Re: Ricardo Duchesne on Ellen Meiksins Wood

Charles Jannuzi wrote:
> What Proyect needs to do is post a summary of his thesis instead of links to
> rather rambling essays that do not cohere as one piece. It's one thing to
> undercut theory-driven superstructures about history writ large, it's
> another thing to have a coherent theory oneself. I don't undestand Proyect's
> theory and must ask for a summary if he wishes to discuss it rationally.
> And is his theory specific to the 19th century US or is he trying to
> contribute to the philosophy of history too?
I am not sure what you need clarification on. I posted a review of 
Ricardo Duchesne's review of Ellen Meiksins Wood's "Origins of 
Capitalism", which contained virtually none of my own ideas on the topic.

If you are referring to my replies to Charles Post, I can summarize as 
follows:

1. If the Brenner thesis hinges on market relations as a sine qua non 
for capitalism, then the American Civil War does not bear it out as Post 
alleged. With an outcome that eventually resulted in debt peonage, 
convict labor, sharecropping and KKK terror to keep blacks from going 
North, the only term that can describe this is "extra-economic" 
coercion, which Brenner and Wood associate with precapitalist societies.

2. I challenge the notion of a bourgeois-democratic revolution in the 
Civil War. In doing so, I try to apply some of the insights found in 
Karl Marx's writings on the abortive German revolution.

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org