Mike, I think it's a mistake to put a "/" between "Brenner" and
"Wood." Even though she's more sophisticated in some ways, her
economics is a popularization of Brenner's. His is more Marxian,
though his questions aren't really the same as Marx's (as sartesian
points out).
On 5/26/07, michael a. lebowitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 23:56 25/05/2007, sartesian wrote:
But Brenner's and Wood's definition of capitalism is not the competition
among commodity producers. Brenner's definition is the separation of the
conditions of labor, and the laborer, from the means of labor and,
initially, critically, the means of subsistence. It is a definition based
on social relations, not of wealth, commerce, trade, the growth or decline
of cities.
Competition among producers is most definitely derived from that
definition.
I apologise for entering a discussion that others have studied much
more closely, but textually I'm not certain this is accurate. As a fluke, I
happen to have a copy of Wood's 'Origin of Capitalism' (MR, 1999) here in
Caracas. (It's a fluke because I had brought the book here from vancouver
because a person who was to teach history of capitalism at the School of
Planning asked if I had anything post-Dobb that he could read on the origins
and the book was light.) And, as I vaguely recalled, her mantra is 'market
imperative, market imperative, market imperative'. The devil made me do
it--- the market made me do it. What? Everything--- it is the basis of the
specific laws of motion of capitalism..
Marx's definition of capitalism has to do with the sale of
labour-power to a capitalist. Wood, however, talks about 'agrarian
capitalism' without initially talking about wage-labour. So, what does that
leave of capitalism? She writes: 'But it is important to keep in mind that
competitive pressures, and the new "laws of motion" that went with them,
depended in the first instance not on the existence of a mass proletariat
but on the existence of market-dependent tenant producers' (95). [The 'mass'
is genuflection to Marx's concept as subsequent points indicate]. 'People
could be market-dependent--- dependent on the market for the basic
conditions of their self-reproduction--- without being completely
dispossessed. To be market-dependent required only the loss of direct
non-market access to the means of self-reproduction.... In other words, the
specific dynamics of capitalism were already in place in English agriculture
before the proletarianization of the work force' (95).
So, the specific laws of motion of capital have nothing to do with
the exploitation of workers as wage-labourers, the drive to increase the
length and intensity of the workday, to divide and separate workers, the
existence of a reserve army of unemployed that keeps exploitation at
respectable levels, the tendency toward overproduction [the 'fundamental
contradiction'] and what flows from the fact that surplus value [oops,
what's that?] must be realised through the sale of commodities under
conditions marked by exploitation of wage-labourers? Nope, the laws of
motion come from competitive pressures, ie., from the market, which is to
say that they are the laws of any market society [hello, Milton's definition
of capitalism].
I'd say Sartesian has it backward in his point about what is
derived from what in their work. As for Brenner/Wood, they are certainly
welcome to use any definition they want of capitalism--- trying to pass it
off as Marx's understanding of capitalism and its tendencies is another
matter, though.
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
fax: 0212 5768274/0212 5777231
http//:centrointernacionalmiranda.gob.ve [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
