Forwarded from Anthony (origins of capitalism)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Lou:

Please post this.

It seems that the "Brenner debate" still smolders on this list.

I agree substantially with Nestor's remarks,

"In fact, it is the interrelation between both models that answers the
question of origins. I somehow find the whole debate -acrimonious mood
particularly included- a bit senseless. Commercial capital does not
engender capitalism by itself. Thus, _something_ must have happened within
the social formation(s) which became the core that allowed them to become
_that_ core. Plunder certainly helped Europe to step ahead of Asia (1), and
geographical proximity was adamant in concentrating plunder into Europe.
Our late Jim B was absolutely right here, and he has demonstrated this fact
out of any doubt for me, at least.

"But the question still remains, and I feel Yoshie is right on this point,
that the organization of chattel slavery and outright plunder in America
did NOT by themselves put the engine into motion. A fertile soil was needed
at what was to become the core, and we are not predicating against the
essential unity of the human race (one of Jim's basic criticisms of
Eurocentric historians, please see his 'Where was capitalism born') if we
say that developments that were internal to some parcels of the Old World,
which were not reduced to Britain or Holland but certainly included them,
provided the fertile ground for the system to begin working."

I also think that while there are no doubt real differences of opinion, the
exact nature of the real differences are being obscured - at least to me -
as writers to the list don't always mean the same thing when they use the
same words.

Most importantly people are using different definitions of "capitalism".

I am not sure what Mine and other 'world systems' influenced writers mean
when they say capitalism, other than the world system that exists today.
Mine describes all kinds of relations of production - slavery, corvee
labor, free, and unfree labor with the adjective 'capitalist'.

For example, she writes:

"In a nutshell, what we need to do is to acknowledge the fact that
capitalism has a variety of forms of labor--*wage labor being a only
faction of all forms of labor*, not a reified category that develops
everywhere in the same manner as capitalism develops.. That is why
existence of slavery ( or "corvee labor" in Poland--18th century; "forced
free labor"; "forced unfree labor", etc..) with wage labor was not
antagonistic to the development of capitalism, but rather was part of the
same process of capitalism within a single division of labor that has
created hierarchical economic roles/labor for different regions of the
world (not only among regions but also _within_ regions)"

I am sure she understands what she means by 'capitalist' - but I do not.

I would ask Mine and others who agree with her to define what they mean by
capitalism.

I would ask the same question of Yoshie and others who tend to be on the
other side of this discussion.

I think the defenders of Brenner are closer to my definition of the
"capitalist mode of production" - which is simply the mode of production
based on wage labor - not slavery, or other forms of free or unfree labor.

*****

Related to the above there has been a duel of quotes of sorts in this
discussion to which I would like to add a few.

The first is from the Grundrisse. Written before Capital, and never
prepared for publication by Marx, it reveals the process of his thinking as
he moved toward the ideas expressed in Capital.

"One of the prerequisites of wage labor, and one of the historic conditions
for capital, is free labor and the exchange of free labor against money, in
order to reproduce money and to convert it into values, in order to be
consumed by money, not as use value for enjoyment, but as use value for
money. Another prerequisite is the separation of free labor from the
objective conditions of its realization -- from the means and material of
labor. This means above all that the workers must be separated from the
land, which functions as his natural laboratory.

"This means the dissolution both of free petty landownership and of
communal landed property, based on the oriental commune. In both these
forms, the relationship of the worker to the objective conditions of his
labor is one of ownership: this is the natural unity of labor with its
material prerequisites. Hence, the worker has an objective existence
independent of his labor. The individual is related to himself as a
proprietor, as master of the conditions of his reality. The same relation
holds between one individual and the rest. Where this _prerequisite_
derives from the community, the others are his co-owners, who are so many
incarnations of the common property. Where it derives from the individual
families which jointly constitute the community, they are independent
owners co-existing with him, independent private proprietors.

"The common property which formerly absorbed everything and embraced them
all, then subsists as a special _ager publicus_ [common land] separate from
the numerous private owners. In both cases, individuals behave not as
laborers but as owners -- and as members of a community who also labor. The
purpose of this labor is not the _creation of value_, although they may
perform surplus labor in order to exchange it for foreign labor -- i.e.,
for surplus products. Its purpose is the maintenance of the owner and his
family as well as of the communal body as a whole. The establishment of the
individual as a _worker_, stripped of all qualities except this one, is
itself a product of _history_. "

Here Marx is concerned with an essential prerequisite for the formation of
capital: wage labor. Note he is not talking about any other kind of labor.

But also note that he does not think this is the only prerequisite for the
formation of capital.

Later, Marx wrote Capital.

And before he wrote the chapters which refer to "so-called primitive
accumulation" he wrote 25 chapters of capital.

(Aha! and Ha! some would say, but not me.) I apologize for the long quote
below but it contains several important ideas.

Here's what I think is important about the quote which follows below.

First Marx identifies the 16th century as the time when the "modern history
of capital" begins [interesting because of the implications that he thought
there might have been a premodern history of capital, as well as for its
implications about Marx's definition of capitalism]. Second he defines what
he thinks are the basic preconditions of capitalism: a world embracing
commerce, and a world embracing commerce. Third he defines the key
difference between any old market, and one in which capitalism can emerge -
i.e between one in which commodities are exchanged for money only so that
other commodities can be purchased, and one in which money is exchanged for
commodities only so that more money can be accumulated

c-m-c versus m-c-m.

Historically market economies have reached m-c-m many times, without
becoming capitalist. It is only when large scale exploitation of wage labor
evolves, that m-c-m becomes the capitalist mode of production.

This however is a different thing than the "capitalist system" which Mine
and other world systems influenced thinkers write about. Clearly other
modes of production exist today, and even more clearly were important
factors during earlier periods of "capitalism". The world system today
includes several modes of production. In the past the world system included
more modes of production.

It makes sense to me to call the world system today the "capitalist system"
because the "capitalist mode of production" is the dominant mode of
production. Slavery, free family production (either subsistence or for the
market), debt-peonage and other modes of production - including those that
are called 'socialist' are subordinated to the capitalist mode of
production in the global market.

This has been true for two or three hundred years. So, here's the quote

In Chapter Four of Capital Marx writes,

"The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capital. The
production of commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form
of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical ground-work
from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the creation
in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing
market.

"If we abstract from the material substance of the circulation of
commodities, that is, from the exchange of the various use-values, and
consider only the economic forms produced by this process of circulation,
we find its final result to be money: this final product of the circulation
of commodities is the first form in which capital appears.

"As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed property, invariably
takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the
capital of the merchant and of the usurer. [1] But we have no need to refer
to the origin of capital in order to discover that the first form of
appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes.
All new capital, to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the
market, whether of commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the
shape of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital.

"The first distinction we notice between money that is money only, and
money that is capital, is nothing more than a difference in their form of
circulation.

"The simplest form of the circulation of commodities is C-M-C, the
transformation of commodities into money, and the change of the money back
again into commodities; or selling in order to buy. But alongside of this
form we find another specifically different form: M-C-M, the transformation
of money into commodities, and the change of commodities back again into
money; or buying in order to sell. Money that circulates in the latter
manner is thereby transformed into, becomes capital, and is already
potentially capital.

"Now let us examine the circuit M-C-M a little closer. It consists, like
the other, of two antithetical phases. In the first phase, M-C, or the
purchase, the money is changed into a commodity. In the second phase, C-M,
or the sale, the commodity is changed back again into money. The
combination of these two phases constitutes the single movement whereby
money is exchanged for a commodity, and the same commodity is again
exchanged for money; whereby a commodity is bought in order to be sold, or,
neglecting the distinction in form between buying and selling, whereby a
commodity is bought with money, and then money is bought with a commodity.
[2] The result, in which the phases of the process vanish, is the exchange
of money for money, M-M. If I purchase 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £100, and
resell the 2,000 lbs. of cotton for £110, I have, in fact, exchanged £100
for £110, money for money. "

We should talk about what M-C-M meant historically. Because it was not
always "capitalist" in the sense of the exploitation of wage labor. Francis
Drake's merchant capitalist backers were invested "M" (money) on "C"
("capital") - in terms of the Golden Hind - and recieved M (money) from the
plunder of Spain's ill gotten gains.

(The spectacular rate of return was not closely related to any surplus
value produced by the sailors on the Golden Hind.)

M-C-M was one of the preconditions for the capitalist mode of production.
Another was a lot of free labor unattached to the means of production.

Buy Four Now (get one free)

Anthony



Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/