Re: Re: Roemer vs. Marx in Vietnam?

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>

> >
> >[was: RE: [PEN-L:23532] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wade vs Wolf]
> >
> >Doug Henwood wrote:>>A friend of mine who spent a few years
as a reporter
> >in
> >Vietnam interviewed Nike workers who told her that they
prefer their
> >sweatshop jobs to what they would have been  doing
otherwise - things like
> >chasing rats in rice paddies (not much fun to be a woman on
the farm).<<
> >
> >Ian writes:
> > > This of course raises, again, the issue of Marx' vs.
Roemer's
> > > views on exploitation.....
> >
>
> Roemer is on record as saying that many agricultural laborers
found factory
> labor liberating. I criticized him for being unhistorical; he
ignores the
> savage breaking of the new working class to time and labor
disciplibe by
> poor laws and the like. That said, it may be true in some
cases today.

==================

I know nothing of the land tenancy laws in Vietnam today [shame
on me], but I got to go through all those books written by US
anthropologists that signed on with McNamara and Westmoreland
when doing a paper on Ho Chi Minh; suffice it to say that if the
extensive kinship networks of Vietnamese farming communities
that were ubiquitous then are still operative--with the usual
caveats-- it would give some weight to the notion that the scope
for choice of those heading to the Nike factories or staying
behind is significantly greater than and different from the move
from manorialism to Manchester. Yeah farming in the Tropics
ain't paradise but the farmers *know* the ecology in ways that
would put Nebraskans to shame......

Ian