> Yeah, but you're working with outmoded data. It is the best available, most recent data out there! Check the year of the sources I cited. LP: If you are serious about these > questions, you should examine the chapter on slavery and primitive > accumulation in Blackburn's book that I posted from already, including the > devastating numbers pointing out the nearly equal ratio between "triangle > trade" profits and fixed capital investment in Great Britain in 1770. Yes, this was one of the few sources which went beyond such *absolute* numbers as how many tons of gold were extracted from the Americas (facts which do not address the role of the colonial trade *as compared to other sectors of the economy*). I did not respond because I thought I better post the stuff on total trade before Micheal had enough. From what I recall that stuff by Blackburn (took a course with him 'The strange history of Marxism') lacked a context in terms of who he is arguing with and where ere he got those numbers and what exactly they include. But I' ll I check it again, if I still have it. > I don't know what your deal is, Ricardo, but you are stuck in the 1980s on > a lot of these questions. I recall that you posted once on how the Mayans > self-destructed because of anti-ecological farming practices. This too was > an argument based on out-of-date evidence. More recent scholarship has > refuted this claim rather definitively. I might add that Blaut takes up > this question as well. It seems that part of the Eurocentrist arsenal is a > belief that capitalism did not take hold in places like Africa and Central > America because of "shifting agriculture" practices which involve burning > fields and then moving on to new locales. It turns out that such practices > do not damage the soil at all since fires were not allowed to get out of > control and were appropriate to less than fertile soil conditions. Dont buy this 'out of date' argument which seems to be the only one Blaut has against me. I already showed here that one of those sources he cited as new and anti-eurocentric contains an artilce by Parker, and I can cite other articles there in that book edited by Tracy. But the fact is that a lot has been published recently which challenges the stuff Blaut keeps parading around. If he keeps mentioning Goody I will forward here my own analysis of that book which I posted last year to the World history list, to which he has yet to respond. I don't know what slash-burn agriculture has to do with capitalism, but the fact is that hunters and gatherers exterminated all large animals in the World except in Africa where such large animals were fortunate to grow side by side with the evolving australopithecines and homo species, thereby learning to adapt to them. > Louis Proyect > > (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) > >
