Fw: Ascent/Decent

[DMS <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Besides its simple historical value, I believe the
analysis of the origin of capital's social relations
is essential to moving forward.  Quite frankly, in my
opinion, Marxism has been beset by various forms of
substitutionism for the better part of a century,
where this or that manifestation, contributing factor
is identified as the "primary contradiction," the
"last phase," and thus "new" "revolutionary" "agents"
are discovered and substituted for the proletariat.


I might argue that this argument about the past is
another argument about "imperialism," and whether that,
imperialism, has superceded the relations of classes
as Marx analyzed them.

But that's argument for later.  I agree and disagree
with Comrades LP and LS.  Yes, it contributed to the
growth, no it is not the source. The fundamental
"achievement" of primitive accumulation is not the
accumulation of wealth, but the creation of the new
social relations of classes, routing of labor from land.
Marx's analysis of primitive accumulation is brilliant
in its compression, but at the end he says all these
forces "hasten" the transformation.  Hasten, at the point
of a sword or at the business end of a rifle, is right.
But how do we get to that critical social relation
of production that allows for industrial capitalist
development?

LP's comments about single countries are a point well
made.  But the study of single countries is important
as they manifest and are manifested in the general pattern
of development.  In the radical capitalization of
agriculture in the US, or in France with the revolutionary
use of assignats to liquify the value, the movement, of
property, the basis for the expansion of industry, the
provisioning of the domestic market, the movement of
population into the cities in exactly those countries
that move to the head of the class.


Without that thorough reorganization of agriculture,
all the extracted wealth in the world (which is what
Spain imagined it was achieving) is destined to drain
away.  Kamen's remarks are dead on, and indicate that
Spain's system, incable of expanding reproduction, was
destined to become a husk.