re: Wood vs. Brenner

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

Title: re: Wood vs. Brenner

I haven't read the Ellen Wood article that Alavi criticizes below, but it fits with other things that I'd read by her (including in MONTHLY REVIEW when she was an editor there). Some people conflate her views with those of Robert Brenner, but if Alavi is right, her theoretical bent differs significantly from his.

On the one hand, Brenner follows Marx to think of capitalism in terms of "This separation of labour from the conditions of labour is the precondition of capitalist production." (Alavi's quote from Marx.) That is, Brenner sees capitalism in terms of proletarianization (the double freedom, freedom from the bonds of serfdom or slavery and freedom from the ownership of the means of production and subsistence). On the other hand, Wood tends to see capitalism in terms of the "imperative of the market." Ironically, this is similar to so-called "third worldists" such as Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.

Wood and Brenner do share a tendency to downplay "third worldist" considerations. But that doesn't mean that we should reject their research out of hand. Rather, it means that their research should be complemented, filled out, by other authors. (I like Samir Amin, for example.) No single author should ever been seen as the font of all truth, anyway. (One problem with Marxism is that some Marxists -- a very small number these days -- treat Marx and Engels in this way.)

Jim Devine

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Louis Proyect posted:

Colonialism and the Rise of Capitalism

Hamza Alavi

It is quite extra-ordinary to see how, over 45 years ago, leading
Â'WesternÂ' Marxists managed to get through an entire debate on Â'The
Transition From Feudalism to CapitalismÂ' (Hilton, 1976) without once
mentioning the colonial context of the rise of British industrial
capitalism. As we shall try to demonstrate, the imperial nexus played
a crucial role in it. Capitalism was a global phenomenon from the
outset, not only by way of trade but also by way of extraction of
resources from the colonies that underpinned capital accumulation in
the metropolis. So it continues today. That blind spot in Marxist
historiography, which fails to locate the colonial relationship at
the centre of capitalist development in the metropolis is also
responsible for a missing dimension in Marxist political practice.
The fate of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries
is, more than ever, linked inextricably with that of the working
people of the so-called Third World. But Western labour movements
have done little to integrate their struggles with those of the
workers of the Third World.

Colin BarkerÂ's review article in the inaugural issue of Historical
Materialism (1997), despite its brilliance and comprehensiveness, is
not free from that general oversight. Barker writes with clarity and
what he has to say stands very well on its own ground regardless of
the merits or otherwise of Ellen WoodÂ's books that he has reviewed.
One would endorse most of what Barker has to say, subject to this one
caveat about the absence of the colonial dimension in his
comprehensive statement. WoodÂ's own contribution to the inaugural
issue of Historical Materialism is, by contrast, very disappointing.
I will take her article, however, as a useful point of departure for
a discussion of issues that need to be raised. Much of the problem
with WoodÂ's article, it must be said, stems from her methodological
decision to take the concept of Â'the marketÂ' as the organising focus
of her discussion, even when she criticises others for the way in
which they have used it. As against them, she argues that Â'the
capitalist market (does not) represent an opportunity (but rather) an
imperativeÂ'. But nowhere does she explain what she means by the
Â'imperative of the marketÂ'.

The market is, of course, an essential component of the mechanism of
capitalism. But, except in pseudo-Marxist works, such as those of
Immanuel Wallerstein (1974), the market does not define the structure
of capitalism. What is specific and central to the capitalist mode of
production (in agricultural capitalism as well as industrial) is the
separation of the producer from the means of production. As Marx
himself put it, Â'This separation of labour from the conditions of
labour is the precondition of capitalist production.Â' (Marx, 1969:78)

Wood is led away from that key definition in MarxÂ's thinking. Instead
she mistakenly posits the existence of Â'two different narrativesÂ' in
Marx. The first of these she attributes to the German Ideology and
The Communist Manifesto. In that Â'conventional modelÂ', (as she puts
it), history is a succession of stages in the division of labour,
with a transhistorical (sic) process of technological progress and
the leading role assigned to burgher classes who seem to bring about
capitalism just by being liberated from feudal chainsÂ'. This
rendering of MarxÂ's ideas is unrecognisable. (Wood, 1997: 10;
emphasis added). The second Â'narrativeÂ' in Marx, she writes, is to be
found in the Grundrisse and Capital. That, she writes, Â'has more to
do with changing property relationsÂ'. We can take this notion of
Â'changing property relationsÂ' as a euphemism (that obscures rather
than clarifies) for the separation of the producer from the means of
production. Further on Wood writes: Â'What Marx is trying to explain
is the accumulation of wealthÂ' (ibid:13) Wood must know that there is
a fundamental conceptual difference between the idea of accumulation
of Â'wealthÂ' (which could include such Â'wealthÂ' as palaces or jewels
etc. which are unproductive) and that of the Â'accumulation of
capitalÂ' that provides a basis of ever rising circuits of production.
Accumulation of capital refers to the conversion of surplus value
into productive capital, which sets in train a process of
reproduction on a progressively increasing scale. It was the
accumulation of capital that MarxÂ's work was all about. One should
not have to point out such elementary distinctions to someone whose
work has been celebrated so generously in Historical Materialism.