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On 8/15/18 7:18 PM, Ralph Johansen wrote:
I wrote this a few days ago in response to Louis Proyect's entry in The
Unrepentant Marxist concerning Vivek Chibber, Robert Brenner and the
journal Catalyst. I had decided not to send it, to leave it as sort of
an exercise in self-clarification. But since Lou has either expressed a
degree of softening toward Brenner in the dispute around Catalyst, or
possibly just found himself on the same side with him on a matter of
principle and that's all, whatever, I'm posting this. By the way, the
friendship between Chibber and Brenner appears to go back at least to
sometime just after the turn of the century. Around that time Brenner
had written, "I wish to thank Vivek Chibber for his thorough reading of
this text," the text of Brenner's critique of Harvey's The New
Imperialism; it seems then that there may be a long, possibly
acrimonious development of their differences that is more than just
around tasks having to do with publication of Catalyst.
I have never read Dimmock until the excerpt you posted to Marxmail and
PEN-L but I was struck by the utter absence of a direct quotation from
either Capital or the Grundrisse. It is filled with
bald assertions like:
"Brenner's account is influenced by Marx's mature works, Grundrisse and
Capital. Brenner argues that in these works Marx rethought his earlier
Smithian assumption of the primacy of the productive forces in economic
development. Marx now placed much greater emphasis on the specificity of
social relations and economic patterns in particular societies, namely
feudalism and capitalism, and on what he called their internal logic and
'solidity.' Marx now argued that in pre-capitalist societies like
feudalism the immediate goal of peasants and artisans was subsistence
rather than to increase wealth, and to reproduce themselves in their
communities. For peasants, this was made especially difficult because
lords aimed to reproduce themselves, and their own communities,, largely
at the peasants' expense."
So where can you find this in Capital? Certainly not the chapter on the
genesis of the industrial capitalist that could have been written by
Samir Amin:
Karl Marx:
"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the
beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of
Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins,
signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These
idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On
their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the
globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from
Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is
still going on in the opium wars against China, &c."
Samir Amin:
"After a period of pure and simple plundering of Amerindian treasures,
intensive mining enterprises were inaugurated, and had recourse to a
tremendous squandering of human resources, as a condition for the
profitability of their activity. At the same time a slaveowning mode of
production was introduced in order to facilitate production of sugar,
indigo, etc., in the Americas. The entire economy of the Americas was to
revolve around these areas of development for the benefit of the center.
The raising of livestock, for example, served the purpose of providing
food for the mining areas and those where the slave-run plantations were
located. The 'triangular trade' that began with the seeking of slaves in
Africa fulfilled this essential function: the accumulation of
money-capital in the ports of Europe as the result of selling products
of the periphery to members of the ruling classes, who were then
stimulated to transform themselves from feudalists into agrarian
capitalists."
In all the years I have been reading Brenner, Post, Wood, Post et al, I
have never seen a single reference to chapter 31 on "Genesis of the
Industrial Capitalist". For people so sure of their superior knowledge
of Marxism, how does this omission take place? Remarkable.
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