File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9710, message 401


Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 17:27:29 -0400
From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: bust


Doug:

I think that we have no disagreement about S. Korea and Taiwan. Both
economies are cold war artifacts: Taiwan (also Hong Kong) mainly the flight
of an immnense amt of capital from mainland China c.1949; also, Taiwan's
military costs and naval "protection" courtesy of Uncle Sam; S. Korea,
first the *non-colonial* economic policies of the US, designed to maintain
stability (at the expense of US private capital in former decades); second,
the huge inputs from the US military and from the US govt to the SK
military; third, Japanese investment and technology import, non-colonial
(cp. PR) and up to a point non-neocolonial precisely because Japanese
economic power had to be filtered through US political power; fourth.
military (and I suppose internal security) paid for by Uncle Sam.

Singapore (I lived there for two years but before its boom) has been a
financial center since the 19th century, a colony but maintained as a
fiancial center for capital from everywhere by the canny British --
Singapore had and has one of the classic commodity markets: rubber -- with
no barriers to labor immigration (from China) before WW2. But Singapore,
like HK, is a very small place: a city state, pop. (I'm guessing) 3
million.

Japan  was a developed European country from the time the Japanese defeated
the Russians in 1904 (1905?). Japan don't count.
    
So where are the tigers? Just Korea and Taiwan?

I can't tell if you have SE Asia countries in mind also as "tigers" --
Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. If you do I will have to growl because
they are paper tigers.

Your statistics from Korea are, of course, irrelevant. 

>Me: This looks like simple diffusionism. Yesterday Britain, today S.
Korea,
>tomorrow the world. So Bill Warren and friends wwere right?

You: No. I've said several times that East Asia stands in marked contrast
to what's happened in South Asia, Latin America, and Africa. 

Me:What about Southeast Asia (see above?). A lot of real estate there. Are
you saying that Warren, Willoughby, et. al are wrong? I hope so. What they
are projecting is oldfasdhioned Eurocentric Diffusionism (see my book The
Colonizer;s Model of the World)*: (1) all important cultural innovations
(like capitalism, socialism) start in Europe, then spread outward over the
world, to be replaced, in turn by (2) the next civilizational innovation. I
have no problem with the fact that Marx believed this, because in his time
everyone did so. Today it is unacceptable: a prejudice.

>You: There's been a decline to near 0 in family farming in the U.S. too.
So >what's that prove? 

>Me:  This, Doug, is a very serious error, unless I have misunderstood you.
>It reeks of moderniozation theory and ideology.

You: It sucks that peasants be pushed off the land by brutal state and
business policies. But what are you advocating? That peasant life be
sustained indefinitely? That people work from sunrise to sunset without a
moment for education or leisure?

Me: You've missed my point entyirely. Colonial and neocolonial processes
attack peasantries in ways totally unlike the decline of US family farming
and even the dispossession of farmers in Britain. All of that "sucks." But
*it was not the same historical-social process.*   Capitalism uses
colonialism as a politico-military environment to permit the extraction of
huge masses of capital from peasants, including Thai peasants.

As to the "idiocy-of-peasant-life" (or wahtever the famous quote). I can
attest that peasants with enough basic income and secure tenure are very
happy to work out in the hot sun.  It is a rewarding life. It calls for
more thought and decision-making than most other professions. Marx and
Engels knew of only the petit-=bourgeois peasants of France and neghboring
countries; they couldn't u nderstand peassantries on a world scale./

I suspect that 60% of the weorld's people today live on farms. 100 years
from now it may drop to maybe 40 unless machines take over photosynthesis.

No boom.

Away with all economism!

En lucha


Doug

*Also an earlier book *Fourteen Ninety-Two: The Debate on Colonialism,
Eurocentrism, and History*, by me withj comments by S. Aming, AG Frank, and
others. Africa World Press 1992.



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



  


     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005