Re: Eurocentrism and Communist Economics

[Michael Novick <mnovick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:21 PM 5/11/97, Franco Barchiesi wrote:
Michael Novick wrote:

>>The treatment of Marx and of capital on this list seems to ignore
>> entirely Marx's insight that there are several different forms of capital,
>> and that rent on land (based on private ownership) is a separate and
>> independent form of capital, with its own set of attendant social
>> relations) than the capital which grows out of private expropriation of
>> wage labor.  I have seen little or no discussion of Vandana Shiva's
>> tremendously insightful work about the continuing expropriation by capital
>> of the commons.  And all this discussion of pricing and labor time has not
>> given an ounce of consideration to what the capitalist economists refer to
>> as "externalities"  the costs to the planet, the environment, air , water,
>> the genome, etc etc of doing "business."
>
>I agree with Michael's concern, and we probably need a more attentive
>look at the multiplicity of forms of capitalist exploitation and
>resistance. I also agree that the thread on "Economics of a
>Communist Society" has revolved around alternatives not
>always aware of the problems raised by that multiplicity. However, I
>think his judgement on discussions on the list
>is a bit too easily dismissive. >

I actually agree; I was overstating, and I do value this list and
particularly some of Monty's postings


>On the content of Michael's post, I'm not quite sure that "rent" on
>the land still defines a totally independent form of capital
>accumulation, separate from proletarianization in its "classical"
>meaning.

I don't actually mean only rent, but really the whole concept of private
ownership of land.  Why is this any more acceptable than "owning" the the
air or the water (which we are now seeing the market manage to accomplish).
 if property is theft, certainly and particularly it is private property in
land, and it's attendant right to untrammelled exploitation.  The
conversion of nature into "value" and resource, and the continuing
enforcement and extension of that conversion is a separate source of
wealth, value and capital from that derived through the exploitation of
labor and is directly related to the nature of colonialism, the "primitive
accumulation" that allowed the development of industrial capital, the
genocide of indigenous peoples, and the global market.

> I rather think that processes of rural exploitation more
>often give rise to a plurality of class relations simultaneously
>experienced in a same locality, not differently from the plurality of
>relationships of employment if factory. Take the expansion of
>sharecropping (on which here in SA there's a massive debate, but
>that has involved, for example, the strawberry fields of California
>in the last two decades, for example): to what extent it can be
>conceptualized along a clear-cut capitalist-precapitalist divide?
>More generally, is the existence of non-capitalist relations of
>production: a) clearly identifiable; b) a recipe for
>resistance/weakness of global capital; c) a potential for alternative
>forms of politics capable at the same time to address what Michael
>calls the "externalities"?

More theorizing needs to be done on the essentially parasitic nature of
even developing capitalism, let alone moribund capitalism that we live in
today.  Capitalism is constantly creating and recreating itself at least in
part by looting wealth and "value" from pre-capitalist, non-capitalist, and
in the current period even of post-capitalist economic formations. Just
think of the plunder going on of Eastern Europe (as well as of the
socialized wealth of Western Europe, as has recently been noted in the case
of England, where new Labout is following in the privatization footsteps of
old Tories, turned socially produced and owned (even if state-capitalist)
property and resources, into private fortunes.  This is connected up
closely with the early capitalist privatization of the commons and of land
generally.


>Recent contributions (eg. the debates on
>"Rethinking Marxism" suggest this, but I have my doubts. I'm probably
>too simplificatory, but I think that idealizing non-capitalist forms
>of economy and identity without a political project to
>circulate struggles arising from their ambigue and
>contradictory nature implies, at best,
>to suggest a strategic retreat. There's nothing wrong with strategic
>retreats in themselves. Provided, of course, that you have some
>gain to defend...

I am not suggesting a retreat or attempting to glorify pre-capitalist or
indigenous societies.  recent studies which show the development of farming
in the western hemisphere took place at about the same time as in the
middle east and china; the development of class society -- an later of
capitalist relations -- in Africa simultaneously with and independent of
similar developments in other regions of human settlement around the globe,
make it clear that there is no "noble savage" and no race of people
uniquely oppressive or non-oppressive.  My journal, turning the Tide has
run a piece analyzing how the technological transformation of irrigation in
indigenous Hawaiian society the attendant development of hierarchies and
inequalities made it easier for Euro-American colonization to proceed,
bringing in plantation farming, etc etc.
but science requires us to be aware of the great variety of human social
and economic structure in order to envision what path to take forward out
of the current exploitative and environmentally destructive prison-system
we find ourselves in.
>
>Franco
>
>Franco Barchiesi
>Sociology of Work Unit
>Dept of Sociology
>Private Bag 3
>University of the Witwatersrand
>PO Wits 2050
>Johannesburg
>South Africa
>Tel. (++27 11) 716.3290
>Fax  (++27 11) 716.3781
>E-Mail 029frb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html
>http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/direct.htm
>
>Home:
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>
>
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