Just saw this on Branko’s twitter and all I can think of is “What’s the economic growth of a million ‘steam slaves’ with no materials for them to process?“ Does someone need to explain the concept of “Necessary but not sufficient“ here?
Having those machines means you will absolutely need as much raw material as you can get, if that’s the bottleneck, it’s easy to see that more industrial capacity could increase the level of labor exploitation.
One thing here he reaches right up to but does not realize is that colonies are useful precisely because they are so far away. You can keep your pampered well-fed skilled artisans in Britain, and so when the labor uprising happens in Africa they’re not at risk or even bothered. That’s in addition to the fact that having resources be distant makes the whole process very profitable and therefore gives capacity and desire for more intense investment
Also talks about the ”heydays of capitalist growth in the West in the period 1945–1973“ without commenting on the fact that it ended. I can easily argue that wasn’t actually stable and it was a weird period in multiple ways.
I feel I could be convinced that slavery/colonization/whatever wasn’t actually necessary for industrialization but people are so bad at arguing it.
You see, I’m the other way around. Ever since I read that “they found harder ways to work the slaves to get more cotton” was bullshit and actually much of the productivity growth was due to breeding better cotton, I have been even more suspicious of claims that slavery/colonization/etc was required as a class.
They seem less about a study of the matter, and more about saddling the West with an infinite moral debt that can never be repaid, and excusing the impact of culture on development.
