{"id":14227,"date":"2020-07-02T16:22:47","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T16:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=14227"},"modified":"2023-03-31T15:08:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T15:08:57","slug":"in-memory-of-neil-davidson-the-west-no-better-than-all-the-rest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2020\/07\/02\/in-memory-of-neil-davidson-the-west-no-better-than-all-the-rest\/","title":{"rendered":"In memory of Neil Davidson: The West – No Better Than All the Rest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allan Armstrong was reading \u00a0How the West Came to Rule – The geopolitical origins of capitalism,<\/em>\u00a0by Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglum, as he learned of the tragic death of Neil Davidson. This book was influenced by Neil’s work on Uneven and Combined Development at a world scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allan has engaged in several debates with Neil about how Socialists can address Scottish history. He decided to write a review of Anievas and Nisancioglum’s book, and look at \u00a0aspects of British and Scottish history, through the lens they provide.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allan \u00a0sent this review to Conter<\/em>. He thought that the second \u00a0issue of the magazine would be well served if it had a number of articles \u00a0in Neil’s memory. However, the Conter<\/em> editorial board declined to publish it, without giving any reason.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE WEST \u2013 NO BETTER THAN ALL THE REST<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Challenging Eurocentric views of the world<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was reading\u00a0How the West Came to Rule<\/em>\u00a0(HtWctR<\/em>) when I learned of the death of Neil Davidson. Neil is acknowledged by the book\u2019s authors, \u00a0Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, as one of their inspirers.<\/a>[1]<\/a>\u00a0 HtWctR<\/em> places the Uneven and Combined Development Theory (UCDT) at the centre of its analysis, referencing Neil in doing so.<\/a>[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Neil had been making a major contribution to reviving and applying this theory to global history. This led to the conference entitled \u2018Uneven and Combined Development for the 21st<\/sup> Century\u2019 held in Glasgow between the 5-7th<\/sup> September 2019. \u00a0Anievas addressed this conference, albeit on another topic than HtWctR<\/em>.<\/a>[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Although this conference placed historical development in Scotland under the UCDT spotlight, its contributors also examined historical developments over a far wider arena.\u00a0 HtWctR<\/em> addresses these developments at the global level and represents the most ambitious attempt I have read to utilise UCDT both historically and geographically, whilst also drawing upon other theories.<\/p>\n

The title How the West Came to Rule<\/em>\u00a0though, is misleading. It could initially be mistaken for one of those many triumphalist books written since the nineteenth century heyday of European imperialism to the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR, which have celebrated \u2018western civilisation\u2019.<\/a>[4]<\/a>\u00a0 However, the book is making a very different argument \u2013 \u201cone in which non-European agency relentlessly impinged upon and (re)directed the trajectory of European development\u201d.<\/a>[5]<\/a>\u00a0 The authors point out that\u00a0The Intersocietal Origins of Capitalism<\/em><\/a>[6]<\/a> would be a better, but this would be a less \u2018sexy\u2019 title.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Making the case for the intersocietal origins of capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

In making the case for the intersocietal origins of capitalism, a key aim of HtWctR<\/em> is to challenge not only liberal histories of the world, but by extension much Marxist historical writing and practice too. \u00a0From both of these perspectives, capitalism, the first social system or mode of production to encompass the whole world, is seen to have its origins solely in Europe. \u00a0This capitalist core was later extended to a \u2018greater Europe\u2019 in North America.\u00a0 HtWctR\u00a0<\/em>looks again at such thinking. This helps us to understand the role such thinking has played in sustaining either liberal democratic \u2018end-of-history\u2019 thinking or much Marxist \u2018capitalist-road-to-socialism\u2019 thinking. \u00a0Both schools of thought have looked to the global victory of European-led capitalism before their ideal societies could be created. This is why they are unable to escape from a Eurocentric view of the world.<\/p>\n

HtWctR<\/em>\u00a0recognises the contributions of World Systems Theory (WST) (associated particularly with Immanuel Wallerstein).<\/a>[7]<\/a>\u00a0 But it argues that WST is based on the projection and intensification of European imposed market relations and division of labour throughout the world, whilst placing a negative sign where bourgeois political economy places a positive sign. \u00a0WST opposes Adam Smith\u2019s belief in the beneficial effect of the \u2018invisible hand\u2019 behind the \u2018free market\u2019, and David Ricardo\u2019s belief that each national economy would find its optimum niche in the world market due to his theory of \u2018comparative advantage\u2019. \u00a0WST though still mirrors their Eurocentric view of the word. \u00a0WST has been good in identifying the exploitative \u2018core\/periphery\u2019 relationship established under European initiated capitalist imperialism, but it also downplays the wide range of social relationships and labour regimes which the global capitalist system encompasses. \u00a0These produce their own contradictions and forms of struggle.<\/p>\n

HtWctR<\/em> also recognises important points made by the Political Marxists (associated particularly with Robert Brenner).<\/a>[8]<\/a>\u00a0 The Brenner Thesis attaches much significance to the capital\/wage labour relationship, seeing it as the distinguishing characteristic of capitalism. \u00a0However, HtWctR<\/em> shows that neither the earlier nor the contemporary \u2018real subsumption of labour\u2019,<\/a>[9]<\/a> with its domination by waged labour, can account for the nature of the global capitalist system. \u00a0It also persuasively argues this system cannot be adequately understood as flowing from purely internal developments in England; nor as the product of other developments in Europe,\u00a0e.g. in the Italian and Flemish city-states and the Dutch Netherlands, nor England’s imperial projection into North America, \u00a0nor through the further extension of wage labour following the classic bourgeois revolutions in the USA and France.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Providing the history to back the case<\/strong><\/p>\n

To help us understand the intersocietal impact of socio-economic developments and their consequent struggles HtWctR <\/em>begins its historical study with Europe\u2019s engagement with the Mongol Empire. \u00a0This led to \u201can increased exposure to the technical developments in the more scientifically advanced Asia\u201d. \u00a0This was followed not only by new social relationships and labour regimes but by the transmission of the Black Death \u201cand the subsequent demographic reordering which brought feudalism in Europe into crisis.\u201d<\/a>[10]<\/a> (At this point, Covid19 could not yet be on the authors\u2019 minds!)<\/p>\n

After this, there is an analysis of the \u201c\u2018superpower\u2019 rivalry between the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires\u2026. {which} undermined existing centres of feudal ruling class power \u2013 the papacy, Hapsburg Empire and Italian city-states \u2013 and supported or encouraged new counter-hegemonic forces \u2013 the Protestants, French and Dutch.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0When the Hapsburgs concentrated their military efforts on the Mediterranean and Central East Europe, this afforded the Northwestern European states \u201cthe geopolitical space that proved crucial to their development along capitalist lines\u2026 {whilst} the Ottomans unintentionally created for the English a condition of geopolitical \u2018isolation\u2019, which directly contributed to the homogeneity of the English ruling class\u2026 At the same time, Ottoman territorial dominance of the Mediterranean and land routes to Asia serve to push Northwestern European states onto an altogether novel global sphere of activity \u2013 the Atlantic.\u201d<\/a>[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

Once HtWctR<\/em> brings this Atlantic sphere into the wider picture, it examines \u201cthe manifold impact of the \u2018New World discoveries\u2019\u2026 and the intersocietal interactions, conflicts and struggles critical to the emergence of the modern conceptions of territorial sovereignty, and the development of Eurocentrism, scientific racism and the modern institution of patriarchy.\u201d<\/a>[12]<\/a>\u00a0 This section of HtWctR<\/em> addresses many more issues.<\/a>[13]<\/a>\u00a0 However, it also shows how \u201cthe development of capitalism in England was itself dependent on the widened sphere of activity offered by the Atlantic and that it was through the combination of American land, African slave labour and English capital {that} the limits of English agrarian capitalism were overcome.\u201d<\/a>[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

Although not stated explicitly, there is an implication that without the Native American genocides and African slavery, the agrarian-based English capitalism would have come up against its own developmental limits, just as the Italian city-states had. \u00a0Such an approach undermines not only British imperial apologists but also the thinking of those on the Left who see an almost inevitable self-generated capitalism with its origins in England and by extension to Europe and North America.<\/p>\n

HtWctR<\/em> looks at the \u2018proto\u2019-development\u2019 of capitalism in the Low Countries, where further economic development would also have been curtailed without the Dutch East India Company\u2019s (VOC) ability to create \u201ca commercial network that combined uneven labour processes spanning the spice-producing islands of Indonesia, precious metal production in Japan and India, and textile workers in India into a single integrated network of \u2018global\u2019 production\u2026The development of Dutch capitalism \u2013 the Bourse, Amsterdam entrepot and VOC \u00a0\u2013 were all based on this subjugated and exploited mass of unfree Asian labour-power.\u201d<\/a>[15]<\/a>\u00a0 And the relatively limited extension of waged labour in Dutch manufacturing at this time was tied to control over overseas unfree labour; just as the much greater extension of waged labour in England in the eighteenth century, came about through a more extensive command over American land and African slave labour.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Capitalism depends on a variety of forms of oppression and labour regimes<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, HtWctR<\/em> also highlights the particularly capitalist nature of various institutions developed overseas by the Dutch, despite these using unfree labour. The plantation is a key example. This also formed the basis \u201cfrom which \u2018super profits\u2019 based on cheap production costs could readily be exploited.\u201d<\/a>[16]<\/a> And HtWctR<\/em> also notes what the black Marxist C.L.R. James had already pointed to in the British West Indian slave plantations. They had \u201cgangs of hundreds in the huge sugar factories {which} were closer to a modern proletariat than any other group of workers at the time\u201d.<\/a>[17]<\/a><\/p>\n

So, as well as showing that unfree and \u2018free\u2019 waged labour grew alongside and not necessarily in conflict with each other, within the different territories ruled by single states, e.g. the Dutch Netherlands and the UK, this chapter reinforces HtWctR<\/em>\u2019s argument that capitalism is a broader social system, quite capable of resorting to a wide range of labour regimes to extract profits. Non-European historians have long pointed this out this link.<\/a>[18]<\/a>\u00a0 Socialist feminists have shown that the reproduction of capitalism requires massive amounts of unpaid domestic labour, overwhelmingly provided by women,<\/a>[19]<\/a> with the additional effect of lowering wages in the non-domestic care sector.<\/p>\n

And today, it should be clear that some of the most up-to-date and voracious capitalist businesses are prepared to resort to non-waged labour to maximise their profits. \u2018Uberisation\u2019 is the modern use of a version of the pre-Industrial Revolution \u2018putting out\u2019 system. \u00a0Uber\u2019s computing platforms enable it to extract big profits from self-employed taxi drivers, just as merchants providing cloth and markets did from self-employed weavers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

History 1, History 2 and old and new identity politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flowing from its recognition of a wider system of exploitative labour regimes, various forms of oppression, leading to different types of alienation, HtWctR<\/em> uses Dipesh Chakrabarty\u2019s distinction between History 1 and History 2. History 1, which supports the rule of capital, tries to make \u201call places (histories) exchangeable (comparable) with one another\u201d.<\/a>[20]<\/a>\u00a0 This is a reflection of the \u201cindividual concrete labour of each worker {as} the precondition for their exchangeability on the market.<\/a>[21]<\/a>\u00a0 By contrast, History 2 refers to those histories that are encountered by capital \u2018not as antecedents\u2019 established by itself, nor as \u2018forms of its own life process.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/a>[22]<\/a> \u00a0\u201cWhile capital may indeed seek to rewrite social life to further the cause of \u2018endless accumulation\u2019, it does not do so \u2013 to twist a famous maxim \u2013 in conditions of its own choosing.\u201d<\/a>[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

In looking to other sources of resistance to capitalism HtWctR<\/em> argues for \u201can understanding of the historical constitution of racism and patriarchy as tied to, but not reducible to, the emergence of capitalism\u2026 It would avoid treating struggles that seek to destroy racism as somehow external from or mere supplements to \u2013 the cardinal aim of destroying capitalism\u201d<\/a>[24]<\/a> (however that is envisaged \u2013 the abolition of the \u2018free\u2019 market, private property or the wages system).<\/p>\n

For many Socialists, such an approach conjures up the dangers of \u2018identity politics\u2019, underpinned by the theory of \u2018intersectionality\u2019.\u00a0 \u00a0They argue that the pursuit of individual or sectional aims undermines working class unity. In the UK, they often look back to a 1945-75 \u2018golden age\u2019 when there was apparent working-class unity. \u00a0However, this \u2018unity\u2019 was often based around the notion and perceived immediate interests of the white, male, trade unionist. At best, black, women or gay workers were tolerated, provided they \u2018knew their place\u2019. Furthermore, trade unions were often active agents in these workers\u2019 discrimination (as well as some unions promoting a sectionalism which divided workers by their recognised skill levels).<\/p>\n

There is indeed a problem with much of today\u2019s identity politics. \u00a0However, in many ways its approach to capitalism as an update of that of the \u2018old identitarians\u2019 found amongst many trade unionists and Social Democrats, seeking their place within the existing capitalist order. \u00a0Social Democracy accepts wage slavery. But it wants \u2018house slave\u2019 status (better pay and conditions) for labour. \u00a0It fears workers being reduced to the \u2018field slave\u2019 status of precarious super-exploited labour, often seeing those in this situation as a threat. \u00a0These \u2018old identitarians\u2019 have long turned against those who seem to challenge any gains they have made. \u00a0\u2018British jobs for British workers\u2019 has strong roots going back to the TUC\u2019s support for the 1905 Aliens Act, Gordon Brown\u2019s specific use of this slogan in 2009, and to UNITE leader, Len McCluskey\u2019s support for Brexit.<\/p>\n

And as Satnam Virdee has shown, even at the highpoint of Red Clydeside in 1919, celebrated by many Left Social Democrats and official and dissident Communists (Trotskyist and Maoist), Manny Shinwell of the ILP and Willie Gallacher (later of the CPGB) were trying to \u201cimport into the broad strike campaign the \u2018old demand\u2019 that black and Chinese crews should be expelled from British ships.\u201d<\/a>[25]<\/a>\u00a0 It was as if Shinwell from his Jewish background and Gallacher from his Irish background wanted to be seen as British working class \u2018old identarians\u2019 or \u2018insiders\u2019 by turning on \u2018racialised outsiders\u2019.<\/p>\n

Today, \u2018new identitarians\u2019, whether organised on an ethnic, gender or other basis, counter the \u2018old identitarians\u2019, who have already made it, preventing the newcomers from getting their own place under the capitalist \u2018sun\u2019. \u00a0There are those who have made more recent gains within the existing capitalist order, including some feminists. \u00a0They in their turn have become defensive \u2018identitarians\u2019 opposing such newcomers as the transgendered. \u00a0They use the same sort of arguments once used against reforms to benefit women and gays.<\/p>\n

The only way to challenge such divisions is from an overall international Socialist perspective. \u00a0This sees the linked nature of various forms of exploitation, oppression and alienation<\/a>[26]<\/a> under the global capitalist order we live under. \u00a0These three \u2018plagues\u2019 need to be challenged with a vision and practice based on emancipation, liberation and self-determination in its widest sense. Socialists should uphold a working class united in its diversity.\u00a0 This also enables us to provide a vision of a future new global order, which encompasses the many peoples of this world., and not see Socialism as the projection of the more limited world of an essentially European\/US \u00a0working class. \u00a0\u00a0HtWctR <\/em>goes some way to providing the theories which could assist Socialists in this. It can also help us to avoid other pitfalls.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

English exceptionalism and Scottish conceits<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those of us brought up in the UK, HtWctR<\/em> highlights a particular political danger in locating the origins of capitalism exclusively in the agrarian conditions of post-Black Death England. \u00a0This can lead to a Left version of English exceptionalism (a frequently unrecognised feature of British Left unionist thinking). \u00a0This sets up England as the ideal capitalist model against which all later capitalist developments, in the rest of Europe and beyond, should be judged. \u00a0But similar thinking can also be used to establish a somewhat wider Eurocentric view of the world, where English economic development is replaced by the role given to the ancient Greeks and their philosophy in certain versions of European supremacy. \u00a0Both of these approaches promote tunnel-vision views, either exaggerating England\u2019s contribution to \u2018progressive\u2019 capitalist development, or the contribution of classical Greece, so dependent on Egyptian and Asian civilisations, \u00a0for its own contribution to \u2018western civilisation\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, HtWctR<\/em>\u00a0 should also make us more aware of a particular Scottish conceit, which has been associated with both classical political economy, \u00a0much Left Social Democracy and official and dissident Communism. The experience of initial capitalist development in Scotland took place later and much more rapidly than in England. \u00a0This made the process much more visible. \u00a0Several major Scottish Enlightenment thinkers took the lead in Europe in outlining the development of commercial society. \u00a0They included Adam Smith in his\u00a0The Wealth of Nations<\/em>\u00a0with its \u2018free markets\u2019; and Lord Kames in his\u00a0Historical Law Tracts<\/em>, with its identification of four stages of social development, \u2013 hunter gatherer, herder, agricultural and commercial.<\/p>\n

Marx\u2019s work on classical political economy and his refinement of the stages of human development to include primitive communist, slave, feudal, capitalist and communist modes of production (sometimes with addition of the \u2018dead end\u2019 Asiatic mode), placed many Scottish-born thinkers at the centre of his critiques. \u00a0Both the Right\u2019s celebration and the Left\u2019s critique of \u2018free trade\u2019 and \u2018free\u2019 labour, have placed capitalist society at the pinnacle of so-far achieved social development. In doing this, they have therefore contributed to another British or Eurocentric approach, in which Scotland is seen to have played a significant role.<\/p>\n

Nearly all those earlier Scottish thinkers saw the 1707 Union as a key step on the road to a commercial\/capitalist society. \u00a0Scotland\u2019s central place amongst the philosophers and theorists, as well as within the British imperial economy, contributed to the Victorian notion of the primacy of a \u2018British road to progress\u2019 in the world. \u00a0From such thinking, various \u2018British roads to socialism\u2019 were to develop, beginning with Henry Hyndman\u2019s Social Democratic Federation \u2013 later to be renamed the British Socialist Party.<\/p>\n

We are still living with their descendants today, whether schooled in the old official Communist Party of Great Britain, its successor the Communist Party (of the no longer so Great) Britain, or by some dissident Communists. \u00a0Precisely because of Scotland\u2019s leading role in capitalist development, Scottish unionists, whether from the Right or Left, could place themselves in the vanguard of progress. \u00a0Within the Union they can still celebrate their own distinctive Scottish-British part in all this \u2013 whether symbolised by the kilt recognised as court dress or by Red Clydeside\u2019s leading role in a British Labour and Socialist movement. \u00a0British unionists have seen any concerns with a distinctive post-1707 Scottish history as being motivated by petty nationalism. \u00a0Their own \u2018internationalism\u2019 stems from either their British unionist or until recently, their Comintern links.\u00a0\u00a0 It was only with decline of the British Empire, that Britishness, in its hybrid unionist forms, could be more clearly seen as another form of nationalism, albeit one with continued linked imperial or unionist pretensions. \u00a0Similarly, the collapse of the USSR undermined the Left unionist appeal of this model.<\/p>\n

But the truly global nature of today\u2019s capitalist society outlined in\u00a0HtWctR,<\/em> should warn us of the dangers of another Scottish conceit. \u00a0Growing numbers of Socialists in Scotland are breaking with their Left British unionist past. \u00a0But in the process, many are mainly confining their practice to Scotland. \u00a0Although most Left British unionists have not recognised their dependence on the wider \u2018intersocietal origins of capitalism\u2019, Socialists who downplay Scotland\u2019s own links with past and current global capitalist developments, tend to become Left Scottish nationalists. \u00a0To counter this, it could be argued that many of the arguments used in HtWct <\/em>provide an argument for Scottish internationalism, which should form the basis for Socialist thinking in Scotland.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scotland, the UK and Europe no longer at the capitalist epicentre<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today Europe, and particularly the Northwestern European archipelago we live in, may appear increasingly peripheral to the centres of world socio-economic developments. \u00a0And for those of us in Scotland, either increased provincialisation under Brexit, or the break-up of the UK, could both accentuate this. \u00a0Therefore, Socialist thinkers in Scotland today would appear to be more in the position of some seventeenth and eighteenth-century Italian city-state philosophers championing Venice\u2019s fading glorious commercial and Renaissance past. \u00a0These thinkers were still able to challenge the reactionary Papal States and Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; but they lived in a Mediterranean world, which was no longer at the centre of a wider socio-economic system. \u00a0Their city-states were to give way to a world which became dominated by \u2018nation\u2019-states. \u00a0They had been marginalised by developments in North Western Europe and the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

Today Scotland may seem to be as peripheral in the world scheme of things as the eighteenth-century Italian city-states, but there is an important difference. \u00a0As with most other states within the current global corporate order, many migrants or their immediate descendants live and work here. \u00a0These include people from Asia, East Africa and Oceania, who hail from those areas in the rising capitalist heartlands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean seaboards. \u00a0Here the Chinese promoted \u2018Belt and Road Initiative\u2019<\/a>[27]<\/a>\u00a0competes with Indian, Japanese and US based economic initiatives. \u00a0Scotland also has migrants from that cockpit of global conflict \u2013 the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Thinkers from the Italian city-states, inspired by the European Enlightenment, would have to travel to Paris, London or Edinburgh to be heard or have much influence. \u00a0Today there is a global flow of scientists, economists, social scientists and cultural figures to universities and colleges throughout the global corporate world, including Scotland. \u00a0It\u2019s not so much that Scotland is marginal in today\u2019s world system. \u00a0It forms just one of many areas, located throughout the world, where corporate capital has promoted particular activities. \u00a0These include the most up-to-date financial institutions, IT and higher education in the quaternary sector and oil and natural gas, the latest in Scotland\u2019s \u2018boom and bust\u2019 primary sector, following timber, kelp, coal and iron ore at earlier periods.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Migrants and the making of a new \u2018internationalism from below\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The much wider movement of migrants and their immediate descendants seeking \u00a0work include a growing number of Left scholars. \u00a0The two authors of\u00a0HtWctR,<\/em>\u00a0and many of those they draw their theories upon, are amongst their number. They are able to provide a wider perspective, drawing on their own intersocietal experiences. \u00a0Corporate capital\u2019s drive to maintain global hegemony is producing its own \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 opposition. \u00a0And this extends far further than Academia. \u00a0This has been highlighted in these islands by significant struggles, e.g. of Turkish GAMA workers in Ireland<\/a>[28]<\/a> and the Latin American Workers Association led London cleaners\u2019 strikes.<\/a>[29]<\/a> \u00a0Such developments enable those of us with longer-standing domestic Scottish connections to develop a shared political practice, which can overcome Brexit provincialisation or national subordination within a corporate capital dominated global order. \u00a0We are potentially far more connected than those who confronted the rise of seventeenth and eighteenth-century mercantile capitalism.<\/p>\n

Neil Davidson is a very good example of the potential for such links. \u00a0He came from the opposite social direction to those in Academia with a recent migrant background.\u00a0 \u00a0He had longstanding Scottish roots in Buchan and Aberdeen. \u00a0But Neil went out from his job in Glasgow University to address academic and political meetings across the world. \u00a0Although a major figure in global Left Academia, Neil always saw the need to push beyond this to ensure that any conferences he was involved in organising were open to political, trade union, community and social campaign activists.<\/p>\n

It is a tragedy that Neil took ill on the first evening of the September 2019 conference. \u00a0Since his fatal illness overtook him over the next few months, Neil was unable to contribute more fully to the further development and application of the thinking aired at this conference, nor to respond to the thinking of\u00a0HtWctR<\/em>. \u00a0Neil was non-sectarian in his personal political approach.<\/a>[30]<\/a>\u00a0 I have always found reading and engaging with Neil\u2019s books an enjoyable experience, because even where there is disagreement, I have learned so much from his scholarly work. \u00a0I would very much have appreciated the sort of discussions I had with Neil in various watering holes after political and other events,<\/a>[31]<\/a>\u00a0had he lived to address the arguments put forward in\u00a0HtWctR<\/em>. \u00a0Socialists currently living in in Scotland have a responsibility to ensure that Neil\u2019s legacy in this regard is carried on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

30.5.20 (updated 20.9.20)<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

References and Footnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, How the West Came to Rule \u2013 The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism<\/em> (HtWctR),<\/em> (Pluto Books, 2015, London) p. xii.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., pp. 24, 49, 77, 197 and 300.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

[3] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Alexander Anievas, Reassessing the Cold War and the Far-Right: Fascist Legacies and the Making of the Liberal International Order after 1945.<\/em><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A recent example would be Rodney Stark\u2019s How the West Won.<\/em><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 4.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 12.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

[7] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., pp. 14-22.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., pp. 14-22.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

[9] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The theory of \u2018subsumption of labour\u2019 is briefly but well explained on p. 17. This is a particular Marxist theory, and hence one that may not be familiar to many in today\u2019s proclaimed \u2018post-marxist\u2019 world. However, the distinction between the \u2018formal\u2019 and \u2018real subsumption of labour\u2019 reflects important differences in the labour regimes workers and others are subjected to, with immediate and practical political consequences.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 274 and for the full argument, Chapter 3, The Long Thirteenth Century, Structural Crisis, Conjunctural Catastrophe<\/em>, pp. 64-90.<\/p>\n

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[11] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 274 and for the full argument, Chapter 3, The Long Thirteenth Century, Structural Crisis, Conjunctural Catastrophe<\/em>, pp. 64-90.<\/p>\n

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[12] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 275 and for the full argument, Chapter 5, The Atlantic Sources of European Capitalism, Territorial Sovereignty and the Modern Self,<\/em> pp. 121-73.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Chapter 6 addresses The \u2018Classical\u2019 Bourgeois Revolutions in the History of Combined and Uneven Development<\/em>. It has clearly taken some of its inspiration from Neil Davidson\u2019s How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions? <\/em>(Haymarket Books, 2012, Chicago)<\/p>\n

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[14] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 275.<\/p>\n

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[15] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 276 and for the full argument, Chapter 7, Combined Encounter; Dutch Colonisation in Southeast Asia and the Contradictions of \u2018Free Labour\u2019<\/em>, pp. 215-44.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 276 and for the full argument, Chapter 7, Combined Encounter; Dutch Colonisation in Southeast Asia and the Contradictions of \u2018Free Labour\u2019<\/em>, pp. 215-44.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 333, footnote 249.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 333, footnote 249.<\/p>\n

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[19] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., pp. 324-6, reference 101, Silvia Federci, Caliban and the Witch.<\/em><\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 37.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 37.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 37.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 38, Marcus Taylor, footnote 191.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 HtWctR, <\/em>op. cit., p. 282.<\/p>\n

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[25] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Satnam Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider<\/em> (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, Basingstoke) p. 82. Satnam was also at the conference in Glasgow in September 2019.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/07\/exploitation-oppression-and-alienation-emancipation-liberation-and-self-determination\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[27]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/cities\/ng-interactive\/2018\/jul\/30\/what-china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer<\/a><\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/cities\/ng-interactive\/2018\/jul\/30\/what-china-belt-road-initiative-silk-road-explainer<\/a><\/p>\n

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[29] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.indymedia.ie\/article\/77562?userlanguage=ga&save_ prefs=true<\/a><\/p>\n

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[30] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Despite our different views on aspects of global and Scottish history, Neil asked me to contribute to No Problem Here – Understanding Racism in Scotland<\/em> (Luath Press, 2018, Edinburgh) another title, like HtWctR<\/em> designed to provoke questioning) and to speak at the conference of scholars and activists invited to its launch in Glasgow in 2018. My contribution is entitled \u2018Britishness\u2019, the UK State, Unionism, Scotland and the \u2018National Outsider\u2019.<\/em> A fuller\u00a0 version of this can be seen at: http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/02\/britishness<\/a>-the-uk-state-unionism-scotland-and- the-national-outsider\/<\/p>\n

[31] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These included the meeting organised by the SSP in 2003, which debated Neil\u2019s Discovering the Scottish Revolution 1692-1746<\/em> (Pluto Books, 2003, London) and my Beyond Broadswords and Bayonets<\/em>(http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2003\/08\/03\/beyond-broadswords-and-bayonets-2\/<\/a>) and\u00a0 the meeting organised by the Radical Independence Campaign where we debated \u2018For and Against Brexit\u2019. (https:\/\/bellacaledonia.org.uk\/2016\/03\/01\/a-socialist-case-for-leaving-the-eu\/<\/a> and A POLITICAL COMPARISON BETWEEN THE 2012-14 SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE AND THE 2016 EU REFERENDA CAMPAIGNS<\/a>)<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

also see:-<\/p>\n

FROM GREY TO RED GRANITE<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

VIEWING THE LEFT, THE SCOTTISH QUESTION AND THE NATURE OF THE UK STATE THROUGH THE LENS OF NEIL DAVIDSON\u2019S WRITINGS AND POLITICAL WORK<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/allanarmstrong831930095.files.wordpress.com\/2023\/03\/from-grey-to-red-granite-1.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

NEIL DAVIDSON MEMORIAL MEETING, 11.7.20<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n