B:
peasants living to day to repeat
terrible journey into capitalism that the English peasants went through.
I'd suggest two things: First, their lives are already no picnic and
peasant agriculture is an economy to be blissfully abandoned. Second, I
would suggest that the best way to smooth the path to industrialism is to
find a substitute for the process of primitive accumulation that made
early capitalism so vicious. That primitive accumulation was necessary
for development at that time because the institutions of credit and
capital fungibility were not well developed. When I say "necessary" I
mean that they were necessary for *capitalist* development.
Ricardo:
This is a misleading interpretation of primitive accumulation. Even
Marx recognized that accumulation by *independent* peasant holders
was a crucial factor in the English transition to capitalism.
Enclosure were never that important, at least not before the 18th
century, by which time peasants had already pushed England well into
agrarian capitalism. Not expropriation but secure peasant propriertoship
pushed England into capitalism.
ricardo
The Soviet
system compared well to *that* system of capitalist capital formation and
that's why it worked well. That was then and this is now. Now, the
capital needs of the industrial economy are both more extensive and
complex. It is entirely historical to suggest that a (Soviet) system that
worked well for the development of basic industry in Russia before the war
might not be adequate now. That does not mean capitalism is the only
development alternative for modern neo-feudal economies. It does mean
that socialists will have to find a *better* system for capital formation
than contemporary capitalism employs, just as socialists did in 1917.
What South Korea means is that capitalists have a better
development answer than Sovietism. So what? That doesn't mean they have
a better answer than socialism.
peace
