In a message dated 97-10-29 10:17:57 EST, Michael Perelman writes:
>>Be careful taking Marx's writings on India at face value. These writings
>>were part of an effort to undermine Henry Carey, who was an important
>>figure at the NY Tribune and how was a major influence on Duhring. Carey
>>emphasized that everything English was bad. Marx countered that the
>>British were helping India develop. I wrote about this in my Marx's
>>Crises Theory.
I realize this isn't one of your main points, but I think you are a little
simplistic about Henry Carey's writings, and I think you may have Henry
confused with his father, Mathew Carey, who HATED the British.
Brief history: Mathew Carey was an Irish rebel who left Britain one step
ahead of the police in 17(??). He escaped by dressing as a woman and
boarding a ship transporting primarily indentured servants to the colonies.
Shortly after landing in Philadelphia, he borrowed money from Lafayette and
opened the first publishing house in the United States. Mathew was also a
prolific writer, publishing pamphlets on economics, poverty, and women's
rights (one of the first published u.s. feminists) under something like 20
different psuedonyms (this was not at all unusual, most political economists
in the colonies and u.s. wrote under multiple names). His earlier writings
all center around the theme of providing protections for manufacturing in the
northeast to make the colonies, then the states, independent of British
manufactured goods. In this he ran several campaigns which directly opposed
the interests of southern plantation owners -- and he was also vigorously
anti-slavery. His later writings almost all centered around issues of
poverty -- he called for a social movement to pay living wages, citing
discrimination and low wages as one of the primary reasons for poverty
amongst women. Mathew also espoused a number of causes ignored not only by
the upper classes, but by early men's unions and workingmen's organizations
as well -- particularly upgrading the piece rates paid seamstresses.
Henry was Mathew's son (one of 9 surviving children). Unlike his
father, Henry's main claim to fame was to provide a voice for the
conservative upper-class intelligentsia in nineteenth-century usa. Marx
refers to Henry Carey as one of the "appologists." One of Henry's most
influential works was a comparison of money wages paid workers in the
northeast with wages paid workers in England. Henry finds that the wages and
living standards of New England workers are far superior to those in England.
He credits the higher wages in the US with two things: one is no state
sponsored poor rates, and the other is democracy. A close examination of
this work reveals tremendous weaknesses: the wages he refers to as higher are
those paid only a minority of workers in the newest, most technologically
advanced factories in the states. When wages in general are assessed in
light of living standards, his whole argument falls apart. Henry wasn't so
much anti-british as he was anti-competition for any u.s. industry, including
agreeing with protections for southern planters. He was a protectionist.
maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
