It took me awhile to get to this thread again. One reason why is that basically, there’s no big issue here. Let’s put this in extremely crude terms, i.e., in terms of blame. Whereas LP wants to blame capitalism for (say) King Leopold’s crimes in the Congo, I say that capitalism aided, abetted, and indeed was central in organizing those crimes while benefiting mightily from them, but that work relations weren’t actually capitalist so that the crimes weren’t “capitalist” _per se_. (Similar crimes have been seen in other modes of production.)
Why
deliberately misrepresent LP’s views -- and my own -- in this way? Because the
basic point is that empirically and _practically speaking_ it doesn’t really
matter which is right. The difference between LP and myself is only a matter of
(somewhat) abstract theory.
I wrote:
> > yes, that's a good book [that Lenin wrote about the development of
capitalism in Russia]. I don't remember exactly how he described "Junker
capitalism," but that capitalism is of a limited source [???]
because of the feudal or semi-feudal relationship between
the bosses and the direct producers.<<
I don't
remember what I meant here, but I think it was that "capitalism was
limited" because of the (semi-)feudal relationship between bosses and the direct
producers. (The development of capitalism was stunted in the Polish countryside
by the Junker style of exploitation.)
LP:>Well,
here's how Lenin viewed a system that combined agricultural commodity
production and non-market coercion:
>>Lastly,
it must be observed that sometimes the labour-service system passes
into the capitalist system and merges with it to such an extent that
it becomes almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. For
example, a peasant rents a plot of land, undertaking in return to perform
a definite number of days’ work (a practice which, as we know, is most
widespread; see examples in the next section). How are we to draw a line of
demarcation between such a “peasant” and the West-European or Ostsee “farm
labourer” who receives a plot of land on undertaking to work a
definite number of days? Life creates forms that unite in themselves
with remarkable gradualness systems of economy whose basic features
constitute opposites. It becomes impossible to say
where “labour-service” ends and where “capitalism” begins.<<
He's
right. There's a big difference between the abstract concepts (capitalism vs.
non-capitalist modes of production) and the concrete empirical reality on the
ground. Though abstractions help us understand the messy reality, they are not
the same as that mess. See my comment at the start of this message.
I wrote:
>> I guess I was right about the idea that Blautian thinkers
conflate markets with capitalism. To see the Congo as "capitalist" is
focusing only on output and financial markets, forgetting about relations
in production.<<
> I would say that you think conflate capitalism with the industrial revolution, and in Great Britain in particular. Marx wrote Zasulich and Danielson in the 1880s that this was not the way to read Capital.<
what specifically did he say? I remember the bit about rejecting the idea that a country had to go through the UK’s “stage” to get to capitalism, but what did he say that’s relevant here?
Capitalism is not the “industrial revolution.” Capitalism started in GB with the "agricultural revolution" (primitive accumulation), which happened before the industrial revolution and involved the creation of a proletariat. It's the existence of a true proletariat (which is "free in the double sense") as a large enough force in an economy as a whole is what defines capitalism and allows full-scale capitalist accumulation.
It's an
historical accident that capitalism started, gathered strength, and then spread
to the world beginning in Western
Europe (and in the UK specifically). That's why people focus on England. It’s
not because people (at least Marxist people) want to impose the “English model”
on the world.
>>
the "Congolese" suffered from "extra-economic coercion" not only in the process
of "primitive accumulation" but while they worked.<<
> I
really don't understand what you are saying here.<
If
there’s extra-economic coercion (e.g., whipping workers, imposing limits on
their mobility) that means that the direct producers are not “free in the double
sense” and thus not true proletarians.
JD
