Re: S. Africa/mode of prod. debate

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Mark says:

> Yoshie Furuhashi:
>
> >  With regard to the early days of modern colonialism (when capitalist
> >  relations were in the process of emergence), it's possible to speak
> >  of two or more modes of production confronting one another
>
> I don't see any meaningful sense in which this is true. What
> 'pre-capitalist' m of p or social formation *effectively* or *meaningfully*
> EVER confronted capitalist states? I can't think of one. There was no
> confrontation of historical equals, there was a total world historical
> process.

Wasn't it your contention -- as well as Jim Blaut's, etc. -- that as
far as technology, seed/yield ratio, quality of textile production,
etc. were concerned, at the moment of the New World conquest,
"Europeans" & "non-Europeans" were not that different, staggering
differences in living standards today being products of capitalism &
imperialism?  Or were they already vastly unequal then, in the same
way that core & periphery are today?

> Your entire conception of the 'emergence' of capitalism into a
> non-capitalist or precapitalist (precapitalist, in some teleological sense?)
> is entirely post hoc reasoning. What Louis and I and others are asserting
> and attempting to prove both in theory and empirically, is that capitalism
> was a product of a total, pre-existent world system.

Was there a world system that encompassed the entire world -- as
opposed to states, empires, & networks of trade relations -- before
the rise of capitalism?  Columbus dreamed of sailing to Japan, to be
sure, but he never got there.

Yoshie