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Michael Perelman wrote: 
 
>As the author of a book on imperialism, Tony surely knows how the 
introduction of the small tax sufficed to drive large numbers of people 
into the labor markets in certain colonies. 
 
 
There is considerable evidence on this in African history. Demand that taxes be 
paid in colonial currency created a need on the part of African peoples who had 
means of production and therefore were not otherwise compelled to engage in wage 
labor or grow cash crops to do so. Case after case after case, taxation was key 
to monetization, wage labor, cash crop production, marketization.  Of course, 
other methods were also used (brutal coercion, de facto slave labor, etc.), but 
taxation and declaration of public receivability were key, and this has received 
much less attention than it is probably due. Recent work by Wray (_Understanding 
Modern Money_, e.g.) and others have revived Knapp's chartalism, which Keynes 
and Lerner recognized was key to understanding State money. 
 
Mat Forstater 
 
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