense of communal land deeded to Indians in the 17th century. While
> Mexico was enclosing land, Japan at the very same moment was reinforcing
> feudal property relations in the countryside so as to hasten capital
> accumulation for the growth of native manufacturing. Japan took off because
> it was protected from colonialism. England took off because it became
> colonialist. Mexico failed to take off because it was a victim of
> neocolonialism. Period. Case close. Sentence: ten years with time off for
> good behavior.
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Enclosure mattered the most at the _origin_ of capitalism, for the
_creation_ of the drive toward M-C-M'.  In the process of its
subsequent development, as more & more areas became incorporated into
the capitalist world market, as Japan eventually was, however, the
ruling classes who were capitalist late-comers could use strategies
different from English landlords.  Nevertheless, primitive
accumulation -- the separation of direct producers from their means
of production (mainly land, but also customary rights, exclusionary
powers of guilds, etc.) & the destruction of private properties based
upon petty commodity production (e.g., writers) -- continues to this
day.  Hence, for instance, the EZLN -- a response to primitive
accumulation.

Yoshie