----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]