Michael wrote:
Your description of me is not quite accurate. I think "decrepit" would be far more accurate than "aging." My interventions have been limited for the last two weeks because of a series of e-mail problems on campus.
Oh please, Michael. This has nothing to do with email connections. You are famous for your laconic emails.
I had not realized that my either/or comment had been repeated so many times. I did not mean it to be some sort of scholarly insight but rather a question that I have seriously considered for quite some time -- the degree which the two forms of exploitation played in the development of England. I tend to go back and forth in terms of the priority, but I really wondered why you held what seemed to be your position of exclusivity.
I hold no position of exclusivity. This is what I believe: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm The money capital formed by means of usury and commerce was prevented from turning into industrial capital, in the country by the feudal constitution, in the towns by the guild organisation. These fetters vanished with the dissolution of feudal society, with the expropriation and partial eviction of the country population. The new manufactures were established at Weapons, or at inland points beyond the control of the old municipalities and their guilds. Hence in England an embittered struggle of the corporate towns against these new industrial nurseries. The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c. -- www.marxmail.org
