[Marxism] reminder

[Sayan Bhattacharyya]

On 8/12/07, bhandari at berkeley.edu <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:

>
> I received a private email where he told me that it is not a racist claim
> that the English population first reached some kind of tipping point in
> genetic change which then had momentous consequences (apparently the
> cultural change needed to become the first industrial society to break out
> of the Malthusian trap). Indeed he defended this claim as if it were
> obviously true and his own and not racist.

This is the exchange I had with Rakesh on this: (By the way, as I
explained to Rakesh, the only reason I replied by private email was
that there is a limit of N postings per person per day, and I wanted
not to post too many times to the list and exceed the limit.)

-------- Content of my private exchange with Rakesh ---------------

Rakesh > >>  that the English population alone has some special
Rakesh > >>  genetic propensity to save.

Sayan > >"Alone has"? That wasn't Clark's hypothesis.

Rakesh > So if Clark is not saying that sooner the rest, England alone had
Rakesh > some special genetic propensity to save and this genetic difference
Rakesh > explains why England had cultural change andn thus the industrial
Rakesh > revolution before the rest , then what is he saying?

As I understand it, Clark *is* saying that England alone had
some genetic propensity to save and this genetic difference
explains why England had cultural change and thus the industrial
revolution before the rest.

What he is *not* saying, however, is that this genetic difference was
"special" (your word) in any way.

[Explication of what I think Clark's position is: (Note: This is not
*my* position! This is my understanding of *Clark's* position.)]

With the benefit of hindsight, i.e. from today's vantage point, we can
see that the *impact* of this difference proved to be momentous.

But *at that time*, this genetic difference was nothing special -- it
would have been a matter of pure contingency, like any number of
genetic differences a population has compared to other populations!
And it would have arisen as a result of pure chance events.

So the English people were not "special" (in the sense of "chosen") in
any way. Intead of the English people, it could have happened in
France or Italy or Timbuktu, just as well.

It is precisely this point which makes this a not-racist hypothesis.
The hypothesis does not claim any "special" status for the English
people, except that the difference, by pure chance, happened there.

If it had happened in Korea (as it might well have happened), today we
would all be speaking Korean rather than English, but global
capitalism would look pretty much the same.