Re: Spain: colonizer and colonized

["dms" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: Spain: colonizer and colonized

No, but the "turbulent dynamism" of capitalist societies in Europe were
> very much dependent on the debt peonage of Mexico or apartheid in South
> Africa. B. Traven has a vivid description of how all this fits together.


First,any discussion of this issue that includes, refers to  B. Traven is a
discussion light years ahead of the usual arguments. Comrade Proyect has
done us all a solid by including these excerpts from a great writer.

Secondly, my disagreement is with comrade Proyect's use of the term
"dependent."  My view, particularly regarding the practices in Mexico is
quite the opposite-- the peonage practice was totally dependent on the more
advanced capitalisms' demands.  B. Traven I think indicates this with the
reference to people in NYC and London wanting their mahogany furniture.
The overall lack of development in Mexico, certainly the result of
colonialism and advanced capitalism, did not create the determinants for
expandsion of "free," unencumbered by attachments to land, labor.  The
advanced capitalisms and their advanced consumers wanted their mahogany.
The brokers, transit points, wanted the mahogany.  The "owners" of the
mahogany forests wanted wood turned into a value.  Nobody cared how it was
done.

There is little doubt that advanced capitalism could have survived without
the debt peonage, without the mahogany.  But that also isn't the point.
What advanced capitalism could not do was create anew the terms of its own
emancipation, where its organization of property overthrew the old (however
reluctant the capitalists themselves proved to be) organizations of property
and labor.  And it could not do this because of chronic worldwide
overproduction which made the reorganization of property a moment of extreme
vulnerability, not unlike that period after a crab tosses its old shell, a
snake its old skin.

As I understand Comrade Proyect's use of the term dependent, it seems to
suggest that advanced capital's ability to expand it universe of values was
(and remains?) dependent on this exchange of  "historical non-equivalents"
(my term).   I don't think so.  I think capital accommodated, absorbed,
supported through calculated and calculating neglect these forms, and having
done so is/was faced continuously with its contradiction between property
and production, owners and producers.