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Date: Sun, 07 Feb 93 23:05:54 EST
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <
[email protected]>
Subject: Sudden death of Chinese protocapitalism
To: Chris Chase-Dunn <CHRISCD@JHUVM>
No one contests the need to stress the big-picture broad-perspectual
longterm approach to macrotheoretical analysis, especially when macrosocial
diachronic comparison is indicated. But the preceding sentence is all the
sociogibberish I have stomach for at this time, given the logical pitfalls
in selecting for inclusion or omission which our discourse facilitates
glossing over.
To illustrate: I asked the only other person I knew in the computer
room at the time, a graduate student in political science, to give a
quick scan to the following passages from the Sanderson article,
"Explaining the Transition From Feudalism to Capitalism: The Japanese
Case and its Theoretical Significance":
> It is important to situate this early Japanese economic thrust in
>its world-systemic context.....
>
> No one should think I am suggesting that Japan was becoming a
>capitalist society in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Far
>from it. But it was involving itself in economic networks and
>undergoing economic changes that would be of momentous importance in
>the centuries to come.
She said, "Is this supposed to mean anything, or isn't it?" (In response,
I said, "In the current state of this 'field', that may well be a secondary
consideration.") Upon re-reading a number of times, I decided that the
author was here striving for a "meaning" which the historical facts,
had they been fully investigated, might have at obscured; but this was
unnecessary, since the author has already ascertained how the story
"ends." Language had to be found for cursory treatment of inessential
Chinese history. The inessentiality, in turn, derived from a *post hoc
ergo haec geneses* fallacy (if you can pardo my language, which has got
to be in error):
This fallacy, which I have mentioned in passing in connection with
European development, amounts to saying, "Given impressive outcomes at
a later period, the order of magnitude of macrosocial variables X, Y, and
Z, as assessed by an imaginary outside observer empirically observing
the society in question in the *earlier* period, would have been
*unimpressive* both qualitatively and quantitatively, takes on
importance as *presumed origins*.
Conversely, where the posited-as-empirically-observable order of
magnitude of macrosocial development may apper in the results of a
study for time T(1) be impressive indeed, then suffer catastrophic and
irretrievable ruin hence appear paltry in a study done at time T(2), the
latter, not the former, becomes theoretically salient. The actual
process of development at T(1) is rendered susceptible to being
rendered *theoretically unhappened*. This is done by assuming the
miserable or seemingly backward conditions at time T(2) also prevailed
at time T(1).
The elided portion of that first paragraph, cited above, which the
political scientist was expected to know beans about (Pol Sci is Seventh
Floor, History is Third, Asian Studies, Second), there is asserted precisely
this kind of *theoretical unhappening* of what was in effect the peak of
Chinese economic development:
> ...It seems that Japan was involving itself
>in a vigorous Far Eastern trade at basically the same time that late
>Sung and early Ming China was withdrawing from world trade and
>declining economically. These events are undoubtedly connected. A
>large economic vacuum was created, and Japan was quick to fill it
>(Collins, 1990). Japan picked up the Asian economic impetus where
>China left off.
Is it getting picayune to berate Sanderson for omittimg a whole dynasty,
the Yuan (1275-1368), between the Song (Northern, 960-1127; Southern,
1127-1275) and Ming (1368-1644)? Trivia-freak though I am, I'll have to give
a serious No to that, because the Yuan was the very period of maximum wide-
open boomtown-atmosphere commercial *and* industrial prosperity; the acme
of Chinese protocapitalism prior to the Catastrophe.
The general picture can be found in any standard general history of China
(imder "The Song Economic Revolution" or suchlike); Jacques Gernet, A History
of Chinese Civilization; also, Everyday Life in China, 1250-1275, gives a
good introduction. But there is even more impressive information in books
read by Sanderson, Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past,; and Janet
Abu-Lughod, Brfore European Hegemony, 1989.
What follows is excerpted from a draft article I'm now revising for
resubmission.
The Chinese in the early fourteenth century looked like a better bet
to develop capitalism than Europe. China had from the mid-tenth to the
early fourteenth century been well in advance of the West both in
technical development and in the institutional development of commercial
enterprise. This perios corresponds exactly to the European Medieval
economic expansion, except that the Chinese started from a higher level
and developed at a faster rate. In recent years there has been some focus
on parallels and similarities between the development of Europe and that
of China. One major focus has been on the rapid development of both during
the Medieval period....
The case made by Gernet and Elvin and recently restated by Abu-Lughod
demonstrates most forcefully that until the early to middle fourteenth
century the advantage in the imaginary race among the "competing
civilization zones of the Eurasian landmass to be first to reach the
unimagined goal of "modern capitalism" *favored the Chinese*. This
has been inferred or explicitly evaluated by recent scholarship in terms
of the rate and broad base of technological development; evolution of
capitalist infrastructures such as considerable urbanization involving
cities of immense size which had, from administrative centers of parasitic
consumption developed into centers of manufacturing industry; development
of metallurgical, textile, shipbuilding, and other industries in advance
of the European; financial instruments facilitating transactions over long
distances; printed paper money; and the appearance of private capitalists
as profit-maximizers (as had not occurred in Europe0.[2]....
[2] The comparison is with Italian bankers, like those of Florence at the
same time, who were compelled to be simultaneously entrepreneurs and
soldier-poliiticians: Those who controlled the state retained their
enterprises; those who did not lost them.
[Section on direct economic consequences of Bubonic Plague pandemic omitted
here. It essentially duplicates material in a previous post.]
*Economic collapse and the Ming crisis legislation*.
The Mongol Yuan Dynasty no longer commanded a unified state apparatus
after 1355. From the following year warlords leading their privately raised
armies fought rebels and each other; loyalty of commanders to the central
government in Dadu (Beijing) was purely symbolic; and troops on all sides
were paid with revenues locally collected or stolen. The paper currency
reflected this in hyperinflation. The warlords were eliminated piecemeal
by a leader of genius, Zhu Yuanzhang (see below). [Meaning some other post.]
The Ming state found the complex, sophisticated, and delicate system of
estates, markets, internal trade, and industrial production in a condition
of prostrate ruin. The Ming founder's objective was the swiftest possible
restoration of the market economy. The means employed to restore commerce
and industry entailed massive state economic intervention, which most
heavily affected the agricultural base of the economy, which most
fundamentally involved strenuous efforts at increasing basic cereal grain
production. Vacant lands were repopulated by offers of land distribution
and in some instances by enforced migrations. Additional land for
redistribution was confiscated from loyalists of the former Mongol regime
and its collaborators. Mobility of the population was enhanced by the
abolition of the worst forms of serfdom, approximating to slavery, which
had residentially fixed the mass of Yangzi Valley peasants on great
estates. Mobility of produce was facilitated by improvement in water
transport.
These measures were accompanied by legislation of coerced production
of cash crops especially those critically important for industrial
production: hemp, cotton, and mulberry trees whose leaves were used in
feeding silkworm larvae. Since the 1340s these crops had gone out of
production; for lack of raw materials the costs of production of the
finished cloth had exploded; and the number of those with cash income
who could afford the high prices dwindled.
Minimum areas were set aside for textile cultivation. The smallest
peasant holdings were required to set aside one-half *mou* (one sixth
of an acre) for planting mulberry, hemp, or cotton; for larger holdings
the minimum assessment was a full *mou*. (Hucker 1978 p. 59) Violators,
in abject lesson of the effects of the raw-materials shortage on prices,
"were required to pay taxes in finished cloth at exorbitant rates."
(*ibid*.) The sales of cotton cloth, recently introduced in the preceding
Yuan Dynasty period, were greatly stimulated by state purchases. The
state moreover rebuilt the economic base of the great cities of the Yangzi
Valley, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou; this required major involvement of the
state in the organization of textile production. in huge manufacturing
establishments owned both by itself and private entrepreneurs....
<<It's after midnight, this is too long already, and I am falling out. Be sure
to *miss* the thrilling conclusion of this economic legislation part.>>
<<Then: Watch the thrilling miniseries coming your way on the Uncovery Channel.
Follow the career of Zhu Yuanzhang from illiterate 19-year-old peasant to
heroic guerrilla fighter to class collaborator to Emperor, "the most blood-
thirsty tyrant in Chinese history.">>
<<Then watch these videotaped discussion groups: (1) Ming The Merciless: Was
he a Paranoid Psycho or Misguided Ideologue? (2) The class politics of social
revolution in the fourteenth century. (3) Quotations from the Works of Ming
the Merciless [on detecting and killing evildoers, etc.] in red plastic.>>
Daniel A. Foss
