Re: Capitalism, slavery and the Brenner thesis; part 2

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

DMS wrote:
> Let me beg the indulgence of list and ask what I consider to be the
> pertinent question:
>
> Did merchant capital, the market, under the impact of the slave trade,
> create the social relations of modern capitalism.  If yes, show me. Show me
> the details of the transition to stripped, detached wage labor, the
> capitalization of agriculture, and dispossessing of the agricultural
> population resulting from the expansion of such trade, and moreover, the
> transformation of implements of manufacture, their accumulation and
> consolidation under a single owner, that then can command that labor and is
> animated in return by it.
>
>  Eric Williams never does it.

I take the above about "Did merchant capital, etc." to be a rhetorical
question. I have no intention of showing DMS anything, since my plate is
filled an immense amount of material about reconstruction that I need to
address. Furthermore, if Eric Williams did not succeed, I certainly couldn't.

> Now we could say, they put the money in the bank and the bank lends to the
> entrepreneur, and OK, but where does the labor, check that, the labor-power
> come from?  His family?  OK, but that's not capitalism. So how does it
> expand?  How does he finally hire others?

More questions. Generally when questions come to me like why Reconstruction
failed so rapidly when there was a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" that
left the Northern ruling class in full control of the country, I try to
answer them myself. I told Les the other night at Starbucks that I write
lengthy analytical articles about subjects that matter to me because I
don't see anybody else around who will provide the answers I am looking for.


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