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Louis Proyect wrote
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the material you have referenced here has to do with matters not
at issue.
We've been down this path before. Brenner's focus is on how capitalism
ORIGINATED, its speciated emergence and conception in a form and in
conditions which without human design or intention produced it as the
dominant form of production; in a specific form and locale, as a
specific form of the organization of production, and not in all the
forms of accumulation which contributed to these origins and their
development in all sorts of places around the globe.
And that became Marx's focus in the Grundrisse and in volume 3 of
Capital, implicit and explicit, as opposed to his theory of origins in
The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, where his initial
influence is Adam Smith and his exposition is trans-historical and
therefore, as he realized on further reflection, conducive to a reading
of the capitalist mode as just waiting there for proper conditions for
the release of our natural human concupiscence, our pent-up, innate
propensity to exchange and our built-in avarice and competitiveness. If
that were the case, forget socialism.
. . . .
Louis Proyect wrote
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."
. . . .
You cite this passage as confirmation that Marx saw the genesis of
capitalism in the realm of primitive accumulation, whereas as I've said,
it was in the realm of those factors enabling, contributing, but
ancillary to the actual origins of capitalism in agrarian England.
. . . .
Louis Proyect wrote
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.
. . . .
From Chapter 51, volume 3:
"The confrontation of produced conditions of labour and of the products
of labour generally, as capital, with the direct producers implies from
the outset a definite social character of the material conditions of
labour in relation to the labourers, and thereby a definite relationship
into which they enter with the owners of the means of production and
among themselves during production itself. The transformation of these
conditions of labour into capital implies in turn the expropriation of
the direct producers from the land, and thus a definite form of landed
property."
The relevant passage here of course is "The transformation of these
conditions of labour into capital implies in turn the expropriation of
the direct producers from the land, and thus a definite form of landed
property." Marx in other words is saying that the specific conditions
for the genesis of capitalism, of the actual historical mode of
production extracting surplus value from landless workers, lies not in
the external sources of accumulation that enable its appearance and may
well be a sine qua non of that process), but the actual origin lies in
the relationship between lord and peasant in 'the expropriation of the
direct producers from the land, and thus a definite form of landed
property.'
Which is Brenner's point: the transformation of these conditions of
labour into capital implies in turn the expropriation of the direct
producers from the land, and thus a definite form of landed property,
material conditions of labor, definite social relations and definite
social property relations - - all originating in the English countryside.**
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