[was: Re: [PEN-L:12150] Re: Re: Re: Ellen Meiksins Woody Allen]
Louis wrote:
> Why can't we discuss questions such as whether the colonial 'mita' was
> feudal or capitalist rather than who I admire or don't admire.
Wow, a 180 degree turn! and I'm glad. Before, Louis' main concern seemed to
be to build an auto-da-f� for Wood and Brenner, the enemies du jour. Who he
admired or didn't admire seemed the center of the whole debate. The entire
magazine AGAINST THE CURRENT was slammed because one person that he didn't
admire (Samuel Farber) is on the editorial board. Now, he wants to discuss
substantive matters. Good!
Of course, debates about definitions aren't really very substantive:
whether or not the "mita" was capitalist depends more on one's definition
of capitalism than it does on the empirical nature of the mita. I'm not one
who believes that there are "correct" definitions, since definitions are
conventional. But as Maurice Dobb once wrote, "The justification of any
definition must ultimately rest on its successful employment in
illuminating the actual process of historical development..." Like Dobb,
Brenner, Wood, and others, I find Marx's political-economic theory and the
definitions which play a part in it to be the most useful way to understand
history.
In this framework, the mita (a kind of forced labor) isn't capitalist,
since the direct producers weren't proletarians (free from forced labor but
free from direct access to the means of production and subsistence).
However, this mode of labor could produce a surplus that could be
transferred to the metropolitan core via merchant capital (marketeers).
Marx's definition would exclude this from capitalism, because merchant
capitalism is merely a incomplete part of capitalism, one that preceded the
modern rise of capitalism by a few millennia. (Was ancient Babylonia
capitalist? yes, if we define capitalism in terms of markets. no, if we
define it in terms of the dominance of proletarian labor in society.)
Was this feudal? again, it's a matter of definition. Most people who use
the word "feudal" apply it only to Europe and Japan, but that's merely a
convention. I don't know if there's a convention among Marxists. Dobb's
definition of "feudal" (unlike Bloch's, for example) is the same as
serfdom. Under this, the mita would be feudal. But, again, that's not the
convention. In any event, whether or not the mita was feudal seems
unimportant. Call it a non-capitalist form of exploitation, like slavery in
the antebellum US south.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
