Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 18:43:44 -0500
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: bust


james m blaut wrote:

>Japan  was a developed European country from the time the Japanese defeated
>the Russians in 1904 (1905?). Japan don't count.

Japan was a lot poorer than Europe and the U.S. in 1904, and didn't have
much in the way of home-grown technological skill. It is now one of the
richest, most technically advanced countries in the world. Its rise is less
dramatic and rapid than S Korea's, but you can't exclude it like this.

>So where are the tigers? Just Korea and Taiwan?

Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia are growing in more dependent ways than
did South Korea, but there's still a lot going on in these countries that
can't be dismissed either. And what about China? China's growth over the
last 15 years is enormously powerful. Is that an illusion too?

>Your statistics from Korea are, of course, irrelevant.

"Of course"? Why? I said that SK went from Third to near First World status
on social indicators in a generation.

>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.

I don't know what your point is here, aside from plugging your book, which
is a practice I heartily approve of, especially since I do want to read
your book. I've been arguing that a significant portion of the world has
undergone a tremendous economic boom over the last 30-50 years which has
profoundly transformed the world capitalist system. That part of the world
is also not European, or of predominantly European origin. You're trying to
deny the existence of this boom, for reasons I don't quite divine. What
does Bill Warren have to do with this?

>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.

How are Thai peasants contribuitng "huge masses of capital"? By growing
rice for domestic consumption? Or does it happen when they're displaced
from the land to go to work in toy factories and brothels? If it's the
latter, then you're implicitly conceding there has been a boom, because if
there hasn't, it's hard to figure out where this SV is coming from.

>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 love it when educated, literate, and cosmopolitan people sit at their
computers and tout the virtues of the unlettered rural life.

Doug




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