>"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?
Louis Proyect wrote:
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.
"much more importance" depends on what question is being asked. At the end of volume I of CAPITAL, Marx was asking the question "where did capitalism come from?" He would likely put more emphasis on English events than Louis does, since Louis is asking a different question.
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.
Perhaps I'm misreading between the lines, but the tone here is that being the first country to spawn full-grown capitalism (as England seems to have been) is some way a _badge of honor_. That's the only meaning I can attach to the idea because France looked better in some ways shines a spotlight of shame on England. Further, there are problems with the concept of productivity. Labor productivity is not easy to compare between countries, especially between crops. We don't want to fall for the Fogel & Engerman fallacy: they argued that Southern slave productivity was higher than Northern free agricultural productivity. But that turned out to be a total artifact of comparing productivity of two different sets of crops (since, after all, the N and the S produced different things). To make things worse, the way that different crops were added up was by using prices (the usual way economists add apples & oranges) -- and the price of cotton was temporarily very high during the period that F&E did their comparison. Now, it may be that the two countries that Louis compares produced the same crops. But it's not standard labor productivity that counts if your question is about the origins of capitalism. It's labor productivity for capitalists (or other ruling-class members), i.e., production of a surplus. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
