Date: Sat, 01 Nov 1997 11:09:37
Subject: Re: M-I: David Harvey on the Communist Manifesto


>"The principle of family life is dependence on the soil, on land, *terra
>firma*. Similarly, the natural element for industry, animating its outward
>movement, is the sea. Since the passion for gain involves risk, industry
>though bent on gain yet lifts itself above it; instead of remaining rooted
>to the soil and the limited circle of civil life with its pleasures and
>desires, it embraces the element of flux, danger and destruction.
>Furthermore, the sea is the greatest means of communication, and trade by
>sea creates commercial connections between distant countries and so
>relations involving contractual rights. At the same time, commerce of this
>kind is the most potent instrument of culture, and through it trade
>acquires its significance in the history of the world...
>
>"To realize what an instrument of culture lies in the link with the sea,
>consider countries where industry flourishes and contrast their relation
>to the sea with that of countries which have eschewed sea-faring and
>which, like Egypt and India, have become stagnant and sunk in the most
>frightful and scandalous superstition. Notice also how all great
>progressive peoples press onward to the sea."
>

Is this Hegel?  Did he do drugs?  What about Switzerland, which also
eschewed sea-faring?  Did pretty well industrially!.  The most advanced
country in eastern Europe was Czechoslovakia, no sea contact there.  Also
the USA's great leap forward was from an internal dynamic in the 1800s; it
was after capitalism took off that the US became a naval power.

Andrew.
'Let us proceed to the construction of the socialist order' - Vladimir Lenin
	




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