I wrote:>>My previous note on this subject was about the existence of substitutes for unemployment under capitalism. But there's also the issue of the existence of unemployment under non-capitalist modes of production.
>>Unemployment typically doesn't exist under slavery, since the slave-owner tries to get as much labor as possible out of his or her chattel. It
also doesn't exist under serfdom, since not only does the lord try to get as much as possible out of the serf, but the serf had enough autonomy (direct access to the means of production & subsistence) that he or she could use any free time to produce use-values for the family.<<
Justin Schwartz writes:>What this ignores (as Marx did not) was the existence of large surplus populations under slavery and serfdom--hence the Roman proletariat, bread and circuses, etc.<
gee, I think there was a third paragraph to what I wrote that Justin somehow elides. It said: >>However, in all of these, there might be unemployment at the edges (e.g., in the towns of feudal Europe). It was recently found that unemployed had existed under the old Soviet Union (though I can't find the reference). But in none of these cases was the existence of unemployment -- or a substitute -- as central to the operations of the system as under capitalism. <<
Not only does this give some idea of the purpose of my missive -- which did not include substituting for Marx's analysis -- but it's clear the free labor force of the feudal period and of ancient slavery were hardly at the center of the operations of the economy (i.e., surplus-labor extraction). The Roman proletariat was out-competed by slaves and so was marginalized, basically becoming a burden on the state. The free labor force under feudalism was similarly at the edges -- in the interstices, as it were -- of the system, between the serf and serf-like relations in the countryside and guild organizations in the towns. It was not central to surplus extraction the way it is under capitalism.
(BTW, following my variant of the Althusserian tradition, I interpret feudalism as a (relatively concrete) "social formation" involving a variety of different modes of production, including especially "serfdom." This fits with Marc Bloch's description of feudalism in his two volume book on the subject.)
JD
