Eugene Coyle writes:
>One of the earliest environmental pieces is by Oliver Goldsmith about the
>expropriation of another commons:
>
>from The Deserted Village
(snip)
This connection between the capitalism vs. the Indians discussion and the
"deserted village" (the abandoned English countryside) tells me that we
should link the former to Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation in
England, at the end of CAPITAL, vol. I. The Indians, that is, are receiving
the bloody brunt of primitive accumulation (PA). Unless, of course, they
fight back with Indian bingo or whatever.
One thing that's noticeable about Marx's discussion is that he's shed the
technological-determinist approach of some of his earlier works ("handmill
gives you feudalism," yadda yadda) and that "the enlightened one" seems to
cling to. In desperate brevity, PA is a political movement that sets off an
economic movement.
Thus, the possibility exists for a counter-PA political movement that
unifies the Indians with the urban working class, pressuring the state from
below to fight not only PA but the normal exploitative accumulation that
characterizes capitalism. Maybe something like that is happening in Brazil
with the Workers Party. (I'm afraid that one of Louis' many missives may
have had information about this but I forgot it or never read it because
there were so many.)
I wish boddhi ("the enlightened one") would give up his
extremely-irritating pretensions and meditate on Socrates' dictum that "all
I know is that I know nothing" for awhile. Even better, he could start
using a pseudonym on pen-l, such as "Kevin."
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
