Guns, germs and steel didn't cause the differences in societies in
> the last 500 years. It was people, Europeans with capitalist ideology.
> The guns, germs and steel allowed them to conquer the world.
>
And as one might guess from his title, it's the guns, germs and steel that Diamond sets out to explain, no?
^^^^ CB: More the other way around, which is the main defect. U should be able to see it with the germs. He's not explaining germs, but using germs to explain capitalist conquest of the globe. Guns were invented in China. But because of a different culture/history, the Chinese didn't use them to conquer the world. So, anyway, he's not explaining the origin of guns in discussing their relationship to European conquest. Europeans didn't invent guns in order to conquer. They didn't invent guns.
It's pretty trivially true that the guns, germs and steel _allowed_ the Europeans to do widespread conquest. Don't need some new book to show that.
Also, it was industrial production that allowed the mass production of guns and steel. See _Capital_ chapter on production of relative surplus value on industrial production, machines , cooperation, factories, etc.
^^^^^
Of course, we quickly run into a chicken-or-egg dilemma regarding their relation to capitalism and other modes of production, all of which I would consider things substantially different than "ideologies," but he never pretends his book offers the resolution to that. And you're simply avoiding the obvious question: why did capitalism and its concurrent technologies arise in some parts of the world but not others?
^^^^^ CB: I don't see a chicken and egg problem with respect to germs , do u ? Anyway, guns arose in China,not Europe.
I''d say the unique component of European ideology that leads to world conquest is the Greco-Roman aspect. U know; Rule Britannia ! There is nothing inherent in the newly arising wage labor/capital relations of production that implies establishing new forms of slavery and colonialism. Modern slavery was specifically not a free or wage-laborer relationship. It's the mentality of enthusiasm about the Greco-Roman heritage or thinking of Bourgeois society as descendant from the Greco-Roman society that motivates building so many guns, making so much steel and using the impact of the germs the Europeans spread to conquer so many other peoples. The Chinese examples demonstrates that having gun powder doesn't by itself cause people to use them to conquer.
There are Greco-Roman roots to much of European language, which is to say that the Bourgeoisie came by that heritage honestly in one sense.
^^^^
> The author is a biologist , who , not surprisingly devises another
> technological determinist, or vulgar materialist, and social darwinist
> theory
Oh, he does no such a silly thing.
^^^^^ CB: Yes he does. He has a whole big tv series where he lays out his thesis. We anthropologists can spot them a mile away.
^^^^
> It is an amateurish jumping into a discipline without any attention to
> the many already existing works in this important area of knowledge.
Such as ... ?
^^^^ CB: Well , Marxism and materialist anthropology. For the 10,000 years there's u know University of Michigan archaelogy department, for example. The one housed in the Natural history museum; and the anthropology department. For the 500 years, See _Capital_. Hey , Weber on the spirit of capitalism. W.E.B Dubois' _The World and Africa_.
^^^^^
I'll admit to a near-complete ignorance of prior attempts to tackle the problem Diamond addresses:
"We keep seeing all those glaring, persistent differences in peoples' status. We're assured that the seemingly transparent biological explanation for the world's inequalities as of A.D. 1500 is wrong, but we're never told what the correct explanation is."
So let's hear something about the better explanations. References to "many already existing works" that are never named grate on one's nerves.
^^^^ CB: For starters, get Conrad Kottak's anthropology text book.Or any text book on anthropology. Then get an archaeology text book. Books by Eric Wolf. Take a class with list member Christopher Carrico ; Christine Galley.