On 4/28/15 12:46 PM, Charlie wrote: > Actually, the Marxist scholars like Rodney Hilton who studied the birth > of the capitalist mode of production did their work before Brenner got > out of diapers. There is no support here for the Brenner thesis, let > alone mumbo-jumbo about "essentializing." Both chatter about > developments that occurred after feudal relations of production broke > up, hence no explanation of same. > > Although quoting Marx as a form of proof is essentially a mark of a lazy > mind.
Charles, I see that you keep referring to the "capitalist mode of production". Don't you see that this is a problem? Probably not, given your obtuseness overall. The key is to identify a capitalist, not the relationship he has to someone he is exploiting. A slaveowner was a capitalist. He presided over a capitalist enterprise. By contrast, there was slavery all through Africa before colonization. But the slave was generally someone absorbed into the social network of the conquering power rather than someone involved in commodity production that actually did not exist. In Ottoman society the janissary was both a slave and a member of the elite. The whole point of the new books by Johnson, Beckert and Baptist is to clarify the capitalist character of the Southern ruling class. You might find their work useful even if it falls outside your dogmatic comfort zone. Btw, I almost never quote Marx but I thought it might pass muster with a Stalinist like you. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
