Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I could nit-pick, but I think I'll skip it.  Thank you for the exposition
and the grounding in South Africa.  Very helpful.  However, two things of
importance stand out.

First, indigenous people may or may not make good laborers.  It partially
depends on the degree of development of exploitative relations among that
people.  In Latin America, enslavement and incorporation of indigenous
peoples marked a serious part of Spanish and Portugese colonialism, unlike
in the United States.  Some of that had to do with societies such as the
Incas, Mayas and Aztecs, which I think can be considered class societies (I
know that is a crude formulation, I apologize.)

Second, the use of the population inpart depends on how the extension of
territory is managed, the ideological framework of the colonialists (the
Portugese and the Spanish never had big restrictions on inter-marrying and
procreation).  This has a lot to do with the nature of race in Latin America
and the Caribbean, which is not at all bi-polar (or look at the Portugese in
Angola, Guines-Bissau and Mozabique where many of the nationalist leaders
were so-called 'mixed bloods', mestizos.)  Now the foundations of this are
beyond my small comment, but I think we have to recognize the complexity of
race and not simply get trapped in the Anglo world of South Africa,
Australia and the United States, where bi-polarity has played a larger and
more dominant role.

Finally, i would suggest caution in proposing a model.  Models tend to take
away from our attention to how struggle shapes the relations.  A
three-period model becomes a trap with political implications that move in a
direct line away from understanding race as racialization, as a struggle
process, as fetishization, rather than as some achieved fetishism.  I can
think of at least 4 major periods where sea changes in the process and
understanding of racialization have taken place and we may be in a crisis
marking the fifth.  Maybe.  The process is neither finished nor decided
before hand, and that is what models tend to do, assign a priori logics to
open-ended struggles.  We cannot confuse history, what has happened, with
the current and the future, with the what is not yet and may or may not be.

But as I said, I enjoyed this.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 8:37 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_


> >>> wilson_rowan@xxxxxxxxxxx 02/05 3:59 PM >>>
> I would like to be fussy and add that it is also
> vital to see capitalism in the context of racism and patricarchy - that is
> to say capitalism wasn't born outside of these 'isms'. Capitalism didn't
> just draw on versions of racism then present, it is also a product of
these
> 'isms' itself.
>
> I think one needs to be very careful here. Yes, capitalism depended on
black slaves to get started, just as it depended on merchant capital, the
absolutist state, scientific revolutions, etc. But your formulation suggests
that there was this pre-existing racism, pretty much as we know it today,
which capitalism could just piggyback onto. This would be quite ahistorical
I think.
>
> Consider the differences between these various cases: 1. The extinction of
aboriginal peoples to 'clear the land' of its original inhabitants. 2. The
transportation of slaves from one place to another. 3. The incorporation of
certain 'inferior races' into the state and workforce in subordinate
positions.
>
> Each one of these is different and constitutes a different moment in the
historical development of capitalism. Take South Africa. At the Cape you
first had the beginning of the extermination of the Khoi-San peoples.
Together with this you then had slaves being imported from other parts of
Africa, from the East Indies and from India. Finally you had the various
conquered peoples incorporated into the settler society as exploited
workers.
>
> This pattern is remarkably similar to that in different parts of the
world, such as the US. Aboriginals do not make good slaves - they know the
terrain and they have their people that they can run away to. Foreign slaves
may well be more afraid of what lies outside the settlement than what they
experience inside it. So the pattern of bringing in exotic populations as
slaves makes sense.
>
> The domination of exploited workers is always a later stage than these
first two, since it depends on a whole range of social arrangements and
ideological apparatuses (e.g. apartheid) in order to be managed effectively.
This moment in South Africa corresponds to the defeat of the last 'native
uprisings' of 1908 and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
The first land dispossessions follow soon after (1913) and, significantly,
the formation of the African National Congress in 1912. The pattern of
racism and resistance to it really starts there.
>
> It seems to me that only this last mentioned phase is racism proper (i.e.
racism as we know it). The earlier stages correspond firstly to some kind of
primitive conquering consciousness leading to pure extermination, and
secondly to forced labour, often of a different population group to the
first. So three clear moments: driving out and exterminating; forced labour;
iincorporation as inferior citizen and exploited worker.
>
> One of the reasons why nationalists like to blur these moments in
explaining the development of capitalism is that it makes it easy to argue
that European racism is eternal and unchanging and therefore a main CAUSE of
capitalism. I am implying that this ahistorical and implausible notion is
foreign to marxist thinking and should be resisted. Racism 'as we know it'
is part of the internal logic of capitalist development.
>
> Regards
> Tahir
>
>
>
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