>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>>CB: I think it was use of force and violence externally that made
>>>primitive accumulation on a global scale possible. Would have been
>>>difficult to accumulate globally by only doing things internal to
>>>Europe.
>>
>>Enclosure + chattel slavery = primitive accumulation = the origin
>>of capitalism. The rise & development of the dominance of
>>instrumental reason (the Benthamite part of "Freedom, Equality,
>>Property, & Bentham") are an effect, not the cause, of the
>>capitalist ensemble of social relations.
>
>But why enclosure? Why travel abroad and steal people? Why did it
>occur to people to enclose common land for the first time? Why
>didn't they think of it before?
>
>Doug
"If successful, the peasant revolts of the sixteenth century, as one
historian has put it, might have 'clipped the wings of rural
capitalism'" (Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic
Development in Pre-Industrial Europe," _The Brenner Debate: Agrarian
Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe_,
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987). That's _how_, which explains the
difference between England and other areas. The _timing_ is
explained by prior historical development (the growth of commerce,
colonialism, the discovery of the so-called new world, demographics,
climate, etc.) which did _not_ distinguish England from other areas
decisively (in fact, the Portuguese embarked upon the slave trade
much earlier than the English).
_Why_ did the species to which both of us belong emerge at all?
Science answers how but not why. Those who do not understand the
difference between how and why, or science's silence on why as to
what _appears_ to be "crucial questions" in the untrained eyes, turn
to God (or nowadays "creation science"), as Stephen Jay Gould
explains.
It fascinates me that contingency leaves both you & Charles, Lou &
Ricardo, etc., unhappy & unsatisfied, for all the differences in
opinions on many other subjects.
Yoshie
