>The reviewer's of the following book urges a more nuanced
>understanding of proletarianization ("A clear free-labor versus
>forced-labor dichotomy does not correspond to reality") in the
>centuries under discussion:
>
(clip)
>particular time. A clear free-labor versus forced-labor dichotomy
>does not correspond to reality....
I have already made the identical point, probably numerous times, citing
Steve Stern's article on world systems theory and Spanish colonial America.
Stern said that the mines were not typified by a pure form of slavery, but
combined wage workers, debt peons, and *independent Indian subcontractors*
hiring either kind of labor. In any case, this is not what the debate is
about. It is whether or not the mines, plantations, etc. of the
pre-industrial revolution period were feudal as Laclau said,
mercantile-commercial as Devine said, or capitalist as I say.
Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value, part 2":
"The fact that we now not only call the plantation owners in America
capitalists, but that they *are* capitalists, is based on their existence
as anomalies within a world market based on free labor."
Louis Proyect
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