SIMILAR ECONOMIES, SIMILAR THREATS,
SIMILAR REACTIONS
Take kings' violent response to ascendant producers
in 19th-century Dahomey and 17th-century France
• In France,
Louis XIV's eliminating Protestants
eliminates the producers themselves
 |
| Dragonnade by Maurice Leloir in Le Roy Soleil by T. Cabu, 1931 |
the monarch sacrifices 300 slaves
to keep producers from buying them
 |
| Dahomey human sacrifice in 1853, "Le Tour du Monde" |
-- Analyzed by Claude Meillassoux,
Ostentation, destruction, reproduction , "Économies et sociétés,"
1968, II, 4, 760-766
Beyond Marx:
The struggle of
"slaves against masters, peasants against lords"
yields to that of rising commercial forces
and the authorities they menace.
To be continued.
* * *
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