>Now, it occurs to me that capitalist development 'take-off' moments are
>marked by an appropriation of something - enclosure, and/or privatisation,
>and/or commodification of something (often a whole way of life) not
>formerly commodified. That means 'economic growth' can't help but be
>dramatic, as stuff without formal market value, and/or without formal
>profits, and/or without any recourse to market transactions at all could
>well equal zero on the national accounts. They suddenly appear on the
>accounts purely by virtue of a formal change of status, don't they? So, as
>the accounts soar, you actually get people losing their access to a
>livelihood, and/or public services and/or a tenable social network of
>collective-life-sustenance.
While there are foundational crimes that make a takeoff, but real accumulation has to take over at some point. What were the primal appropriations that kept U.S., Japanese, and East Asian growth going for so long? Sure there are imperial appropriations that keeps the North growing, but there's also the routinized exploitation of labor and its embodiment in technology.
Doug