At 21:04 25/05/2007, Louis wrote:
Keep in mind that Engels's schema in "Origins of the Family"
defines capitalism as immediately following feudalism. He didn't
come up with these stages on his own. They were shared by Marx. Was
16th and 17th century Holland "feudal"? If so, then the word has no
use as a strict social science category.
The problem I have with this is Marx's concluding footnote in Vol. I,
Ch. 26, where he describes the Italian case as one in which the
dissolution of serfdom [emancipation of the peasant] occurred before
the peasant acquired a 'prescriptive right to the soil'. This is in
contrast to the case elsewhere in Europe where peasants DID acquire
that prescriptive right to the soil before the dissolution of
serfdom. What that meant, then, is made clear at the opening of Ch.
27--- the disappearance of serfdom in England left as the the immense
majority of the population 'free peasant proprietors, however much
the feudal trappings might disguise their absolute ownership.' Ie.,
not feudalism but feudal forms.
Thus, the necessity for the expropriation of those peasant
proprietors. So, you can't call that feudalism if these are merely
feudal trappings which are mystifying observers. Was it capitalism
then? Or, was there an intermediate 'stage' in which peasant and
craft commodity producers were numerically dominant but exploited by
incipient capital in the form of merchant capital and money-lending
capital which had not yet seized possession of production? This would
be consistent with Richard's definition.
In any event, while I taught about the period in the distant
past, it's been years since I've followed the literature (except to
recognise that the Brenner/Wood definition of capitalism as
competition among commodity producers has little to do with Marx's
definition of capitalism). I would say, though, that 'primitive
accumulation' occurred in the Italian case--- in the sense of the
assembling of an essential component of capitalism [producers
separated from the land/means of production]; since there was no
prescriptive right to the soil, though, they went directly to
wage-labour without passing enclosures. I.e., I think it is important
to distinguish between the essence of the process (the original
accumulation of elements, i.e., the becoming of capital) and the
contingent forms it took.
michael
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Director, Programme in 'Transformative Practice and Human Development'
Centro Internacional Miranda, P.H.
Residencias Anauco Suites, Parque Central, final Av. Bolivar
Caracas, Venezuela
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