On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Doug Henwood wrote:
> But why enclosure?
Arguably the original impetus to capitalist agriculture comes from the expansion of the market. Enclosure was the result of demand from the textile industry. Similarly capitalist practices arose in agriculture throughout Europe once there was money to be made in food export. Why was there money to be made in export? Because of colonies. Why colonies? Because of the exploration of new lands with the purpose of state aggrandizement. And arguably that was the one thing Europe had that China didn't: a mess of competing states, each feeling threatened by its neighbors and looking for an edge. Arguably, if Europe had been politically unified under an emperor who wanted to preserve his power, this wouldn't have happened, because it wouldn't serve the central power's interests. And there's a case to be made that that's exactly how the Chinese ruling class felt about it and that they acted accordingly to stifle it.
> Why travel abroad and steal people? Why didn't they think of it
> before?
Actually stealing people and enslaving them had been going on vestigially all along. People were enslaved during the Crusades, and they were enslaved in wars with the Turks. There was a noticable number of slaves in Renaissance Italy. But they were mostly ornamental, like midgets. What made slavery blossom was that a vastly profitable use was found for them: growing sugar in Madiera. Portugal, the smallest state, who most needed a competitive edge simply to keep from getting absorbed, led the way in exploration, and traded for slaves in Africa just has they had done centuries before on different coasts. But in Madiera, once they started growing sugar, the natives died and the Europeans didn't want to come. But sugar growing was hugely profitable so they tried every way to make it work. And the slaves, to their eternal unhappiness, endured. Thus money fanned a flicker into a holocaust. And success led to imitation in other similar islands growing similar hugely profitable crops, and in mining, the other activity they most wanted to do overseas that killed natives and didn't attract Europeans.
Later, when it seemed to be coming to the end of another cycle, slavery got a new wind in the US with the invention of the cotton gin.
So in each of these cases, politics and economics seem to be explanation enough.
Michael __________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com