Suchergebnisse

The solitary and isolated figure of Robinson Crusoe is often taken as a starting point by economists, especially in their analysis of international trade. He is pictured as a rugged individual -- diligent, intelligent, and above all frugal -- who masters nature through reason. But the actual story of Robinson Crusoe, as told by Defoe, is also one of conquest, slavery, robbery, murder, and force. That this side of the story should be ignored is not at all surprising, "for in the tender annals of political economy the idyllic reigns from time immemorial." The contrast between the economists' Robinson Crusoe and the genuine one mirrors the contrast between the mythical description of international trade found in economics textbooks and the actual facts of what happens in the international economy. The paradigm of non-Marxist international trade theory is the model of a hunter and fisherman who trade to their mutual benefit under conditions of equality, reciprocity, and freedom. But international trade (or, for that matter, interregional trade) is often based on a division between superior and subordinate rather than a division between equals; and it is anything but peaceful. It is trade between the center and the hinterland, the colonizers and the colonized, the masters and the servants. Like the relation of capital to labor, it is based on a division between higher and lower functions: one party does the thinking, planning, organizing; the other does the work. Because it is unequal in structure and reward it has to be established and maintained by force, whether it be the structural violence of poverty, the symbolic violence of socialization, or the physical violence of war and pacification. In this essay I would like to go over the details of Crusoe's story -- how, starting as a slave trader, he uses the surplus of others to acquire a fortune -- in order to illustrate Marx's analysis of the capitalist economy, especially the period of primitive accumulation which was its starting point. Adapted from the source document.

This paper uses a simple physiocratic model to examine forms of economic organization prevailing in Ghana before it was incorporated into the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. It is divided into three parts. The first analyzes the village subsistence economy and suggests that the egalitarian nature of the land-tenure system prevented the emergence of a land-owning class and the appropriation of an economic surplus. This led to an economic structure characterized by a low level of material production and a low degree of specialization and exchange. The second part analyzes forms of economic organization associated with long distance trade: that is, the very old northern trade with other parts of Africa, and the southern coastal trade with Europe which began in the fifteenth century. It argues that foreign trade not only expanded the consumption possibilities of the society, as predicted by the theory of international trade, but also introduced a new class structure and greater income inequality, since it allowed a small group to appropriate a surplus for its own use. The third part discusses the relevance of Pre-Colonial forms to twentieth century economic development.