CB
>>> Brad De Long <delong at econ.berkeley.edu> 02/02/00 09:41AM >>>
> > Brad de Long wrote:
>> Nevertheless, the first industrial nation--Britain--is the only one
>> for which you can plausibly argue that median standards of living
>> fell during the process of industrialization. That tells me
>> something...
>
>Brad, add South Africa and Zimbabwe! Capitalist industrialisation
>"needed" an articulation of modes of production between the
>mines/factories/plantations and artificially pre-capitalist
>"bantustan" zones where rural women and the environment provided a
>nice site of superexploitation in the reproduction of ultra-cheap
>labour power. More negative externalities, writ huge on the
>socio-ecological fabric. I'd guess (who can really measure!) that the
>median went way down from the 1890s through at least the 1950s as
>this system's logic fully unfolded.
>Patrick Bond
Thanks...