Re: the mita

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Jim Devine:
> >Volume III doesn't ignore the role of labor. One of Marx's clearest
> >statements of historical materialism appears here: the "specific... form in
> >which unpaid surplus-labor is pumped out of the direct producers" reveals
> >"the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure
> >and... the corresponding specific form of the state" (p. 791-2 of the
> >International Publishers' 1967 edition).

Louis Proyect:
> This is rather schematic, isn't it? I was getting at the rather rich
> discussion of labor in V.1, with its historical detail. For me historical
> materialism is much more concrete, like discussion of the enclosure acts, etc.

Yeah, it's schematic, but it's not a historical description but a statement
of a philosophy of history -- on the level of his famous "Preface" to the
CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. In fact, think that this
statement (which goes on for much longer) is a much better theory of
history than his "Preface" one, which leans toward "forces of production"
determinism. It also fits better with Engels' and his vision in the
MANIFESTO of history being a series of class struggles.

> >But you should remember that I have never restricted myself to the "volume
> >3" theory. Instead, I apply recent theories and discussions of "merchant
> >capital," which see it as merely "articulating" different modes of
> >exploiting labor -- until it gets submerged in the circuit of industrial
> >capital.
>
> Sorry. Have no idea what you are driving at.

For example, see the literature summarized by Dupuy and Fitzgerald. [Dupuy,
Alex, and Paul V. Fitzgerald. 1977. A Contribution to the Critique of the
World System Perspective.  The Insurgent Sociologist. 7(2) Spring.]
"Articulating" means connecting different modes of exploitation and
possibly organizing them. Merchant capital does so through market relations.

BTW, Dupuy and Fitzgerald suggest that the impact of merchant's capital in
the expanding capitalist world system is as follows: "merchant's capital
has a conservative influence on the social structures it dominates... Its
actions will help dissolve the existing social relations only where these
relations are themselves being transformed by and through class struggle"
[page 117].

> >Merchant capital doesn't simply work between empires of similar
> >socio-economic levels, but within such systems as the "triangle
> >trade,"  which included what Mat F. calls the Enslavement industry.
>
> So throughout Latin America and the Caribbeans into the late 19th century,
> you had "merchant capital"? Methinks not.

why not? No-one said that it was _only_ merchant capital.

> >There's a lot of disagreement about the nature and impact of this
> >"articulation," but most people who study this stuff follow Marx to agree
> >that merchant capital is not the same as full-blown or industrial
> >capitalism (which involves mass proletarianization).
>
> So merchant capital must exist throughtout most of Africa today, where
> there is no full-blown or industrial capitalism, nor mass
> proletarianization. When a category becomes so all-encompassing, it loses
> all meaning.

not really. It's just as "all-encompassing" as the concept of the "market."
But as Marx would emphasize, there's much more to economic life than markets.

with regard to the case of contemporary Africa: in the world system,
merchant capital has become subordinated to industrial capital (part of a
unified system), so one might say that Africa is dominated by industrial
capital even if it isn't part of it.

> >If merchant capitalism (market activity) were the same as industrial
> >capitalism, we have had industrial capitalism since several centuries
>
> You are missing something entirely. Latin America had no industry to speak
> of. The economy revolved around extraction of minerals and stoop labor for
> coffee, bananas, etc. under conditions of widespread coercion. If this is
> "mercantile capitalism," then the term is useless.

For Marx, "industrial capital" didn't have to be urban. For example, the
first footnote of chapter 31 of volume I of CAPITAL says that he's using
the term "industrial" capitalist "in contradistinction to agricultural."
But he clarifies that in his terms (the "categoric sense" of the terms),
"the farmer is an industrial capitalist as much as the manufacturer."
"Industrial capital" refers to relations of production, not to what is
produced.

The "stoop labor ... under conditions of widespread coercion" is exactly
the kind of forced-labor mode of exploitation that isn't true
proletarianization, isn't part of full-blown industrial capitalism in
Marx's terms. My statement started with "if merchant capitalism ... were
the same as industrial capitalism" because I _reject_ that premise.

> >B.C.E. In that case, nothing special happened to Western Europe around 1500
> >in terms of changing systems of labor exploitation. So one might say that
> >the Western European conquest of most of the rest of the world was simply
> >an extension or a continuation or a development of the previous
> >market-centered kinds of conquest (like the Ancient Roman sort).
>
> One might say? If so, they are wrong because this is ahistorical.

I used that phrase simply because I rejected the premise. In fact, it seems
to me that A.G. Frank leans toward the capitalism = market (industrial
capitalism = merchant capitalism) perspective, so this ahistorical vision
seems to have its adherents.

> >It's a matter of taste whether the pre- or non-capitalist modes of
> >production in LA should be called "feudal" -- it's no big deal unless one
> >likes endless debates about the meaning of words. (I'd prefer
> >"non-capitalist modes of labor exploitation" or "forced-labor modes of
> >production" or something like that, since European and Japanese feudalism
> >were so different from other social systems based on forced labor.
>
> Non-capitalist modes of labor exploitation? Somebody get in touch with Tom
> Bottomore.

I prefer short & conventional terms too. But the usual "modes of
production" term leaves out the concept of labor exploitation.

> >Whatever the terminology, I doubt that it's true that none of these
> >inhabitants were "laborers" before the Conquest. Labor seems  pretty
> >universal in human history so far. Further, many of them produced
> >surplus-products for the tributary empires such as the Incas and Aztecs.
>
> Actually, the Inca and Aztec kingdoms revolved around the production of
> use-values. I am a moldy old fig when it comes to essential categories like
> these. After the conquest of Latin America, labor in Latin America was used
> to create commodities for exchange on the world market.

Right, but one can be exploited in the production of use-values. Marx makes
the point that this kind of exploitation has natural limits, whereas
exploitation for exchange-value does not [see chapter 10, section 2, of
volume I], but that doesn't mean that exploitation in the production of
use-values doesn't happen. After all, in the "natural economy" phase of
feudalism, most of the exploitation was done to produce use-values.

> >Of course, by 1600, full-blown capitalism had already arisen in English
> >countryside, at least according to the people you lambaste.
>
> So did it in Spain.

I already responded to your message on Spain.

> And cut out the nonsense about who I lambaste if you
> want to have a conversation. I am not lambasting people but dogmatic
> neo-Kautskyist ideas on capitalist development.

Okay.

> >Also, I'd bet that if you study the relations of production in Latin
> >America in 1600, you'd find that the rural proletarians were a relatively
> >small percentage of the total.
>
> I only bet with people who can put something on the table that is worth
> risking or taking.

it's a phrase, one that indicates that I don't have the time to look this
issue up, but that since you seem to have a lot of Latin American  history
on tap, you could do so.

> >In addition, like the freed slaves in the U.S. after 1865, I think you'd
> >find all sorts of direct use of force against the Indians. The government
> >was in league with the land-owners, who were in league with the merchants
> >and the money-lenders (and in fact many of these were the same people or of
> >the same family), as part of a 4-sided bloc that imposed such fates as debt
> >peonage on the native inhabitants. Like the freed slaves, they were
> >prevented from becoming true proletarians, since extra-economic force
> >(including linked monopoly/monopsony positions) was being applied.
>
> I have no idea what you are driving at. North American Indians were put on
> reservations where they were given miserable handouts. South American
> Indians were all wage laborers by 1700, or debt peons which meant they were
> paid in advance and had to work off their debt.

What I was saying is that debt peonage (which typically is much more than
debt peonage, because the creditors are in league with the landlords,
merchants, and the state) is not the same as proletarianization as Marx
defined it (involving the double freedom, i.e., freedom from direct
coercion and from direct access to the means of production and subsistence).

> >Again, "laborers" is not the same as proletarians. Further, the ease with
> >which the Indians went from wage labor to forced-labor jobs (like working
> >in silver mines) suggests that they were doing "wage labor" in a situation
> >in which direct force -- and monopoly/monopsony power -- was applied
> >regularly to them. This in turn suggests that they weren't true
> proletarians.
>
> Good point. Neither did they speak English or eat roast beef.

I don't get the point of the second sentence. It sounds like you're
suggesting that being a proletarian in more honorable than being, say, a
debt peon. But I don't think so.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine