>
> The issue is that Laclau was not putting forth a position, as you
originally
> claimed, that third world economies were, en toto, pre-capitalist or
> feudalist [whichever you prefer], but that they involved articulations of
> capitalist and other modes of production. The only position in the debate
> that saw these economies as undifferentiated was the one you are so
> forcefully advocating, Andre Gunder Frank, who saw them as undifferentiated
> capitalist economies.
I did not state that Laclau regarded Latin America as 100 percent feudal, only
that percentage that was characterized by forced labor. Obviously that is
wrong. For example, the debt peonage described in B. Traven's "Jungle" novels
had nothing in common with the society described in Marc Bloch's books on
feudalism. In Mexico City during this period there were also people in
factories earning wages. No question about that. In the countryside of
Chiapas,
however, and in the city capitalism prevailed. There was no 'feudalism'.
Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
