Seems to me that you have been taken in by the cultural Marxists' claims that it's impossible to compare development. The important point about Marx's 'Asiatic' societies was that they were non-industrialised compared to the 19th century European ones. Most were closer to those of the Classical world, his 'first stage' societies - medieval feudalism being a particular feature of Europe (though Japanese society had some parrallels). Contrary to your claim, all those societies have sought to follow the West in industrialisation. Of course there are individual differences - east-Asian 'capitalism' is very very different from the Euro-American model, so much so that it may be considered a different economic system entirely. But the broad stages are the same.
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Seems to me that you have been taken in by the cultural Marxists' claims that it's impossible to compare development. The important point about Marx's 'Asiatic' societies was that they were non-industrialised compared to the 19th century European ones. Most were closer to those of the Classical world, his 'first stage' societies - medieval feudalism being a particular feature of Europe (though Japanese society had some parrallels). Contrary to your claim, all those societies have sought to follow the West in industrialisation. Of course there are individual differences - east-Asian 'capitalism' is very very different from the Euro-American model, so much so that it may be considered a different economic system entirely. But the broad stages are the same.
Just a note: in the US, women's labor force participation was rising throughout the 1900s. The trend was faster in the 1960s and 1970s than the typical decade, but the overall trend is generally upward, so there's not that much to explain about the 60s/70s specifically. Here’s a good graph of that.
1960s-era tax changes aren't exactly my specialty (
), but I don't think there were any truly major tax reforms in the 1960s that would have affected labor decisions in this manner. Average taxes on a near-median family seems to have been increasing from 1960 to 1980, but just looking at federal income and payroll taxes one stat I found (based on the NBER TaxSim program) puts it from 16% in 1960 to 23% in 1980. Average federal + income taxes on poorer (but above poverty line) families only increase about 2%, and taxes on poverty-line families go down due to the Earned Income Tax Credit.Furthermore, while a lump-sum tax from a family would induce women to work more (an income effect), an increase in marginal tax rates would cause women in particular (since male labor force participation rates are very high) to be less likely to work since their wage after taxes would be lower (a substitution effect). In light of this average tax data, I doubt there was a 60s-era tax reform that consisted of a large tax increase on the first marginal dollars of income without increasing taxes on subsequent income, which is the kind of thing you’d need for this story to hold up.
Contrary to what claims? So far in this line of discussion, I have been arguing against one claim and one claim alone: that Asian societies were static or stagnant in cultural and technological development for hundreds or thousands of years. I was at first responding to Ydars's claim that Japan was technologically and culturally stagnate for the 500 years leading up to Commodore Perry's arrival. I was also responding to your implication that Oriental cultures were static and unchanging found in this post:
I was also responding to this comment you made earlier:S'mon said:
I argue that the idea that a culture can exist without changing for hundreds or thousands of years is not reflective of the real world. The idea of unchanging Asian civilizations grows out of a general ignorance of the actual cultural developments that took place in those civilizations. As someone who has studied the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian civilizations to varying degrees, I assure you that there was consistently a lot of change taking place in all of them constantly.S'mon said:
The problem is that most people are taught the overall progression of Western civilization: ancient Rome to feudal Europe to Renaissance to Enlightenment to Industrial Revolution. However, Asian civilizations followed a different historical path. Since it is different, people simply don't recognize the sweeping changes in society that occurred throughout Asian history.
The fact that Asian civilizations adopted the technologies of the Industrial revolution from the West doesn't mean that their cultures were somehow static or stagnant. It is just an example of one culture adopting technology from cultures it is in contact with, a trend that can be seen throughout history. For example, the iron plow, the compass, the number zero, the trebuchet, gunpowder, the gun, the printing press, the blast furnace, and countless other major inventions were originally invented in China and India, only to be later adopted by the Islamic world and European countries. Did that mean that Europe was stagnating until those inventions reached it? No. Europe was still developing culturally in the Early Middles Ages, which can be seen in the development of ever more stable nations with ever more sophisticated social systems.
I still think that any claim that a country is unchanging or stagnant for hundreds or thousands of years is based solely on a lack of knowledge about that country.
"I was also responding to your implication that Oriental cultures were static and unchanging found in this post"
No, I was talking about the representation of aliens & fantasy races in (Western) fiction, esp fantasy & sf fiction. Contrasting with the 'Western' humans. Call it Orientalism if it makes you happy.
No, I was talking about the representation of aliens & fantasy races in (Western) fiction, esp fantasy & sf fiction. Contrasting with the 'Western' humans. Call it Orientalism if it makes you happy.
I think this is a not seeing the wood for the trees kind of agument. What is more notable about ancient Egypt - the undoubted changes, or the continuity?
Any discussion of change vs continuity must be a matter of degree, not either/or.
Finally, any argument which dismisses the importance of what happened in Europe from ca 1450 onwards, and does not see it as an unusual event in world-historical terms, is very silly IMO.
Ydars
Explorer
I think you have now gone a little too far SkyOdin!
The fact is that Japan HERSELF, her government, her people, decided largely break with their traditional way of life and adopt most aspects of western culture after Perry shows me that THEY judged western technology to be superior to their own. You can hand-wave about that as much as you like.
And as for guns and knives etc; I don't see many battalions of knife-wielding soldiers in the modern world; most have guns and this is empirical evidence that in most situations, guns are superior to knives. Similarly, the samurai would have been annihilated if they had fought the US; sometimes you are right that "better" or "superior" don't exist, but like many historians, take it a little too far and are a little too in love with your own vision of the world!
I understand your earlier arguments, but in fact NO-ONE understands the past; we only think we do. We were not there and we do not have the mindset of the people who lived with and through any time in history outside of our own experience. Your posts are starting to come across as if you are the "one true arbitor of historical truth". Take a step back Sir.
The fact is that Japan HERSELF, her government, her people, decided largely break with their traditional way of life and adopt most aspects of western culture after Perry shows me that THEY judged western technology to be superior to their own. You can hand-wave about that as much as you like.
And as for guns and knives etc; I don't see many battalions of knife-wielding soldiers in the modern world; most have guns and this is empirical evidence that in most situations, guns are superior to knives. Similarly, the samurai would have been annihilated if they had fought the US; sometimes you are right that "better" or "superior" don't exist, but like many historians, take it a little too far and are a little too in love with your own vision of the world!
I understand your earlier arguments, but in fact NO-ONE understands the past; we only think we do. We were not there and we do not have the mindset of the people who lived with and through any time in history outside of our own experience. Your posts are starting to come across as if you are the "one true arbitor of historical truth". Take a step back Sir.
I'm not sure. I am not an expert on ancient Egypt, having never studied it. I would not presume to make any sweeping claims.
It would help if you were a bit more specific about what you are talking about. So many major changes happened in Europe in the Early Modern period that I am having a little trouble figuring out specifically what you are talking about. Are you referring to the Rennaisance? The Reformation? The discovery of the New World? The scientific revolution? The rise of absolute monarchs? All of these things are pretty important, but you need to narrow it down a little if you want to make a point.
Of course the samurai would have been annihilated if the Japanese attempted to take on an industrialized Western power in the year that Commodore Perry arrived in Japan. I would be an idiot to claim otherwise. That has no bearing on your original claim that Japan was "culturally and technologically stagnate for 500 years". Military power is not the end-all, be-all of measuring a country's technological and cultural progress. If it was, then Attila's Huns would have been the most advanced civilization in Europe in the waning days of the Roman Empire.
Most technological developments in Asia were primarily designed to help support very large populations using as few resources as possible. To this end, China and Japan were very successful countries. Writing off those technologies as meaningless is foolish at best. If you study Japanese and Chinese history, you can track the developments of this kind of technology. For example, Edo-period Japan possessed home stoves that were more energy efficient than any Western one. That is the kind of technology those civilizations excelled at. As a result, they were able to support large urban populations much earlier in their history than Western countries did. Those technologies were generally not replaced by Western technology after Perry's arrival either. It is not like Japan completely replaced its technology and culture after Perry arrived. They mostly just stole industrial technology and military technology.
I do not mean to imply that I think Chinese and Japanese civilization is somehow perfect or superior. In particular, I think China's almost dogmatic adherence to various forms of Confucianism as the main form of philosophical thought constrained the country's intellectual development. But it is not right to say that these countries were stagnant or completely inferior to Western countries.
I do not claim to be the one true arbiter of historical knowledge, but I am someone who spent a few years of my life studying these things as my major in college, and I am confident about the veracity of my claims.
