Re: S. Africa/mode of prod. debate

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> Mark:
> > nevertheless was already a totality. Without this particular totality,
> > capitalism could never haved 'emerged' in the 'English countryside' or
> > anyone else specific.
>
> You know, the other night I saw a film that I reviewed here. It was called
> "Life and Death". I didn't want to give away the ending, but it seems that
> nobody here will ever see it. So I am going to give it away now, since it
> helps to illustrate a point about this whole English countryside business.
>
> At the end of the film, the tough cop and the gang boss square off in an
> open field near a factory. The cop has just lost an arm, but continues to
> fight. After shooting each other multiple times, the two men glare at each
> other. Who will go down first? Then then resort to their secret weapons.
> The cop has an atomic rocket launcher in a backpack. Meanwhile, the
> gangster reaches into his chest and plucks out his heart which has turned
> into a radioactive, pulsating blue ball, which he hurls at the cop. The cop
> returns fire. The moment the two projectiles reach each antagonist, a
> nuclear blast not only sweeps across Japan but the world. Very powerful.
> Irresistible in fact.
>
> So coming home on the subway, it occurred to me that this whole English
> countryside deal might have been included in the climax of the film.
> Somebody reaches into his shirt and pulls out a copy of the Enclosures Acts
> or something. But imagine the power of that change in English farming.
> Without it, you never would have had capitalist colonialism, imperialist
> war, socialist revolution, fascism, prosperity after WWII, computers, MTV,
> microwave ovens, the Internet and everything else. Rather awe-inspiring
> when you think about it.
>
> Louis Proyect

This is such a delightfully funny post with a great punch line that I
hate to spoil it with a reply, but let me say this.  Enclosure alone
would not have done the job but for a multitude of other conditions
existing then.  Besides, the emergent capitalist relations would have
been buried if many other conditions had not followed its emergence.
What if indigenous peoples had not been susceptible to smallpox & the
like?  What if all tribes & kingdoms in Africa had together fought
against Europeans, instead of fighting one another?  What if
working-class emigrants from England, etc. could make a common cause
with enslaved Africans & Indians, instead of shoring up the ruling
class of slave owners & capitalists?  And so on.  And so forth.

Yoshie