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 ---
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