that quote is from the _Poverty of Philosophy_. A good book in many
ways, it was also a bit hasty. Marx said memorable stuff like "The
hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill
society with the industrial capitalist." It's a great epigram, but
it's hardly an analysis of the sort that Marx produced later. Its
technological determinism doesn't fit with Marx's historical
materialism. The book is better at devastating Proudhon than
presenting an alternative.
On 12/12/06, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
How about this one to show that Marx's thesis was more like Jim Blaut's than
Brenner's on the issue in dispute ?
^^^^^
Throughout Karl Marx's long career as philosopher, historian, social critic,
and revolutionary, he considered the enslavement of African people in
America to be a fundamental aspect of rising capitalism, not only in the New
World, but in Europe as well. As early as 1847, Marx made the following
forceful observation:
Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as
machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton
you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their
value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world
trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an
economic category of the greatest importance.
Without slavery North America, the roost progressive of
countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North
America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy - the complete
decay of modern commerce and civilisation. Cause slavery to disappear and
you will have wiped America off the map of nations.
Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed
among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to
disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without
disguise upon the New World.1
<http://www.sojournertruth.net/marxslavery.html#1>
--
Jim Devine / "The human being is in the most literal sense a political
animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can
individuate itself only in the midst of society." -- Karl Marx.
