On Wed, 22 Jul 1998, Alejandro Rivero wrote:
> ....I think that capital accumulation is closely related to the intake
> of energy each civilization was/is able to do. So, we start playing
> animals (very indirect sun energy), and primitive uses of wood and
> coal, then we proceed to wind and water, then a centuries wide
> epoch of harvesting again from nature (and humans), and finally
> we restart with vapour machine, and now oil and nuclear. Capital
> seems very related to this intake....
Yes and no, IMHO. Capital/energy got embedded in very material
form in ancient times, after all, whether as ovens and streets or
golden statues, and some of this was used for what we might term
"investment" and some wasn't. It's estimated Julius Ceasar looted
4000 Druidic temples in Gaul, for example. The cost of filling
these temples with objets d'art must have been considerable, but
it's not likely that this "accumulation" contributed in either
Gallic or Roman hands to economic development.
As I see it, the very notion of economic development as a steady
process was probably alien to classical civilizations. Instead,
most people/nations saw plunder as a preferable means of obtaining
wealth. Effectively, Marx was correct in seeing a great difference
between a "Slave Mode of Production" and what came later.
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ms44278@huey.csun.edu
Mike Shupp
California State University, Northridge
Graduate Student, Dept. of Anthropology
http://www.csun.edu/~ms44278/index.htm