>Jim Devine:
> >To say that each case must be examined only in its own terms (is this what
> >you're really saying?) is totally anti-theoretic, leaning heavily toward
> >stereotypes of post-modernism, full of sound and rhetorical fury but
> >signifying nothing.
Louis Proyect:
>No, rather I am saying that Marxists should apply the historical
>materialist method to Latin America in the 16th through 18th century. Marx
>himself never did this. If you are serious about doing this, you have to
>roll up your sleeves and engage with scholarly material. Although Wood
>makes frequent references to the region, she never bothers with a concrete
>analysis of concrete class relations. For that you have to look elsewhere.
>At least with Brenner, you don't even get an inkling that the New World
>even existed.
I think that it's a mistake to assume that every author -- or every author
you dislike (for whatever reason) -- _must_ write about Latin America. That
kind of standard can be used to trash anyone. For example, I never see you
criticizing sexism or heterosexism. I never even see you deal with those
subjects. Does this imply that you're sexist and hate gays? No.
It's better to try to learn what can be learned from each author rather
than splitting authors into two camps, bad guys and good guys and then
throwing out the former. "Splitting" is very academic: one of the problems
with academia is that people dwell on the "competing schools" vision,
creating seemingly endless battles of various schools, rather than trying
to draw out a synthesis. (In economics, on the other hand, there's only one
Truth, neoclassical economics, there's only one God, Adam Smith's Invisible
Hand, but the competing schools paradigm is applied within this framework.)
Since the capitalist disease -- the cancerous world-wide expansion of
capitalism -- seems to have started in Western Europe, specifically in
England, it seems valid for the hated Brenner to study that area of the
world. It's possible that this disease started somewhere else, but I've
never seen you present the case for this possibility.
> >But you said in the previous message it was capitalism (since work was done
> >by PROLETARIANS)? that means that it was _like Russia_ in many ways! Thus,
> >Latin America wasn't a unique case that should be analyzed solely in its
> >own terms. Or did the oobleck mode of production prevail, one that was
> >completely different from those of other countries, times, and places?
>
>There was capitalism in Russia, capitalism in Latin America and capitalism
>in Western Europe. Each region has its specific class relations and
>dynamics. Trotsky and Lenin analyzed Russia. Marx and Engels analyzed
>Western Europe. People like Celso Furtado, A.G. Frank, Mariategui, and
>Adolfo Gilly analyzed Latin America. My analysis rests on their work, not
>what Marx and Engels did not write.
But that doesn't imply that Marx's concepts -- his general theory of
historical materialism & political economy, not specific stuff like his
early belief in the automatic stage theory of history -- are wrong. You
never showed that. You seem to be arguing the empiricist, anti-theoretical
theory, but you never really present an argument.
Folks like Trotsky knew that Russian capitalism was different from German
capitalism, but they also didn't reject all lessons learned from studying
Germany in their effort to understand Russia. Trotsky never threw CAPITAL
into the dust-bin of history.
> >summary of the issues:
> >
> >(1) the oppression of Peru involved markets and merchant capital, within
> >the context of the Spanish Empire. -- Both Blaut & Brenner would agree.
>
>I just talked to Jim's ghost who is standing above my left shoulder and he
>disagrees with you.
so he thinks that markets played no role in Peru?
> >(2) the oppression of Peru involved proletarianized labor (Louis' previous
> >message) or it involved forced gang labor (Louis' current message). or
> >maybe a combination of both (semi-proletarization)?
>
>I am not interested in identifying the forms of labor.
you changed your mind, then.
>I am interested in
>identifying the specific nature of the way in which capital was created.
doesn't this involve identifying different forms of labor?
>Krupp used slave labor throughout WWII. It remained capitalist.
that's because Nazi society _as a whole_ remained capitalist. As Baran &
Sweezy quote Hegel to say, "the truth is the whole."
At this point, I think it's worth quoting Marx (volume I, chapter 10,
section 2):
�Capital has not invented surplus-labor. Wherever a part of society
possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer, free or not
free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an
extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the
owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian
[aristocrat], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus, Norman baron, American
slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist. It is,
however, clear that in any given economic formation of society, where not
the exchange-value but the use-value of the product predominates,
surplus-labor will be limited by a given set of wants which may be greater
or less, and that here no boundless thirst for surplus-labor arises from
the nature of the production itself. Hence in antiquity over-work becomes
horrible only when the object is to obtain exchange-value in its specific
independent money-form; in the production of gold and silver. Compulsory
working to death is here the recognized form of over-work. .... Still
these are exceptions in antiquity. But as soon as people, whose production
still moves within the lower forms of slave-labor, corv�e-labor, &c., are
drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the
capitalistic mode of production, the sale of their products for export
becoming their principal interest, the civilized horrors of over-work are
grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the Negro
labor in the Southern States of the American Union preserved something of a
patriarchal character, so long as production was chiefly directed to
immediate local consumption. But in proportion, as the export of cotton
became of vital interest to these states, the over-working of the Negro and
sometimes the using up of his life in 7 years of labor became a factor in a
calculated and calculating system. It was no longer a question of obtaining
from him a certain quantity of useful products. It was now a question of
production of surplus-labor itself: So was it also with the corv�e, e.g.,
in the Danubian Principalities (now Romania).�
I think this is the solution to the never-ending Blaut/Brenner
Battle. Latin American forced-labor modes of exploitation (the mita, etc.)
"were drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the
capitalistic mode of production" (i.e., Europe-centered industrial
capitalism). So, as with U.S. slavery, the "barbaric" conditions of forced
labor -- the mita and similar -- were combined with the "civilized"
conditions of the world market dominated by industrial capital, we see the
worst of both worlds.
This is in some ways akin to Marx's observation later in CAPITAL (ch. 15,
section 8) that the competition from the "advanced" factories using
machinery encouraged even more sweated work in the technologically
"backward" sectors.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
