Re: Re: why colonialism?

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yoshie wrote:
> Did usury play a role in primitive accumulation?  Peasants in
> pre-capitalist societies often lived in mortal fear of debt (failure to
> pay back which could reduce them to debt slaves).  Massimo De Angelis
> discusses the role of public debt in primitive accumulation (at
> <http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/M.DeAngelis/PRIMACCA.htm>); what of private debt?

I'm far from being an expert on this subject, but my understanding is that
the "putter-outers" (in the era of so-called "proto-industrialism") were
squeezed by the usurers, landlords, merchant capitalists, and
tax-collectors (a group that was often formed a united from with each other
or were really all the same people, connected by marriage, etc.) This led
to a kind of exploitation akin to what the "freedmen" suffered after the
U.S. Civil War and often led to separation of the putter-outer from the
means of production and subsistence (proletarianization).

Pure money-lending can't do that (exploit & expropriate), but usurers might
be able to stand alone if the borrower is desperate enough, given that a
usurer has an enforcer (i.e., is able to apply direct force, rather than
relying of normal government enforcement of contracts). Crucial are the
other social forces that make the putter-outer's situation so desperate.

I wrote:
> > The drive to colonize is much older than capitalism. After all, the
> > ancient Greeks were a colonizing bunch, setting up city-states all over
> > the Mediterranean (where they could get away with it). Similarly,
> > conquest is much older than capitalism, as when those Greeks conquered
> > Persia and Egypt (after being conquered themselves by the
> > Macedonians).  So people like Lenin were insulting capitalism and
> > undermining its liberal pretensions by likening that stage of capitalism
> > to ancient imperialisms.

Yoshie writes:
> A clarification of what colonization meant in ancient Greece is in
> order.  M. I. Finley writes in _The Ancient Greeks_ (NY: Penguin Books, 1963):
>
> *****   The Greek word we conventionally translate as 'colony' is
> _apoikia_, which connotes 'emigration'.  The point to be stressed is that
> each was, from the onset and by intention, an independent Greek community,
> not a colony as that word is customarily understood.  And since the
> movement was an answer to demographic and agrarian difficulties, the new
> communities were themselves agricultural settlements, not trading
> posts.  Hence, numerous as were the 'colonies' in southern Italy, there
> was none at the best harbour on the east coast, the site of Roman
> Brundisium (modern Brindisi). Hence, too, the aristocracy of the greatest
> of the new community, Syracuse, were called _Gamoroi_, which means 'those
> who shared the land'....   *****

I'd say that this describes settler colonialism (of the sort that produced
the U.S. or Israel). I'd bet the reason why the Greeks didn't take
Brundisium is because the locals were able to resist. But the Greek
colonization was definitely a military operation, not just a "little house
on the prairie" type settlement.

> So, it was neither like imperialism (as analyzed by Lenin) nor like early
> modern colonialism.

I didn't say it was like the process described by Lenin, Luxembourg,
Bukharin, _et al_. Instead, those folks were insulting capitalism by using
the word that had been applied to the ancient Romans, etc. Of course,
pro-imperialists (like Mussolini) liked the comparison...

<elipsis>

> I agree with you on the emergence of chattel slavery, but I think theory
> needs to clarify how the aggregate effects of horizontal struggles among
> elite factions (sovereigns, lords, merchants, etc.) and vertical class
> struggles expressed themselves as expanding settler-colonialist production
> of sugar & tobacco,

clarification is always a good thing (and thanks for the quote from Mintz).
I've never thought that I have presented the last word on any subject.

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