I wrote: >>Other countries
(outside of Western Europe) had mass waves of primitive accumulation
of the sort described by Marx in CAPITAL?<<
LP writes: > There was primitive accumulation in the sense of converting precapitalist social formations in hunting-gathering or tributary societies into laborers, but not in the same exact pattern as England.<
Of course I agree, since history never repeats itself exactly.
> I would look at 16th century Potosi as one instance. Indians dug silver 11 hours a day until they dropped dead of exhaustion or disease. This is not the mode of production that prevailed in the Middle Ages in Europe, ... If feudalism is marked by this kind of "waste" of human labor-power, then it is difficult to describe Potosi as feudal. In fact, the mode of production had much more in common with Africa in the late 1800s--especially the Congo. Now Marx never wrote about such things for obvious reasons, but this does not mean that we are forced to adopt a schema in which everything that fails to conform to 18th century Manchester is "non-capitalist".<
On this last bit about forcing stuff in to Marx's
framework, I totally agree.
I'm not into the Biblical interpretation of Marx. However,
he does write about this kind of thing, quoting Liebig on page 718 of volume I
(Penguin/Vintage ed. chapter 23, 9th note) about the treatment of native workers
in South America. (He didn't dwell on it, because it wasn't the subject of
CAPITAL; capitalism was.) While I'm in the Biblical mood, there's the
following from the start of volume I, ch. 10, section 2, one of my favorite
quotes:
"Capital has not invented
surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means
of production, the labourer, 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 [well-to-do man],
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-labour will be limited by
a given set of wants which may be greater or less, and that here no boundless
thirst for surplus-labour 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 recognised 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-labour,
corv�e-labour, &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 civilised horrors of over-work are
grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, &c. Hence the negro
labour 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 labour 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-labour itself: So was it also with the corv�e, e.g., in the Danubian
Principalities (now Roumania)." [from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm#S2]
The thing about labor in Potosi was that it was either
slavery or very close to slavery. (It was very non-feudal. I don't see why
feudalism is relevant here at all.) It was a lot like the slavery in
antiquity that Marx writes about. It wasn't free proletarian labor (of the sort
that Marx argued distinguished capitalism from other modes of production). So
this "primitive accumulation" didn't create a proletariat _per se_. It created a
system that later evolved into the latifundium/minifundia system, a sort of
"semi-feudal/semi-capitalist" system.
>>... that's why Engels and others wrote of
the "second serfdom." (Like antebellum slavery, it was embedded in
the world market without being capitalist.) I don't know enough about
the latter to comment.<<
> Engels was referring to the mid 1400s, not Junkers Germany....<
> Engels was referring to the mid 1400s, not Junkers Germany....<
right. But this "second serfdom" persisted in a modified
form until the time that Engels wrote. The quote above from Marx also discusses
this. ("as soon as people, whose production still moves within the lower forms
of slave-labour, corv�e-labour, &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 civilised
horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom,
&c. ")
> > Of course, whether it _can_ enslave them depends
on the strength of the resistance of the rural
population.<<
> Not sure this is meant to rebut what I am arguing at all.<
> Not sure this is meant to rebut what I am arguing at all.<
It wasn't meant to "rebut." But what it says about simple
rules such as "if the bourgeoisie cannot produce commodities with the ready
stock of free ex-farmers, it will enslave them or a ready-made substitute" is
that we can't omit the role of class struggle (just as Blaut might argue).
>> Further, mechanization (Marx's "modern industry") means that the bourgeoisie can reduce its reliance on a ready stock of free ex-farmers. He saw modern industry as the full _expression_ of capitalism, a capitalism that no longer had to rely on direct force in production. <<
> Yes, mature capitalism is marked by the widespread production of relative surplus value, but that does not really indicate that European rubber companies were not involved in the capitalist mode of production when they terrorized Africans into climbing rubber trees with nothing but a knife.<
_Of course_. Of course European rubber companies used slavery & other
forms of forced labor whenever they could! Who said otherwise? This is another
case of "people [being] drawn into the whirlpool of an international market
dominated by the capitalistic mode of production [and] the sale of their
products for export becoming their principal interest, [so that] the civilised
horrors of over-work are grafted on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom..."
The fact is that "capitalism" isn't a single company or even several
companies. It's a type of _society_. It's the type of society that has dominated
the world market and subordinated other modes of production, _eventually_ (and
not immediately) converting them into capitalism -- or simply destroying
them.
Jim Devine
