----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- I am rather puzzled by Michael Perelman's defence of his book in reply to Greg Clark's review. I should admit that I haven't worked over the book thoroughly yet, so I am basing myself on Michael's mail to this list. First, if the game laws are to be counted a significant part of primitive accumulation in the Marxist sense, that is, of forcing people into the capitalist labour market, it would have to be the case that hunting was a significant potential means of support taken away by the game laws. But surely we know that hunting and gathering can only support very low density populations, far less than the density in England in the industrial revolution. It is hard to see that the availability or otherwise of hunting could affect labour supply significantly. More important, if classical economists are to be blamed for not emphasising this alleged function of the game laws we must first think how it would have looked to them. They saw population as endogenous, so even if hunting could support significant numbers they would surely say that in the long run population would increase if hunting were freely allowed, with no reduction in labour supply in the formal (capitalist) labour market. Michael's defence mainly consists of a description of the damage done to agriculture by game animals and by hunting (this is hunting by oppressive capitalists and landlords within the game laws, not by free peasant-worker-poachers outside the laws). This is even more puzzling. If the game laws allowed or encouraged this damage, how can capitalism possibly gain from a reduction in agricultural productivity? (I assume that capitalist farms were not selectively exempted from damage - most farms were capitalist at the date concerned.) Again, how would the classics have seen it? In a Ricardian framework, (regular and predictable) damage on marginal land will lower the general profit rate while damage on intramarginal land will reduce rents. Unexpected damage will be a loss to the (normally capitalist) farmer. It is hard to see how this could benefit capitalists or capitalism, or what motive the classical economists would have had for condoning it if they had really thought it significant. Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask]) ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]