Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 12:20:09 -0600 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
I fwd this post both because it seems to me to have some interesting material relevant to Economic Nationalism but also because an aside at the end is a bit of a point for Doug in the on and off debate over Freud.
Carrol
[Note: ISU is engaged in a software changeover and I can send but not receive mail at this address. I've got a temporary sub on Netscape web mail, but that mail program is so damned awkward that I only read a small selection of posts.]
From: "NÈstor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky at inea.com.ar> Subject: RE: British railways in India Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000 23:39:54 -0300
Clairmonte is one of the most interesting historians in the First World dealing with matters in the Third World. His work on liberalism and protectionism is among the best ever. I strongly recommend it.
One of the interesting sides of his work (which has to do with my recent centripetal / centrifugal posting) is that he exposes up to which point the alternative was clear for Britain from the very onset. I remember that once I read an article by him on the differences between India and Japan. On that article, he disclosed that Jeremy Bentham, the arch-liberal and arch-free trader, commended the Japanese officials who visited him to read an economic history of India (by an Indian economist or historian) which showed the terrible results of free trade.
It seems that Bentham, a good son of England, was decided to help Japan becoming a power lest it became a colonial outpost in Asia that the USA could profit from; on this, the comments by Baran and Sweezy are still of the greatest value; Jim Blaut, if I am not remembering wrong, commented that, being Japan the further East from Europe, it was spared colonization by Europe, which did not obstruct Commodore Peary of course.
The fact is that through the good offices of Bentham, the very same Bentham whose Free Trade Credo was taught to the South American oligarchies by the British tradesmen here, Britain helped Japan become strongly protectionist, and thus generate a centripetal community. Peary's fleet met an unexpected dreadnought in Master Jeremy's liquid prose.
As to railroads, they are important in many senses. Their function was dialectically opposite in England and, say, in India. The Argentinian example is, however, more revealing. Both in India and Argentina, British railroads were designed to continue British overseas trade routes inland. In India, however, there are many ports. In Argentina, being Buenos Aires practically the only port, the fan shaped pattern of the railroads is a lesson in economic imperialism by itself.
[And, since Lou made his aside, I will make mine: neither bored nor frustrated, I deeply respect Freud, whose whole construction is structurally homologous to that of Marx; and therapeutically, it certainly works, it worked on me at least].
NÈstor Miguel Gorojovsky gorojovsky at inea.com.ar