Re: Spain: colonizer and colonized

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Julio Huato:
> Many different things.  Capitalism is not productive at all.  The USSR was
> more productive than the capitalist world in a certain period.  What do
> you mean "capitalism is not productive at all"?  Since the 16th
> century?  In the 1950s and 1960s?  In the last decade?

What do I mean? I meant that capitalism *is not productive* for the vast
majority of the world's planet. Even in places where it appears to have a
certain dynamism like China, the ecological consequences will have the
long-term effect of robbing future generations. One of the things that is
often omitted from the discussions of how revolutionary capitalism was in
the 17th and 18th century is the way it was able to displace environmental
despoliation to the New World.

> In other words, since capitalist societies in Europe were fed by the
> spoils of forced labor, then production based on wage labor and production
> based on forced labor are the same?

No, the point I am making is that capitalism is *a world system*. The rise
of Europe was dialectically related to the fall of Asia, Latin America and
Africa. It was only Japan that exploited its geographical isolation to
avoid the consequences of colonialism. The only way that countries of the
South can enjoy G-8 standards, as Cuba does, is to break completely with
capitalism. Whether you call this socialism or communism or pretzelism is
besides the point. You need production geared to the masses, not for the
capitalist class. Despite Cuba's problems, and despite its stubborn refusal
to conform to an image of communist reality that was evoked in the film
character Morgan's vivid imagination, it is a confirmation of a key element
of Marx's thinking: the dictatorship of the proletariat.



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