Temple jogged my memory with the following comment;
The question of obtaining an effective foothold or control of an industry - from production through distribution must be resolved in the affirmative...and it won't be settled by anything other than black folk being excellent at activity x. And, in most cases, it will certainly require excellence.
Summoning to mind Dr. Oba T'Shaka's commentary on mastery culture vs corporate civilization. On the spectrum of knowledge-power-freedom - it is necessary to realize that the way things are is not the only way for them to be - and sure as hell not the best way for them to be. For example, the industrial development of Japan, up until comparatively recently, was not in fact due to emulation of Western capitalist methods, but to a much less hierarchically organised structure based on a different kind of relationship between local industry and the capitalist sector. In the light of the economic destruction being wreaked at present by the proponents of crude corporate globalisation, this is interesting to say the least....
Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetites:
"The predominant viewpoint in Japanese studies is that the emerging industrial economy of the Edo Era was “premodern” or merely the commercial extension of feudalism. Economic historian Heita Kawakatsu disputes this notion of a premodern transition existing phantom-like between feudalism and capitalism. The late Edo era, he argues, gave rise to a productive revolution on par with the industrial revolution in Western Europe and the United States. The modernization of Japan came about as the result of an evolutionary process within Asian civilization rather than by emulation of the capitalist West."
"...The evolution of silk- reeling technology reveals one of the notable features of Japanese industrialism: the incremental improvement of production technology by “skilful” workers. The role of the “skilful” worker represents a major difference between the Asian and Western models of industrialization in their respective management philosophies and in the relationships between labor and capital...In the West, as Max Weber pointed out, the entrepreneur has been exalted as a member of a predestined elect whose faith was affirmed with hard work and accumulation of capital. The result was a bias in favor of the capital congealed in the machine, while the worker faced the steady loss of his social status from craftsman to unskilled laborer. The Western factory is the meeting point of the smart machine and dull worker. The Japanese model, on the other hand, has stressed the role of the “skilful” laborer who exercises a significant degree of authority and responsibility over his tools and, collectively, over the workspace and production process. ."
"...Studies of the traditional economic dynamics of mountain communities could lead to a better understanding of their potential for industrial self- development, as well as more sustainable trade links with the developed countries. In its early development drive, Japan’s homegrown industry proved to be the basis for economic growth rather than a disadvantage. ....The retreat of NGOs and tourism before the ongoing Nepalese hill people’s insurgency, reminiscent of the Chichibu Rebellion, shows that external dependency relations, no matter how well intended or ideally conceived, cannot substitute for indigenous industry rooted in the environment and culture of mountain communities."
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