----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 12:01
AM
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Why aren't
non-labourers sources of value?
> However, in slave and feudal
societies labour *is* pretty much fixed
> by the prevalent social
relations. In the slave mode the labourer it is
> treated as a talking
animal and in the feudal mode peasants are bound to
> their plot of
land (to put it very crudely). The fluid creativity of
> labour
remains little more than a potential in such societies.
Hi
Andy:
A historical note: the 'fluidity' of the slave (who was
as you say thought
of by slaveowners and slaveocracy as a talking
animal) in the South of the
US was limited by the state: i.e.
slaves could be put to work on different
jobs (skill permitting) by the
slaveowner or sold to another slaveowner,
but the 'mobility' of slaves
was limited by the abolition of slavery is most
parts of the world.
Thus, wage-workers could move freely (with passports
and visas, of course)
Perhaps the point about labor mobility should be qualified.
There was mobility across borders; in fact passports and visas were NOT
required for much of 19th century migration. See review of the fascinating
book by John Torpey below.
But it is also false that there was unregulated movement of labor within
national boundaries even among non-slaves. Karen Orren
Belated Feudalism (1991) has shown how widespread was the application of
master-servant law to putatively free labor relations before 1930. Vagrancy
laws were used to force able bodied people to work; earnings could be withheld
until the completion of the entire contract, often five to ten years; as
employees were required to obtain a testimonial letter if they wished to
switch jobs, judges could prevent the movement of labor if the employer did
not provide such a letter; workers were defacto the property of their
employers since in applying the doctrine of quicpquid acquietur servo
acquietur domino (whatever is acquired by the servant is acquired by the
master) off the job earnings could be appropriated by the
employer.
I think we should watch the tendency to
theorize without attention to the historical record.
between the US and European nations, but
the
slaveowner could not sell his slaves in Europe or put his slaves to
work
in Europe. Indeed, there were very few parts of the world
during that time
when slavery was legally permitted
Brazil counts as very few parts?
-- this was of great
consequence
politically because it helped to isolate the South from the
rest of the
world during the Civil War and after the Emancipation
Proclamation,any
hope that the Confederate States of America had of
help from the UK or
other foreign powers quickly
evaporated.
There has never been a time historically since the
dominance of the
capitalist mode of production when slaves were "fluid"
in the same sense
as wage-workers were. From plantation slavery in
the Americas to
current forms of bonded labor in various parts of the
world, the use of
bonded labor is restricted -- if not necessarily
in individual regions and
nation states, then certainly
internationally. The 'fluidity' of
the
wage-worker, however, is a consequence of the market and
different
forms of property and class relations: it was and remains
systematically
necessary for the expansion of capitalism.
There is a statement here about what was necessary for the expansion of
capitalism.
Are their actual historians who confirm this point?
Again the expansion of capitalism in certain areas, in certain branches,
in certain eras would not have been possible without formally unfree labor or
at least were in fact carried out with formally unfree labor. The South
African compound and Pass system?! The mobility of labor in early modern
English capitalist agriculture was restricted. Brenner and Wood certainly do
not deny this. Their emphasis is on the competition for leases, not the
mobility of labor.
Now a libertarian review of a Foucauldian book.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/0500h.asp
Book Review -- The Invention of the Passport:
Surveillance
by
Richard M. Ebeling, May 2000
The
Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State by John
Torpey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); 210 pages;
$19.95.
One of the most stupendous achievements of 19th-century
classical liberalism was the right of freedom of movement. As one indication,
between 1840 and the early decades of the 20th century almost 60 million
people emigrated from Europe to other parts of the world. Eighteen million
came from Great Britain and Ireland; 10 million from Italy; 9.2 million from
European Russia; 5.2 million from Austria-Hungary; 4.9 million from Germany;
4.7 million from Spain; 1.8 million from Portugal; 1.2 million from Sweden;
850,000 from Norway; 640,000 from Poland; 520,000 from France; and 390,000
from Denmark.
The right to freely leave one's native land
required the right to freely settle in another country of choice. And so
matching the right of emigration was the right of immigration. During that
same period between 1840 and 1914, 34 million Europeans settled in the United
States; 6.4 million went to Argentina; 5.2 million moved to Canada; 4.4
million made Brazil their new home; 2.9 million went to Australia; 1.6 million
took up residence in the British West Indies; 860,000 chose to live in Cuba;
852,000 traveled to South Africa; 713,000 elected to go to Uruguay; and
594,000 journeyed to New Zealand.
Historian R.R. Palmer
emphasized,
Perhaps most basic in the whole European exodus was the
underlying [classical] liberalism of the age. Never before (nor since) had
people been legally so free to move. Old laws requiring skilled workmen to
stay in their own countries were repealed, as in England in 1824. The old
semi-communal agricultural villages, with collective rights and obligations,
holding the individual to his native group, fell into disuse except in
Russia.... Governments permitted their subjects to emigrate, to take with them
their savings of shillings, marks, kroner, or lire, and to change nationality
by becoming naturalized in their new homes. The rise of individual liberty in
Europe, as well as the hope of enjoying it in America, made possible the great
emigration. For so huge a mass movement the most remarkable fact is that it
took place by individual initiative and at individual expense.
In the
early 1950s, German free-market economist Wilhelm Röpke pointed out the
paradox that as the world has developed cheaper and more rapid means of global
transportation, making it easier and less costly to move about from one part
of the world to another, "national borders have been changed into barbed wire
fences." And he explained, "There is no doubt that the closing of the gates of
immigration ... is part of the larger tendency of our time towards growing
nationalization and collectivization of political, cultural, economic and
social life."
John Torpey's recent book, The Invention of the Passport,
is an attempt to explain how and why governments have used the power of
issuing official travel documents as a means of restricting the free movement
of people during the last 200 years. Over the centuries governments have
attempted to control the movements of the people under their
control.
The origin of passports
With the French Revolution,
Torpey explains, the argument was made for the first time that free men should
be at liberty to move freely both within and between countries. But as the
French Revolution developed into civil war between factions within France and
international war between France and surrounding countries, the assemblies
governing the country reimposed passport controls and restrictions on movement
between the countryside and the cities. Fear and paranoia about spies,
provocateurs, armed bandits, army deserters, and "enemies of the people"
became more important than the principle of the freedom to move.
Only
after the wars between France and the rest of Europe did travel and passport
restrictions loosen across the continent, as the classical-liberal spirit of
freedom and enterprise began its ascendancy. In the 1820s and 1830s,
restrictions on migration were reduced in Great Britain, France, and the
German states, including Prussia. By the middle and late decades of the 19th
century, the freedom to move was viewed as complementary to and inseparable
from the freedom of trade. Just before the First World War, a German scholar
could write that
"most modern states have, with but a few
exceptions, abolished their passport laws or at least neutralized them through
non-enforcement. [Foreigners] are no longer viewed by states with suspicion
and mistrust but rather, in recognition of the tremendous value that can be
derived from trade and exchange, welcomed with open arms, and for this reason,
hindrances are removed from their path to the greatest extent
possible."
But, as Torpey points out, already in the 1880s, new
restrictions on migration, residence, and work by foreigners began to be
reimposed in France and Germany. Labor unions in both countries pressured
their governments to "protect" jobs from foreign workers who were willing to
offer their services to employers at more attractive wages. The emergence of
welfare-state programs also strengthened this tendency, as governments claimed
the right to determine who was expected to pay taxes and who could claim
redistributive benefits within their respective jurisdictions.
The role of the United States
But the
great impetus for a new era of barriers on freedom of movement came from the
United States. In 1880, the U.S. government imposed immigration restrictions
on Chinese. In 1882, this was extended to various socially "undesirable"
types.
When these laws were challenged, the Supreme Court declared the
federal government had the authority to control entrance into and residence in
the United States. One reaction was for foreign governments (Italy, for
example, in 1901) to start issuing passports to provide legal documents to
assist emigrants desiring to gain entry into the United States.
The
great watershed in the reestablishment of passport regimes among all the major
countries of Europe and North America, however, was the First World War, under
the declaration of "national emergency." In the political and economic
nationalistic environment that followed the war in 1918, passport controls
became an institutionalized feature of international travel, with governments
reasserting the right to control exit from and entry into national territories
under their control.
As the state has grown in power and authority over
social and economic life in the 20th century, Torpey concludes, governments
have used national documents, including passports, as a legal device to
"embrace" private individuals under their control and to exclude others.
Passports have been a crucial technique for "nationalizing" their citizens.
And until men in their social and economic life are once again denationalized,
passport controls will remain government's way of managing the movement and
activities of people around the world.