Your culture sucks, mine is better

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Azazel


So does capitalism predate the enlightenment?

I would argue yes, but most non-Marxists wouldn't.

[Az]

Ah, the everlasting question, "What is capitalism?"

[Ramo]

Private, non-worker control of the means of production I think is a decent definition.

[Az]

by this definition, it indeed predates the enlightenment by far.

[Ramo]

Yep.

[Az]

I feel that this thread was threadjacked enough. Let's get back to the original issue, and leave this issue at peace.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Azazel


So does capitalism predate the enlightenment?

Think of what were the great engines fuelling the mercantilist empires of the Netherlands and England/Great Britain- in neither case was it the desire to proselytize for religion (partly the case with Spain, Portugal and France) nor the desire to simply amass plunder and bullion (think of the gold and silver mines of Potosi, Central and South America). The impetus behind the empire building of the Dutch and the English/british was trade- both the VOC and the East India Company (the Hudson's Bay Company too, for that matter) created essentially trading empires overseas as opposed to empires by outright conquest.

The British Empire in India stems from a trading port, canny alliances and diplomacy (and marriage to a Portuguese princess)- similarly with the Dutch in Sri Lanka, and the Dutch East Indies. When the empires developed, the European nations could place a tariff zone around their colonies, and force places such as India to buy English cotton.

But it could well be argued also, that this proto-capitalist approach to empire helped energize the intellectual processes of the Enlightenment which then led to the typical 19th century form of imperialism, with Palmerstonian gunboat diplomacy, commdities forced on nations (opium to China), and so forth. I think the crazes for new things, new ideas, new tastes, new art, was at least fed by the expanding trade networks- Chinoiserie crazes, Moghul/Saracen style architecture, Japanese prints, Pacific and African 'primitive' art.

[GePap]

So we have a bunch of people living a way of life that has existed, depending on how you decide to define it, for only 12,000 years TOP (assuming you define modern life as agricultural life), with 9000 (urban life) being perhaps a bit better claim carpet superiority oevr a way of life that has existed sincve the beginning of mankind as a new species....how, interesting?

Whether something is better or worse is based solely on your aims: what you define as where we should go and what we should be defines what is good society and bad society, worthwhile and not, better or worse.

[Straybow]

Even the half-naked "primitives" think that living past 35 is better than not. They lack the means to effect it by their own medicine, and therefore capitalist-derived health is better.