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[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

A note on " New views on the origin of capitalism"
(posted by Louis Project Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:02:44
-0400)
     Reply-To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lou posted an EPW Book Review from June 01, 2002 called "(Role of
Revisionism in History) reviewing two books: 'Trade in Early India: Themes
in Indian History' edited by Ranabir Chakravarti and 'Origins of the
European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300-900' by Michael
McCormick

The author of the review, Nigel Harris, talking about the importance of
trade in ancient society wrote,

"By implication, a pure exchange economy was already important and
sufficiently so to induce the reorganisation of production so that
producers were dependent upon exchange."

What Harris argues is that capitalism is simply commerce, and that since
commerce has been around for thousands of years, so too has capitalism. It
should be noted that Harris' "pure exchange economy" was not so pure,
because it did not rely on the exchnge of labor power - i.e. it did not
rely on wage labor.

The notion that capitalism is simply buying and selling things for money
is completely useless for the study of class struggle. Commerce was
important all over the world before capitalism developed - that is if you
define capitalism by the social relations of production. Commerce can be
based on many different forms of social relations: free independent
producers, communal tribal relations, market cooperatives of individual
producers, enserfed peasant producers, chattel slavery, wage labor, and
even nationalized property.

One reason bourgeois scholars like to define capitalism as simply being
commerce is precisely for this reason - it allows them to ignore issues of
class struggle.

This doesn't in any way imply that the books Harris reveiws might not be
useful, or interesting. If anyone gets a chance to look at them, I would
be interested to know what they say about wage labor in the ancient world,
and about social relations of production in the times and places they
study.

All the best, Anthony


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