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.
This must mean that South Africa was not a capitalist society when apartheid and the pass system dominated. It must also mean that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were not capitalist either. Obviously this is not the case. Imposing limits on a workers mobility is actually *the norm* for capitalism throughout its existence, except in Western Europe and the USA outside of the deep south. I think the confusion stems from the fact that the key categories of Marxist economics, including especially the production of relative surplus value, are drawn from a specific phase of English history. When Ellen Meiksins Wood and Robert Brenner declare that market coercion is a kind of sine qua non for capitalism, they can't explain apartheid South Africa, Leopold's Congo, the totally regimented fascist economies, nearly all of Asia and Latin America until recently, etc. When you whip a worker, this does not mean that you are operating outside the sphere of capitalism. It simply means that the class struggle has achieved such an extreme and violent character that the extraction of surplus value can only be realized through *coercion* and not rely on the free play of market forces. This tends to happen most often in "backward" societies where self-sustaining agriculture or a combination of hunting and foraging is the rule. In order to force a worker to mine or to pick crops, you need to enact laws that tie them to the land or to a mine. And to put teeth into the class relationship, you have to whip them and threaten them with pistols, etc. Here's a reminder of what capitalism looks like in these places:
"Don Gabriel quickly took to it. He saw there was a fortune to be made, without real effort and without the need of allowing a margin for losses. He did not consider don Ramón any brighter than himself; and no intelligence was required. There were thousands of indebted peons and independent Indians in the district he was best acquainted with. In his own village alone there were more than a dozen who were deeply enough in his debt to give him the right to proceed against them in any way and by any means not expressly forbidden by the law. It was not illegal to offer them the chance of contracting with a monteria [lumber chopping company] as a means of freeing themselves from debt. On the contrary, the government was glad to see debts paid off, and even more glad that the companies who paid it well for licenses and concessions should be kept supplied with labor, so that production could be maintained and exports increased. Exports were necessary to the finances of the country and kept up the value of the peso on the money markets of London and New York. It was therefore a highly patriotic activity to supply the coffee plantations and the monterias with labor and to keep the supply constant; it was just as important as dying gloriously and miserably for the honor of your country assured of the joys of paradise."
full: http://www.swans.com/library/art9/lproy08.html
-- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
