Charles Brown wrote:
>
> >>> dbreslin at ctol.net 12/07/00 02:26PM >>>
> Capitalism beginnings have multiple
> threads and even notions of chance and necessity are too
> clunky to handle.
>
> ((((((((((((
>
> CB: You sort of leave us hanging when you don't tell us what notions are capable of handling those beginnings.
Hmmm...you're left hanging and I'm hoisted by my own petard. I read into your use of chance and necessity something more mechanical and programmatic. Once chance has it go at it, the focus turns to necessity and from there its all necessity. At least in the sense of determinism - where cause is identified and we see it play out in its consequences or effects that by, well necessity, must happen. And necessity gives birth to monocausal theories operating within totalities and concepts and labels for things that sacrifice complexity and inconvenient details for the sake of conceptual simplicity. Actually I don't know what notions would be capable of handling beginnings since I'm still stuck in trying to pin down just what it is that is beginning; whether we're referring to a unitary thing or a constellation of processes or patterns to which something like capitalism is largely a label of convenience. The more I think about it, the more inane it looks. But it works in its own fashion. So where, for example, Carrol Cox wants to know what causes the labor process, I get the urge to unpack it.
Dennis Breslin