Meszaros, progress

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Perhaps Jim B has a stagist theory of history in which all the
precapitalist states or empires are collected together under the rubric of
a feudal or tributary mode, all imagined to be equally fated to have passed
over to capitalism if Europe had not arrived there first due to the plunder
of Americas and then kept everyone else in twilight between feudalism and
capitalism for centuries. But note that it is not only Eurocentricists who
reject this stagist theory of history--which anachronistically attributes a
unity to human activity that is the unique consequence of capitalism.  As I
noted previously, Harbans Mukhia argues that India was indeed not on the
cusp of making such a transition; this supports Brenner's and Wood's
arguments.  See Mukhia's contribution to Feudalism and Non Western Society,
a book he edited with TJ Byres.

(Following Grossmann, CLR James, Jairus Banaji, Alex Callinicos and others,
I do disagree with Brenner and Ellen Wood on the proletarian nature of much
of the formally unfree labor in early capitalism--they seem to deny it.)

In terms of Brenner and evolutionary theory, it comes into play in his
global turbulence book as an implicit analogy, I would say. Evolution is
often thought of as a process of constant hill climbing, but it is possible
that evolution has sometimes passed through valleys of intermediate forms
of low fitness before beginning hill climbing on higher peaks on the
adaptive landscape. But how does one survive in the valley?  Analogously,
how did Germany and Japn survive the transition to a new technological
foundation on which higher heights could be reached though economic costs
are high in a transition to  a new technological paradigm and thus
relative fitness dangerously low?

For Brenner, they were explicitly protected by the US due to the Cold War
and thus allowed to switch peaks on the adaptive landscape, having thus
survived the valley of low intermediate fitness. In other words, protection
allowed Japan and Germany to pass over the adaptive saddle and then be
captured by a higher steeper adaptive peak. Fitness was decreased in
passing from one peak to another, and this would not have been possible
without protection.  So eventually they reached much greater heights (not
all peaks are equally high on an adaptive landscape). This then led to US
retaliation and then their counter-retailiation--the long downturn being
the consequence.

Oh well just playing around with Sewall Wright's adaptative landscapes,
which according to Jean Gayon has been the most powerful metaphor of
evolutionary biology in the 20th century.

Barkley may get a good laugh at my efforts here to explore the analogy
between economics and evolution. But note that I think this analogy helps
to illuminate Brenner's framework, not that he relies on it. And not that I
agree with it.

Still thinking about Jim F's response.

Yours, Rakesh