Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> On 6/1/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > And what value are the very poor creating that some capitalist is
> > appropriating?
>
> It seems to me that capitalism has already exhausted its once
> progressive historical tendency -- its inability to incorporate much
> of the world's poor legally and formally into the chain of exchange
> value creation is evidence of that. Capitalism was progressive only
> in so far as it dissolved feudal relations of production.
I've never made up my mind on this, but I think an argument could be made that capitalism was _never_ progressive in the sense of directly improving the world, _in any way_, but only in the sense that it opened up the possibility of _future_ improvement.
Much of the evidence that various scholars (e.g., Jim Blaut) have produced of growth in productivity outside Europe does _not_ at all demonstrate the non-European origins of capitalism; rather, it shows that growth of productive capacity was possible (even likely) WITHOUT the detour through the bloodbath known as capitalism.
Carrol