Thankyou Jim for the opportunity to bore everyone with my obsession,
Dobbins argument is that in preclass societies kin relations regulated
(expressed) equal exchanges of necessary labour. No surplus nor on the
surface any possibility of one. The contradiction would thus appear to be
no historical movement.
The concept makes sense of "modern" family relations and the tradition
division of labour between the sexes. To use a hackneyed example the
housewife contributes her labour to the household - her necessary
labour, while her husband returns from work with its necessary labour
expressed in money and whatever else he manages to do around the
house. As the last remnant of kin society the exchange of necessary
labour is in producing the common product of the household "economy"
(here used in its original sense as household from the Greek) which is
consumed by all.
Again there is no surplus or even a possibility of one whoever is in
ultimate social control of the house (the household representative to the
rest of civil society). There is room aplenty for contradictions and
antagonism but "economically" despite how draconian the household
may be, there is no room for exploitation as such - the family remains
communal to this extent.
Now to return to the contradiction of "economic" self development. The
stability and robustness of kin relations seems sealed by the equality of
labour exchange, and to a certain extent this is true. However, the
stability also rests on the assumption of all things remaining equal at the
level of production itself and this is where things can go awry.
Kin relations are robust enough to suffer setbacks (natural or otherwise
downturns in actual productivity) - necessary labour being partly
determined by capacity as well as what is need for social reproduction -
the kin group absorbs downturns rather well, mutual sacrifice being part
and parcel of the exchange.
The weaker aspects derives from productive upturns, those of nature
enriching the kin group collectively, but those determined by increased
productivity have a different and uneven effect.
Dobbins uses the example of Laban from the Old Testament as a telling
example. Laban works seven years for his father-in-law in order to
produce a bride-price for the daughter he loves. The canny father-in-law
marries him off to the other daughter and demands Laban work another
seven years for the woman he loves. Laban's complaint is that he
provides many cattle (he is a cattle herder) but receives a poor mess of
porridge in return. Of note is that Laban has a secret, the secret of the
bull (this alludes to a technique of cattle raising - probably the castration
of all other male cattle in order to have a very productive bull in service)
it is a secret which produces many more strong calves then others can
produce.
The mess ("mess" in the sense of a meal or portion) of porridge is a
reference to the stable productive levels of agriculture. Both the potential
father-in-law and son-in-law exchange equal amounts of necessary
labour (the "working for" merely stating an "in-law" rather than blood-kin
exchange). But because Laban is more productive than his fellows he
gives many cattle but receives only a small amount of grain - the
beginnings of proto-exploitation.
The father-in-law accumulates at the expense of the son-in-law who
does not consume the proportion he gives but only the proportion he
receives (the grain). The least productive household grows rich via the
most productive (a part explanation why warriors and priests seem to do
so well out of communal societies). Of course these cattle can be
exchanged on the periphery with non-kin (which is where Marx takes
over), more-often they would be used to "enslave" fellow kin-members
(ie given away in expectation of a future return of necessary labour -
hence the father-in-law accumulates more grain because he has more
cattle and sets himself up as a "big-man").
In this story of Laban, it is his productive secret which sets in motion his
own proto-exploitation. Dobbins does not touch on what I say below, but
I mention it here to give a better idea of how things might move across
time.
Inventive technique in communal societies usually happens during times
of stress. A more productive technique is discovered and employed at a
time when there is a dire necessity to make up for a downturn. There is
every-reason in "normal" times to stick with traditional techniques as
innovation leads to imbalance within kin exchanges (this is not greatly
effected by external trade except when such trade becomes so important
that members of the kin group are forced to work for it and eventually are
forced to break with kin production - modern proletarianisation). In other
circumstances the unevenness in production leads to massive social
contradictions "solved" by re-adjusting kin relations.
The recent (19th eary 20th century) abandonment of matrilineal in favour
of patrilineal kin recognition was a often a direct result of capitalistic
trade where that trade included important items of productivity (iron axes
being a classic example) and desired in return some form of directed
labour (the Sandlewood trade being a good example, where the women
remained "making the food" while the men were needed to fill the hulls of
sandlewood traders). The compounded result was an inversion of kin
relations as goods came in via males and considerable resistance was
felt for giving large portions of these goods to matrilineal in-laws.
Ancient changes (ie those where capitalism played no part) sprung from
productivity gains (the Maya being a good example where proto-
exploitation became so pronounced that overpopulation and eventually
revolution resulted). It not only makes sense of aspects of pre-history
and proto-history but also I found accords to communal people's own
understanding of what they are doing - even when things appear on the
surface very uneven (the differening roles amongst men and women in
traditional aboriginal societies) all members assert that everything is
shared and all contribute equally (those that gain the most bounty are
expected to share it out - regular paid work sets up a lot of
contradictions, partly solved by extensive part-time and seasonal
employment [that is restricted, broken work times] but also leaving an
open wound of antagonism within communal relations).
Jim there is much more that could be said on this and I have found it
very useful in order to understand a bit more about the family and other
communal kin relations. The dialectic as such is not fully worked out,
only the nub has been found in the formula "equal exchanges of
necessary labour" the full effects of uneven productivity its social origins
etc need a lot more work. Of interest however, the origins of slavery
become very much more obvious and the fact of self-enslavement (I give
my necessary labour to this foreign household) more readily explained
(the Book of Ruth is actually a good example of this).
Proto-exploitation, proto-enslavement can now be severed from the myth
of all conquering invaders and placed more securely within a kin social
context (not that forcible enslavement and exploitation did not take place
but it is sporadic by nature and insufficient to explain widespread
exploitation and slavery unless this already had a basis within the
"conquering" society - Rome for example).
Of passing note is the fix that classical (Roman) slavery produced. That
is concentrating large numbers of labourers without the matrix of kinship
(they belonged to the house - villa and were thus alienated from civil
society) and the disuse of coinage (a result of the collapse of trade - the
villa being self-sufficient) meant that labour itself was the mode of
exchange.
When active slave-getting died-off because the frontiers ceased being a
cheap resource for human beings, and the potential for social
enslavement decreased with the emergence of patriarchal peasant
production, the slaves became transformed into villeins (serfs) by
specifying the amount of work required and what kind of work - this
agreement could only take place in the Church (where nominally both
master and slave were equal) hence the role of church had this much
social evolutionary force behind it.
I mention this because it is a transformation which mimicked the
communal divisions and in many ways needs to be understood in terms
of mutual equal exchanges of necessary labour - though we know that
this "equality" was something of a farce if only because it was based on
what proceeded it. Not that the need for military protection by a lord be
dismissed, nor the labour that involved - the farce was originally based
on real necessities given the situation that the villa found itself in when
faced by repeated invasions (this I believe is the meaning behind Marx's
obscure statements that the barbarians re-invigorated the remains of the
classical world).
This transformation is mentioned because the emergence of capitalism
required socially aliented labour (that is not tied into extensive productive
kin societies) freed from both direct labour exchanges and also the
means of production. Escaping serfs and later freed serfs (converting
labour exchanges into coin makes some free tenenats while others are
simply cut loose). It is this free labour which is otherwise hard to see
emerging from other societies where kin plays a much greater role (that
is it is endemic to later feudalism and sporadic elsewhere). Once
Dobbins idea is accepted the necessary transformation from slave to
wage slave can be sensibly understood as having to pass through what
appears to be a "primitive" throw-back of serfdom (which outwardly
resembles but does not have a kin based logic).
Thus the first great expansion of exchange value in classical times
(whose strongest expression was in trade) has its effects sublimated into
an apparent anti-exchange value economy (trade dies off) which by way
of its passage makes way for a re-emergence of exchange-value freed
from the need to be expressed as external trade as its dominant
expression.
I hope this makes sense without sounding too cosmological. The re-
emergence of trade played a vital part in ending feudalism however
social evolution via feudalism now provided exchange value with a more
powerful means of social expression in that of the freed labourer (the
village being now a source for such labour, which no-communal based
kinship society could long sustain). Of course this is not the usual way
the transformation is portrayed but is, I think, just the other side of the
coin to Marx's primitive accumulation - I am simply emphasizing why
slavery and feudalism had to be presupposed by capitalism.
What I particularly like about Dobbins concept is that it shows how
labour is the engine for social change - that plunder is not a sufficient
basis for early accumulation and that the idea that the most productive
prospered is laid to rest as a bourgeois myth - it is the least productive
who prospered (their labour might have been necessary but not open to
much improvement - ie priests and warriors) and hence leisure became
the "profit" of ancient economies (something the Greek philosophers
were all too clear about).
Likewise the nature of change becomes more satisfactorily understood
as a rebellion against systems that get out-of-kilter and the setting up of
a new more equal (based on what passed beforehand) systems which of
course gave birth to new contradictions - the transformation of kin
relations being the subject of Engels thesis. To turn things on their head
a little, social progress is a result of instabilities in production (lack of
success in maintaining productive levels giving rise to great unevenness)
- "primitive" societies are therefore those which skillfully changed
themselves in order to preserve communal life (unalienated), they are in
this way also great success stories of the human spirit.
I will not add any more but am ever willing to elaborate ; )
Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
--- Message Received ---
From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 12:21:32 -0700
Subject: [PEN-L:19012] Re: Re: query: Engels & anthropology
thanks for your reply. It was quite useful. Could you please give a quick
summary of Dobbins' theory of the missing dialectic?
At 10:21 AM 10/23/01 +0800, you wrote:
>If you are interested to track down a pamphlet by (I think) Peggy
>Anne Dobbins "From Kin to Class" you will find that she has
>discovered the missing dialectic in the equal exchange of necessary
>labour ...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine "Segui il
tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.)
-- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
