>> Lou, aren't you & Jim saying the same thing?<< Comment
I understand Lou's emphasis to be on the transformation in the form of wealth, from land to movable, portable property, i.e., gold . . . and his quotes from Marx Capital and The Communist Manifesto are super. Not just foreign conquest but the feeding frenzy over a new form of wealth, driving the imperial conquest. >"primitive accumulation" is one big undifferentiated mass? so we can >ignore the different parts of Marx's analysis or treat them all as >playing exactly the same role? the expropriation of English >agriculture producers is the same thing as the looting of the Incas? Lou's response below << I would say that silver mining in Latin America had much more importance in the early stages of capitalism than anything happening in the British countryside. I will have more to say on this later on but the figures for labor productivity on British farms was *lower* than France's in 1600. That is centuries after the supposed miracle in the British countryside that was to lead to everything shiny and new and industrial. >> Comment I agree . . . in the meaning that the transition in the form of wealth sets, the stage for, and makes expropriation of the English agricultural producer sensible. Feudalism is a landed property relations. The primary form of in this agricultural society, on which sits the political system called feudalism is land itself. What breaks up and undermines the feudal system is the transformation in the form of wealth, which . . . . was seized by individuals and welded as a social power. That is, capital - ism is not God ordained, I think . . . I think. Expropriation . . . (not simply or the concept of "separation from") . . . of the agricultural producer from the land or rather his means of production and subsistence . . . . implied in expropriation, is not possible without the seizing of this new mobile form of wealth in the hands of individuals. Separation of the agricultural producers as one of the dominant classes underlying the agrarian relations, on which sits the feudal political order is possible but not expropriation. Last point . . . not so much the distinction between species or fiat money, both whose usage requires force or the state, but the distinction in the form of wealth itself. Not just the change in the form of wealth, but its appropriation and concentration in the hands of individuals and their power to expropriate, rather than separate the agricultural producer from the land. Melvin P. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
