Re: Reply to Brenner/Wood, part 2

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Lou says:

>  >The point of the debate is to understand (1) what caused capitalism
> > (a mode of production unlike any previous one, with its own distinct
> > laws of motion);
>
> No, that is your point and I do not accept it. It is framed in such a way
> as to vindicate the Brenner/Wood thesis. I know and you know that as soon
> as you mention 'modes of production', a whole set of consequences flows
> from that.

Once you lose the concept of capitalism as a historically specific
mode of production, you are on a slippery slope toward ReOrient,
whether or not you actually slip all the way to the "5,000 years of
the world system."  You gain nothing going down that road.

> But it does not address the reality of Latin American
> capitalism, which took an entirely different course.

Capitalism is a mode of production that has created the first truly
global economy; in other words, the rise of an ensemble of capitalist
social relations, with its drive toward production of relative
surplus value, eventually subjected all social formations, including
colonies in the New World, to its hegemony, transforming them in the
process.

*****   For a given working-day, surplus-labour can be increased only
by reducing the necessary labour; this can, in turn, be obtained -
apart from lowering wages below value - only by reducing the value of
labour, that is, by reducing the price of the necessary means of
subsistence. (Pp.291-93 [312-15]) This, in turn, is to be attained
only by increasing the productive power of labour, by revolutionizing
the mode of production itself.

The surplus-value produced by lenthening the working-day is absolute;
that produced by shortening the necessary labour-time, is relative
surplus-value. (P.295 [315])

In order to lower the value of labour, the increase in productive
power must seize upon those branches of industry whose products
determine the value of labour-power - ordinary means of subsistence,
substitutes for the same, and their raw materials, etc. Proof of how
competition makes the increased productive power manifest in a lower
commodity price. (Pp.296-99 [316-19])...

<http://csf.colorado.edu/mirrors/marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/ch04.htm#1>
*****

The above is absent in the below ("higher yields per area at the
expense of higher inputs of labor but offering employment to the
growing population"):

At 1:33 PM -0300 5/17/01, Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
> From: "Ricardo Duchesne" <rduchesn@xxxxxxxx>
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 13:33:31 -0300
> Subject: [PEN-L:11696] Fernand Braudel's Daily Bread
>
> >  One major difference between wheat and rice is that the later tends to
> >  grow in a system of polyculture.  Along with the rice, fish or ducks
> >  and sometimes even pigs are grown.  Comparing grain yields can be
> >  misleading.
>
> That is a major difference as I take that term to mean
> multicropping. Yields can be compared and the results are that
> China had far higher yields per area than Europe at the expense of
> higher inputs of labor but offering employment to its growing
> population and generating comparable living standards right until
> 1800.

What we want to know is _how_ the drive toward production of relative
surplus value originated.

Yoshie