Re: Spain: colonizer and colonized

["Julio Huato" <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alex LoCascio's says:

> I find it rather curious that some would argue that capitalism in its
> declining phase must also be characterized by generalized wage slavery.

If you're referring to what I argued, then this may be a misunderstanding.
To paraphrase Clinton, it depends on what you mean by 'generalized.'

Let me assume the extreme.  You mean that I mean advanced capitalism will be
100% wage slavery.   Well, this may be what you think I think, but it is
certainly not what I wrote or what I believe.  I am talking about the main
tendency of modern capitalism and you attribute to me judgments about the
end result of the process -- judgments that don't follow from a mere
assessment of the main tendency.

It is as if you say that a woman is becoming increasingly fit to bear
children and then I say that you predict that such woman will mother 5 kids.
 It doesn't follow.  All I say is that the process of expansion and
generalization of wage slavery is still ongoing.  And that the relation
between wage slavery and direct types of slavery is one of cooperation and
conflict -- but certainly not one of identity, as Louis Proyect thinks.  And
that wage slavery is the dynamic core of the world system, but the parts are
not all identical to the core.

Where the process of capitalism development will lead is a whole other
thing.  As Mexicans say, we the workers are not merely painted.

So, note that I don't say or imply ANYWHERE that workers should wait before
they start uniting, organizing, and sharpening their struggle against
capitalism.  I don't say or imply either that they should moderate
themselves or 'radicalize' to fit my fancy.  I agree with an old argument
based on the Communist Manifesto that José Pérez has articulated best on
this list, namely that we're not in the sectarian business.

We are in the business of articulating the self-identity of the movement as
a whole, in the totality of its interests, clarifying the social dynamics in
which the movement lives -- as it happens (not as we wish it to happen).  We
are in the business of trying to be the most enlightened and resolute
segment of the movement -- which is to say, not to flinch when tough choices
are to be made.  And we are in this business for the long haul.  That is how
I'd put it now.  But run a search under José Pérez, and you'll find in his
postings a better description of our task.

With regards to who is proletarian and who is not, these are my two cents.
The term 'proletarian' was inherited from the Romans.  In my understanding,
in classical writings, the term refers to free people who were poor.  I
believe Marx used the term 'modern proletarians' to refer to poor people who
were free to sell their labor power in the market in modern capitalist
societies.  If people are not proletarian in the sense of being free, then
they cannot sell their labor power because they do not own it.  They do not
own themselves, partially (e.g., peones) or totally (slave proper).
Naturally, the position, interests, and incentives of forced and free
workers in social production are entirely different.

And if people are not proletarian in the sense of being poor, then they do
not need to sell their labor power.  They are not poor, which means that
they do own wealth, and they can sell it instead.  So, in modern capitalism,
there are a lot of workers who are not poor and, therefore, are not
proletarians.  The size of their wealth may not allow them to be capitalists
either.

In his early writings (and to some extent in the Communist Manifesto), Marx
(and Engels) argued that a radical revolution able to end exploitation and
oppression required a social agent who was irreducibly radical.  Someone
with no ties to the status quo, capable of evolving radical needs.  Marx
thought the modern proletarians were in this position.  But, I believe a key
point people tend to forget is that, in the same passages, the revolutionary
character of the 'modern proletarians' was tied to their position in the
social structure in a rich society -- to their being massively placed by the
capitalists into positions where they were at the very nerve of modern
production.

In Lenin's early writings, he used this as an argument against the
populists.  In his book on the development of capitalism in Russia, Lenin
argued that Marxists should work politically on the minority of urban
workers and not on the majority of peasants because, even though numerically
they were less significant, their density or 'specific mass' was much
greater due to their position in modern, dynamic production.  If we were to
use the same logic to the U.S. in our times, what would the conclusion be?

I think that one of the reasons why Marxists tend to fall in love with the
neo-populist interpretations of Lenin's theory of imperialism, where the
Third World is framed as a world-scale 'proletarian' and the rich countries
are the 'global capitalist', is because they think of the poverty in the
Third World as the kind of poverty that would make a mass of people have
'radical' needs and no adherence to the status quo.  They probably believe
that deep poverty is inherent to the revolutionary character.  I don't think
that we should fall in a mechanistic interpretation of the political
potential of specific groups of people, but I do believe that groups of
people with experience dealing with sophisticated technical stuff have a
productive edge (no moral superiority though).

Based only on translations from the German, it seems that in his economic
writings Marx used different terms for different purposes.  Among others:

(1) the proletarians,
(2) the workers,
(3) the working class,
(4) the direct producers,
(5) the collective worker, and
(6) the producers.

I've discussed the meaning of 'proletarian'.  The workers (a term Marx used
in the context of capitalist production) are a superset of the proletarians.
 Some may be poor.  Some may not be so poor.  Of course, if they are rich,
how come they still have to work as opposed to just live off their wealth
(i.e., by exploiting wage labor one way or another)?  So workers cannot be
that rich.  Workers are wage laborers who may be 'productive' or not.  The
direct producers are those who are on the workers' side of the wage
relationship and carry out capitalist production proper.  There are
producers who are not direct producers, namely the technical managers and
supervisors (in the technical sense of the term, not insofar as they protect
the owners' wealth and police the workers).  There are capitalists (i.e.,
owners of capital) who are also engaged in the technical aspects of
production.  In that sense, they are producers as well.

There may be direct producers not involved in capitalist production, e.g.,
peasants and handcraft people.  The collective worker is a term used in
reference to capitalist production only and it encompasses all the
producers: direct and indirect.  I recall that in volume 3 of Capital, there
are passages where Marx clearly suggests that it is up to the collective
worker, i.e., the direct and nondirect producers (including capitalists, not
as owners, but as technical organizers of the general aspects of the
productive process) to build communism (he uses the term, 'cooperative
society' or something like that).  For Marx, the unemployed who remain
somewhat connected to the labor force are members of the working class.  The
working class is usually a term used in a political context.  Marx's
distinction of the workers as a class in itself and for itself is known.

The producers are those involved -- directly or indirectly -- in the
creation of useful things.  But things useful not because of needs that
arise out of the specific social character of capitalist production.  An
excellent reference on this is the book by Shaikh and Tonak, Measuring the
Wealth of Nations.  I believe E. Ahmet Tonak is a member of this list.

Concepts should be plastic enough to accommodate the evolution of the
reality they denote.  Yet, if they are too plastic, then semantically they
become useless.  They will confuse rather than clarify.

Julio

_________________________________________________________________
Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger:
http://messenger.yupimsn.com/