I wrote:>> 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 [in this
discussion].) It was a lot like the slavery in antiquity that Marx
writes about.<<
LP:> This is not the case at all. Slavery in antiquity was tied up with the natural economy. Slaves could become free. In the Ottoman Empire, for example, slaves commanded armies. In Ethiopia they bore arms. <
Marx was talking about a _special case_ in antiquity. To quote him again, from the same place: "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." (emphasis mine.) He's _specifically_ referring to cases where the "natural economy" didn't apply. Like Potosi.
BTW, in economic history, a "natural economy" was one without money and/or markets. I wouldn't say that antiquity in Rome or Greece fit this at all. I'm not very familiar with either the Ottoman Empire or the Ethiopian Empire, but I doubt that either of them totally lacked commodity production (production for market). It's just that many were pretty self-sufficient, so that only surpluses and luxury goods were traded.
> In such precapitalist societies, commodity production was not generalized. <
Lenin talks about "generalized commodity production" referring to the situation where labor-power is a commodity (differing from simple commodity production, where it's not). Is this what you mean? If so, we agree: pre-capitalist societies and societies such as that of the antebellum South didn't have generalized commodity production, i.e., capitalism. Instead, it was a society dominated by capitalism.
> In the 16th century, Latin America was a source of silver, gold, sugar, etc. that became transformed into commodities for sale on the world market. Stocks in mining companies were bought and sold like any other stocks, even if the workforce was unfree.<
>> 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_. ....<<
> But a proletariat was
created. How else would you describe somebody who digs silver 11 hours a day for a
wage? <
They worked for a wage, but it was still forced labor, so it's pretty much slavery. Just as in apartheid South Africa, all sorts of institutions/forces were used to minimize the wage of mine workers, going beyond the norm of capitalism. (It's super-exploitation, not "normal" capitalist exploitation.)
> Btw, most silver miners were wage earners, even though they were subject to all sorts of nonmarket constraints.<
on this last, exactly. It's the "nonmarket constraints" that make their situation non-proletarian (totally or to a large extent).
>> right. But this "second serfdom" persisted in a
modified form until the time that Engels wrote.<<
> Not really. The Junkers
estates of the 1800s were typical large-scale capitalist farms operating on a strictly
for-profit basis. The only thing not
typical about them is that the work force was constrained by non-market judicial codes that tied them
to the land. <
that's _exactly_ what I meant: "nonmarket judicial codes that tied them to the land" is just another way of saying that there was serfdom-type restrictions in addition to any market-type relations. The fact that they followed profit-seeking rules and produced commodities does not make them capitalist in terms of social relations, just as slave plantations in the antebellum US South weren't capitalist, despite being "drawn into the whirlpool of an international market dominated by the capitalistic mode of production."
> If you want to understand this better, I'd recommend Lenin's early work on the development of capitalism in Russia. He says that there were 2 roads that Russia could take. It could follow the Junkers capitalism model or that of the USA, where small proprietorship and wage labor prevailed with a minimum of extra-market coercion. He favored the second path.<
yes, that's a good book. 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.
> > _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..."
> So you are saying that there was no capitalism in the
Congo in the 1880s? Interesting.<
"no capitalism"? no. The capitalist world market clearly _dominated_ the Congo at that point, even though _on the ground_ production was not organized in a bourgeois/proletarian way, but in a forced-labor way. (As usual, the ability of King Leopold and the rest to tap forced labor "crowded out" any development of a full-scale proletariat.)
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.
>> 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.<<
> But that's what happened in
the Congo exactly. The rubber companies separated the small farmers and
hunter-gatherers from their means of production and converted them into a
proletariat. It didn't matter
that this was done through
extra-market coercion including taking family members as hostage. In terms of class
relations, you had a bourgeoisie based in Belgium--about this there should
be no doubt. [right] And in the Congo you had a proletariat. From a Marxist
standpoint, there is *no* difference
between somebody climbing a tree to harvest rubber and somebody back in Brussels turning the raw
material into tires.<
the "Congolese" suffered from "extra-economic coercion" not only in the process of "primitive accumulation" but while they worked. (The worker in Brussels is not subject to this kind of coercion.) It wasn't a capitalist society as much as a society _dominated_ by capitalism. (Dominated is a mild word in this context.)
Jim Devine
