[ExI] Races, cultures and religions (EP)

[Tom Nowell]

Keith, do you know of any discussion of Clark's work in relation to non-European cultures? After all, Japanese society for many centuries had the merchants (Heimin) at the bottom of the social scale, as they did not produce any useful wealth unlike farmers and artisans but merely redistributed goods to where there was demand. Under such circumstances, you would think there was little or no selection for capitalistic traits while traits emphasised by the samurai class would have been favoured. Nonetheless, in the 19th and 20th centuries the Japanese took to capitalism very well and provided a thriving model of economic development. After the second world war, they were able to build a very free and democratic society. So, this would indicate that for the Japanese lack of genetic selection pressure for capitalist traits is less important than the lessons a culture can import from abroad.

Tom