Re: Spain: colonizer and colonized

["dms" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julio Huato" <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxxxx>


> Louis Proyect says:
>
> >So what would you call the DeBeers diamond cartel? A fiefdom? In any
case,
> >the issue is not slavery. It is forced labor. This can take a variety of
> >forms, up to and including chattel slavery.

JH says:
 I may not be qualified to characterize DeBeers, but I can say that, if they
> use some type of forced labor systematically in the production of
diamonds,
> if workers are not free and voluntary wage workers, then that doesn't
> qualify as capitalist production.  I don't care how rich the owners of
> DeBeers are or what their lifestyle is.
    -----------------------

dms says:  Here is where I have to disagree with comrade JH.  DeBeers,
Anglo-American, the Oppenheimer conglomerates utilized coerced labor,
coercion established by a SOCIAL necessity, there is no strictly economic
coercion, in the production of "free commodities."  It is the nature of that
specific form of production in the OVERALL general mode of capitalist
production that makes discussions of DeBeers in ISOLATION unproductive.
Likewise, it is a functioning within the world market, of the indentured
labor in the Caribbean after abolition of slavery, the functioning of the
debt peonage in Mexico within the world market which makes these specific
manifestations, "deviations," part and parcel of advanced and advancing
capitalism.

One could just as well claim that the production of sugar, cordage, tobacco
in the Philippines on the large estates by indentured, debt coerced farmers
is not capitalist in that the organization of agricultural property, and
agricultural labor is not a processs of "free" exchange, the detachment of
land from value, and labor from land.

Nothing could be more fruitless.  The absorption of these systems into the
network of capitalist change, giving value to its products, gives a parallel
equivalent in the social relations of classes.  Capital marks its progress
towards its "essence," its universal nature in its continuous backsliding,
accommodation, allegiance to "archaic" forms.

------------------------

Regarding comrade LP's remarks that capitalism is not productive at all, and
his citing of the "zero sum," if the cost to humanity is taken into
account....

Here is where I have to disagree with comrade LP.  Capitalism, on its terms,
by its measures, for its class, for its augmentation of the productivity of
labor,  does have a legitimate claim to productivity.   Throughout the post
WWII era, the advanced capitalisms were able to continuously reduce the
proportion of its populations required for agricultural production.  This is
the single most critical measure of productivity.  For the US the percentage
so engaged is app. 3% , while for the USSR I don't think it ever dipped
below 30%.  Ah, but isn't that an abstraction?  What about on an
international scale?  Well, the record of the Comecon countries, China,
Cuba, etc. is not much better than the 30% figure, and in the case of China
much worse.

Certainly we can and should say that this "underdevelopment" is the
reflection of the global grip of advanced capitalism.  Still, that proves
the point-- the global grip of capitalism maintains underdevelopment
alongside productivity.   The results of capitalism's overall productivity
of labor?  No argument with comrade LP there.  We all know what it is--
Afghanistan.