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It's interesting that Joaquin would use this example of 1963-1965-- interesting because rather than look for the source of the civil rights movement and the concession of the bourgeoisie in the relations between capital and wage-labor, in capital's need for wage-labor, Joaquin looks to the consensus of the bourgeoisie as being the critical element in its own right. It's all about the bourgeoisie's mind set, all the time, for Joaquin, whether it's the bourgeoisie in Brazil struggling with "semi-colonialism," or the bourgeoisie in the US, whether it's Lula or Obama. We're not engaged in economic reductionism, but in historical materialism; recognizing that social change is triggered by changes, conflicts, contradictions, between property and production, between relations of labor and the requirements of production. In the example at hand, the civil rights struggle, we don't have to explain the lack of consensus among the bourgeoisie for years, we have to examine the underlying change in production, the conflict between production and pre-existing archaic relations of labor and property that became an integument to capital's own accumulation. In the civil rights struggle, this change doesn't begin, or take place in 1963-- but around 1940 and all through WW2 and after as South agriculture is "revolutionized" through mechanization. It occurs all through WW2 and after as black labor migrates away from tenant farming and share-cropping, which itself is being buried under the tractors and mechanized cotton picking machines introduced into the South, and migrates to the cities in larger numbers, into industrial production, and into Northern industrial production. The old relations of land and labor, the near bondage of black labor to the soil is made obsolete, and access to free labor, in order to aggrandize greater relative surplus value by expelling that "free black labor," just as capital expels labor in general and in relation to its "constant" and fixed components, is what triggers the great civil rights struggles. This transformation appears as a struggle for formal political equality, for basic democratic rights, as an opposition to the oppression of a whole people, when at core, it is a struggle for the emancipation of black labor. The stalemating of that struggle, and the reversal of some of the gains of that struggle, has everything to do with the bourgeoisie going on the offensive against labor starting around 1973. I haven't asked anyone to do anything I wouldn't do myself. My views on imperialism in general and Brazil in particular are available to anybody so interested. But I'm not the one making any special claims for Brazil, or for Lula, based on an assertion of "semi-colonial" status, so I really don't have to do the meta-analysis. Asking the questions, asking someone to defend an assertion about something called imperialism, to define that term, and to show how that supposed system actually does what the proponents of such theories say it does doesn't constitute a requirement on my part to show that it doesn't do those things-- although I have shown that and can provide a link if that's desired. And, in one specific area, I did already discharge my responsibility in doing what you refuse to do-- showing how the myth of "semi-colonialism" actually serves imperialism, when I pointed out that Lula and the Kirchners were exactly what you said they weren't-- murderous thugs by pointing out the actions of Brazil and Argentina in Haiti. That's they myth of semi-colonialism serving the reality of capitalism. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joaquín Bustelo" <[email protected]> > On 6/7/2010 12:08 AM, S. Artesian wrote: >> What has been asked is what every Marxist should ask. HOW have all >> these >> things occurred? What are the mechanisms for accumulation? Why do we >> have >> to ask that? Because if we're Marxists we know that those very >> mechanisms >> of accumulation contains the prospects for the negation of that >> accumulation. That's why. That's why the issue of the mode of >> production >> is so central... at least to Marx. We call that historical materialism. >> If >> it's not important to Joaquin or Dr. Barrera let them explain why. > > If I have understood Sartesian right, then this is economic reductionism. > > The Hows and Whys of politics can't be answered in this way, if for no > other reason than that the economic factors at this level of abstraction > do not change rapidly enough to account for political changes. > > It is very clear, for example, that around 1963-1965, the U.S. ruling > class decided to bite the bullet and eradicate the Jim Crow system. This > was a wrenching change that required the mobilization and direction of all > sorts of political, ideological, social and economic resources in a > context with increasingly uncontrolled political forces in the Black > community that would be emboldened by the change. > > To explain this in terms of "the mechanisms of accumulation" you'd have to > show why economic factors prevented this ruling class consensus from > emerging in the late 50s and why it could not wait until the late 1960s. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
