[PEN-L:11385] Re: Re: Person work hours at the dawn ofcapitalism

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 09/20/99 05:24PM >>>
Charles writes:> Seems clear that Marx's attitude (see below and other
discussions of modern slavery by Marx) on this issue was that modern
slavery did produce surplus value that was convertible in the capitalist
system into capitalist profit.  The slave owners in the U.S. South were
capitalists. <

As I tried to make it clear in my missive, it depends on your _definition_.
If you use the definition of "capitalist" that says a capitalist is a
greedy bastard who tries to exploit labor as much as possible, then human
society has had capitalists for millennia;

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Charles: No I define capitalists as arising only after the capitalist mode of production comes to prevail, not when trade was occurring between socieities and in its periperhies; and after labor power itself becomes a commodity, i.e. when wage labor is the predominate form of labor.

 What I mean is that the slave owners extracted surplus-value using a slave mode in a system that was predominantly capitalist or wage-labor. Theyused the use-values produced by slaves (non-wage laborers) to get money in a the prevailing capitalist market system

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Jim:
the Sumerian priests who used
their religious mumbo-jumbo and knowledge of calendars to exploit the
slaves back then were capitalists by that definition. If you use the
definition that says that a capitalist also profits by selling commodities
(goods and services produced for sale), then the Sumerian priests were not
capitalists. The modern slave-owners, however, were capitalists by this
definition.

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Charles: I wouldn't define the Sumerians as capitalists. The modern slave owners were a sort of hybrid, but the point is that they were able to amass great wealth within the captalist system.

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Jim:

I was following Marx, who doesn't really define the word "capitalist" at
all. (I think it was Paul Sweezy who pointed out that it took Marx three
volumes to define the word "capital.") But I think it's reasonable to
define them in terms of their role as part of the capitalist mode of
production. Marx defined things in terms of their role in greater
totalities (cf. Ollman's ALIENATION), just as "third base" is defined by
its role in the entire baseball field or the dating ritual. As I said
before, it makes sense to me to apply Marx's concepts, though of course
"it's a free internet," so you can apply any definition you want (as long
as you make it clear what definition you're using).

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Charles: Yes this is it. The greater totality in this case is that the capitalist mode of production prevails at the time of modern slavery, so the slaveowners are a form of capitalist, even though it is worth noting their differences from the techincally pure capitalists. The impurity of the slave system is part of the reason it could not last in capitalism.

In general, capitalists are trying to push wages down toward slavery even with wage-laborers. This is in conflict with the logic of the system actually

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Jim:
So what is the totality used in defining what a "capitalist" is? Under
Marx's definition, as I understand it and as modified following the
Althusserian tradition, the modern slaveowners of the US south were part of
a large "capitalist social formation" which involved not only a pure
capitalist mode of production (England, the Northeast US, etc.) but also
non-capitalist modes of production (forced labor, as in the US south). The
slaveowners were capitalists in the sense that they sold and bought in the
capitalist marketplace; stretching Marx's definition a lot, we might think
of them as kind of merchant capitalists. But they were not _complete_
capitalists, industrial capitalists. The latter not only bought and sold
commodities but also hired "free" wage labor, proletarians. As Marx makes
pretty clear, it's with industrial capitalism that capitalism becomes
completely capitalist, with all of the circuits of capital usually working
and the system accumulating like crazy.

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Charles: I'm pretty sure we completely agree, unless you some way in which I am not right there with you.

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Yes, the slave-owners definitely got their slaves to produce surplus labor
that was convertible in the capitalist system into capitalist profit
(surplus-value). I don't think anyone doubts that. Maybe it's okay to say
(in terms of the rigorous use of Marx's concepts) that the slaves produced
"surplus-value," though many would disagree.

But to merge the slave system with the industrial capitalist system is to
miss one of Marx's _big themes_ in CAPITAL, one made in section 2 of ch. 10
of vol. I (where I got my quote) and elsewhere in the book: unlike slavery,
serfdom, etc., the exploitation of labor under capitalism is not
transparent, visible to the common-sense observer. The common-sense
observer can see that slave are _forced_ to work. But under capitalism, the
role of force is _hidden_ from that observer by the fetishism of
commodities (called the illusions created by competition at the end of vol.
III). The common-sense observers sees the realm of "Freedom, Equality,
Property, and Bentham" and then goes off and does neoclassical economics.
What they miss is that by and large, the coercion needed to get workers to
produce a surplus-product under capitalism is _structural_ rather than
involving goons whipping the direct producers. Instead of direct coercion,
the coercion is centralized in the state, which preserves property rights
and destroys any threats to the system, and in the reserve army of labor,
which threatens employed workers. Though contrary to what John Roemer and
his followers say, production workers are necessarily _dominated_ (or
subsumed or subjected) under capitalism, the supervisors are not allowed to
beat their workers. (There are always exceptions, but physical punishment
is _not_ the rule.) The supervisors' power is based on the system of
structural coercion in which they operate.

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Charles: Yes, I agree with this point too. The capitalist system is more tricky than previous modes of exploitation. "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work" is the slogan of the demogogy you are describing above I believe.

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Jim D>
One problem with the merger of merchant or money-dealing capital with
industrial capital into a big homogeneous mass is that it abstracts from
the way in which capitalism has changed between say the 1600s (when
merchant capital dominated) and the 1800s (when industrial capital took
over in the core countries). Another is that it's pretty clear that Marx
himself didn't see a "Etruscan theocrat, an Athenian [aristocrat], an civis
romanus [ancient Roman citizen], a Norman baron, an American slave-owner,
[or] a Wallachian boyar" as being the same thing as "a modern landlord or a
capitalist." [from the Vintage/Penguin edition] Third, avoiding the Marxian
divisions between money capitalist, merchant capitalist, and industrial
capitalist ignores a large and well-established literature in Marxian
historiography.

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Charles: Yes.t

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> However, The fall of modern slavery was due in part to the contradictions
that Jim D. discusses.  Seems to me these contradictions are mainly an
aggravated form of the problem of crises of
overproduction/underconsumption. Since slaves have no wages, they cannot
buy any commodities, which is a problem for capitalism which  relies on the
mass consumption of wage laborers to realize surplus value/profit. <

Eugene Genovese used to argue this. I don't think that's it's really a
matter of "since the slaves had no wages, they could not buy any
commodities." After all, the slaves did get corn and other products for
their subsistence (which some neoclassical theorist might see as "in
exchange for their efforts"). In fact, if there were an overproduction of
corn and other such consumption products, the slaveowners could say "here's
some extra, I'm being a nice guy" (in an effort to motivate their slaves,
complementing the whip) without having to worry about the low price of the
corn that usually accompanies overproduction. That is, except for cotton
and similar export crops, overproduction was less of a problem than it was
for Northern family farmers. The problem, to my mind, was not the fact that
slaves didn't get paid and thus couldn't buy. Rather, the problem was that
the institution of slavey pushed the standard of living of the slaves (the
corn ration, etc.) down as is humanly possible, limiting the market for
corn. Complementing this was the fact that the entire slave system (or
rather the slave-plantation-cotton complex) was aimed at serving the global
market, not its own domestic market, a classic case of economic dependency.
When global demand for cotton and the like slowed and the supply increased,
the slave system and later its postbellum successor in the South suffered
drastically. The slave system was less able to switch over to
domestically-oriented production than was the Northern farm system. The
Northern farm system was also more able to switch crops to serve the global
market than was the slave system.

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Charles: Yes, I didn't mean to say that the "overproduction" aspect was the whole explanation; it was just a creative idea I had, although I see Genoves already thought of it.

Also, in one of Marx's articles on the U.S. Civil War he discusses the slave system at length and how slavery demanded constantly expanding territory. Thus, the South knew that to agree to not allowing new slave states basically spelled the end of slavery. So, Lincoln and the Republicans' idea of not abolishing
slavery but not allowing anymore expansion was the same as abolishing slavery bottomline. You may have the Marx article ,but if not, I'll look it up (I'm splitting for a couple of days; so I'll get back to you)

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Jim:
Actually, "the mass consumption [spending by] wage laborers" can't realize
surplus value, since even under capitalism workers can't buy back all of
their product. The realization of surplus-value in any specific country
requires domestic capitalist accumulation, government deficits, or (very
relevant to 1999), trade deficits.

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Charles: I absolutely agree with this. By critical definition, the wage workers cannot buy back all or even any of the surplus value, because by definition , they are not paid the surplus value. I may have used my terminology hastily above. This block on the realization of the surplus is the ultimate reason for crises. I should have said that the slaves not being paid wages ( presumably even a smalller fraction of all they produce than wage laborers, although as you say, the slave's got some "payment" in food etc. althought don't forget the master may have forced them to grow their food so as not to even have to pay for that) meant they could buy even less than the wage laborers who still couldn't buy the whole product.


Agreeably,

CB