Date: Sat, 1 Nov 1997 13:33:45 -0800 From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu (Rakesh Bhandari) Subject: Re: M-I: David Harvey on the Communist Manifesto Louis P, you have to put James H's paeans to bourgeois industrial growth in perspective. He is from a country that lost industrial leadership a century ago. And in its place the mighty Brits now live off City transactions, North sea oil exports, and illegal arms sales befitting a rogue nation. It is in this context that James' promulgation of large-scale industrial technical projects can seem progressive. Of course what is really bothering the Brits is that their industrial production has been so stagnant that dynamic East Asian firms have exported industrial capital in order to take advantage of the low wages for a massive industrial reserve army of labor. You have to understand how much that hurts. In the face of such humiliation, you can't expect someone to think of the global ecological consequences of global industrial growth; all he will want is some more of it. There is another interesting aspect to it. Just like it fell to the German idealists to theorize the French Revolution because they weren't really making one, it is interesting today that the economic theory which is most brilliantly attentive to technological change as the pulse of economic growth is produced by economists from the nation which has had the least of it--I am referring here to Chris Freeman, The Economics of Industrial Innovation. All the best, Rakesh --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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