RE: Re: RE: Re: theorizing capitalism

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
> >One thing the Althusserians missed was the way in which
> capitalism dominates
> >other modes of production and reproduction as part of its
> accumulation
> >process.

Alan asks:
> Is this really true? I remember reading a lot of French and Latin American
structuralists  (when I was doing graduate work in sociology back inthe late
80s) on the articulation of modes of production, and the subsumption  of
pre-capitalist modes of production to the capitalist m of p....<

my impression is that the Althusserians treated history as a series of
structures (as part of diachronic analysis). They were not dynamic thinkers
(though I learned a bunch from them). Part of this was that they treated
people's conciousness as merely an effect of structures rather than as not
only effects but causes. (They forgot that people make history, emphasizing
the way in which history makes people and of course the bit about "not
exactly as they please.")
Jim D.