Jim Devine:
>Volume III doesn't ignore the role of labor. One of Marx's clearest
>statements of historical materialism appears here: the "specific... form in
>which unpaid surplus-labor is pumped out of the direct producers" reveals
>"the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure
>and... the corresponding specific form of the state" (p. 791-2 of the
>International Publishers' 1967 edition).
This is rather schematic, isn't it? I was getting at the rather rich
discussion of labor in V.1, with its historical detail. For me historical
materialism is much more concrete, like discussion of the enclosure acts, etc.
>But you should remember that I have never restricted myself to the "volume
>3" theory. Instead, I apply recent theories and discussions of "merchant
>capital," which see it as merely "articulating" different modes of
>exploiting labor -- until it gets submerged in the circuit of industrial
>capital.
Sorry. Have no idea what you are driving at.
>Merchant capital doesn't simply work between empires of similar
>socio-economic levels, but within such systems as the "triangle
>trade," which included what Mat F. calls the Enslavement industry.
So throughout Latin America and the Caribbeans into the late 19th century,
you had "merchant capital"? Methinks not.
>There's a lot of disagreement about the nature and impact of this
>"articulation," but most people who study this stuff follow Marx to agree
>that merchant capital is not the same as full-blown or industrial
>capitalism (which involves mass proletarianization).
So merchant capital must exist throughtout most of Africa today, where
there is no full-blown or industrial capitalism, nor mass
proletarianization. When a category becomes so all-encompassing, it loses
all meaning.
>If merchant capitalism (market activity) were the same as industrial
>capitalism, we have had industrial capitalism since several centuries
You are missing something entirely. Latin America had no industry to speak
of. The economy revolved around extraction of minerals and stoop labor for
coffee, bananas, etc. under conditions of widespread coercion. If this is
"mercantile capitalism," then the term is useless.
>B.C.E. In that case, nothing special happened to Western Europe around 1500
>in terms of changing systems of labor exploitation. So one might say that
>the Western European conquest of most of the rest of the world was simply
>an extension or a continuation or a development of the previous
>market-centered kinds of conquest (like the Ancient Roman sort).
One might say? If so, they are wrong because this is ahistorical.
>It's a matter of taste whether the pre- or non-capitalist modes of
>production in LA should be called "feudal" -- it's no big deal unless one
>likes endless debates about the meaning of words. (I'd prefer
>"non-capitalist modes of labor exploitation" or "forced-labor modes of
>production" or something like that, since European and Japanese feudalism
>were so different from other social systems based on forced labor.
Non-capitalist modes of labor exploitation? Somebody get in touch with Tom
Bottomore.
>Whatever the terminology, I doubt that it's true that none of these
>inhabitants were "laborers" before the Conquest. Labor seems pretty
>universal in human history so far. Further, many of them produced
>surplus-products for the tributary empires such as the Incas and Aztecs.
Actually, the Inca and Aztec kingdoms revolved around the production of
use-values. I am a moldy old fig when it comes to essential categories like
these. After the conquest of Latin America, labor in Latin America was used
to create commodities for exchange on the world market.
>Of course, by 1600, full-blown capitalism had already arisen in English
>countryside, at least according to the people you lambaste.
So did it in Spain. And cut out the nonsense about who I lambaste if you
want to have a conversation. I am not lambasting people but dogmatic
neo-Kautskyist ideas on capitalist development.
>Also, I'd bet that if you study the relations of production in Latin
>America in 1600, you'd find that the rural proletarians were a relatively
>small percentage of the total.
I only bet with people who can put something on the table that is worth
risking or taking.
>In addition, like the freed slaves in the U.S. after 1865, I think you'd
>find all sorts of direct use of force against the Indians. The government
>was in league with the land-owners, who were in league with the merchants
>and the money-lenders (and in fact many of these were the same people or of
>the same family), as part of a 4-sided bloc that imposed such fates as debt
>peonage on the native inhabitants. Like the freed slaves, they were
>prevented from becoming true proletarians, since extra-economic force
>(including linked monopoly/monopsony positions) was being applied.
I have no idea what you are driving at. North American Indians were put on
reservations where they were given miserable handouts. South American
Indians were all wage laborers by 1700, or debt peons which meant they were
paid in advance and had to work off their debt.
>Again, "laborers" is not the same as proletarians. Further, the ease with
>which the Indians went from wage labor to forced-labor jobs (like working
>in silver mines) suggests that they were doing "wage labor" in a situation
>in which direct force -- and monopoly/monopsony power -- was applied
>regularly to them. This in turn suggests that they weren't true proletarians.
Good point. Neither did they speak English or eat roast beef.
Louis Proyect
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