>now, I'll agree with you that the 'more steel' versions of marxism are >particularly horrid. but that does not mean that I'll agree with >you that peasant forms of life are closer to what I would aspire to. >my parents were peasants, and I think you idealise and exoticize way >too much. they would tell you the same thing, not to mention regarding >your nostalgia with deep suspicion. in order for both you and lm to >make the kinds of sweeping claims you do, you have to idealise >'pre-'capitalism and capitalism respectively. > >angela I can't wait until Michael Perelman's new book on "primitive accumulation" comes out. When I was reading a first draft, I kept telling him that I wish Doug could read it. All that nonsense about peasants wanting to flee "rural idiocy" gets put in the garbage can where it belongs. The actual historical record is that peasants in what Michael calls "self-provisioning" economies resisted proletarianization with all the force they can muster. It was normal for peasants in the 17th century to have the skills and raw materials to fashion their own shoes, for example. When they lost their land and were forced into the factory system, it would take days of labor to earn the wages they needed to buy a pair of factory-made shoes. The capitalist system only began to be accepted, when the technology advanced to the extent that it took less time at work to gain the wage necessary to buy shoes than it took to make them at home. In Africa, Latin America and Asia "primitive accumulation" never had the same sort of benefits because the capital was exported back to England or the United States. That is the reason for all the imperialist interventions of the 20th century. Peasants were neither given the means for self-provisioning, nor the wages to stay alive. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
