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Jim,
I
only gave you a definition because you demanded one.
In fact I prefer what has been your attitude, to cite
Marx's
writing a three volume book called _Capital_ and note
that
he never provided a definition. So, I'm not going to
respond
to criticisms of my "definition" from you or Doug or
anybody else.
I never wanted to give a
bloody definition in the first place and am
totally uninterested that game (hence my "Nah"
response to Doug).
This is not a definition of
"capitalism," but I note the following:
"What really is capital and what
does it mean for value, growth,
and distribution? Is it a pile of produced means of
production? Is it
dated labor? Is it waiting? Is it
roundaboutness? Is an accumulated
pile of finance? Is a social relation? Is it an
independent source of
value? The answers to these questions are probably
matters of belief."
---J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. _From Catastrophe to Chaos: A
General Theory
of Economic Discontinuities_, 1991, Boston/Dordrecht, Kluwer
Academic
Publishers, p. 125.
Barkley Rosser
Mat, these quotes fit with the
"middle of the road" position I've been advocating between those
strawpeople who blame capitalism simply on the agricultural revolution and
those strawpeople who blame it simply on luck (i.e., Europe being lucky to
conquer the rest of the world before the rest of the world got to them). The
primitive accumulation process -- the enclosure revolution and then later
stages of rural and urban socioeconomic revolution -- was home-grown
in England (and elswhere) but was nourished by the loot from the
"new" world, etc.
The last quote suggests that market
relations alone -- merchant capital or commodity exchange --
"contributed materially toward destroying the feudal fetters on
production." I disagree with Marx on this one. Maybe because it's a
manuscript that was published only posthumously, he wasn't clear enough. But
I think that it's more likely that "the competitive zeal of the
European nations to posess themselves of the products of Asia and the
treasures of America" was more than simply merchant capital (buying and
selling). The fact is that before 1800 or so, there was no hard-and-fast
break between "politics" and "ecomics" while the
basically artificial split between these has faded with the end of the
classical liberalism. The "competitive zeal" wasn't simply a
matter of _trading_. It also involved military conquest, which sometimes
creates off-shoots of the metropolitan capitalism (as in white settler
colonies like the US) and sometimes does not (as in Peru, until the 1800s or
so).
BTW, the following needs to be clarified: >Once people are
proletarianized, then there's a basis for accumulation. This implies that
competition encourages accumulation. < I was not saying that
proletarianization is the _only_ basis for capitalist accumulation, since I
mentioned "directly-forced labor." In any event, the comparison
was vis-a-vis simple commodity production. Other modes of production besides
capitalism have involved accumulation (as with the accumulation of pyramids
in ancient Egypt), but full-bore (industrial) capitalism is the one that
accumulates exchange-value, regularly lays off labor in a way that fuels
more accumulation, and inherently involves a drive toward technical
"progress." Simple commodity production does not involve
exploitation and thus cannot have this kind of accumulation.
At
12:22 PM 09/27/1999 -0500, you wrote:
"[T]he veiled slavery of the
wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple
in the new world...[C]apital comes (into the world) dripping from head
to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." (Marx, _Capital_,
Volume 1).
"But the accumulation of capital pre-supposes
surplus-value; surplus value pre-supposes capitalistic production;
capitalistic production pre-supposes the pre-existence of considerable
masses of capital and of labour-power in the hands of producers of
commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a
vicious circle; we can break out only by supposing a primitive
accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capitalist
accumulation; an accumulation not the result of the capitalist mode of
production, but its starting point. (Marx, _Capital_, Volume 1, ch.
XXVI).
"The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised
looting, enslavement and murder, floated back to the mother-country and
were turned into capital." (Marx, _Capital_, Volume
1).
"However, not commerce alone, but also merchant's
capital, is older than the capitalist mode of production....[M]erchant's
capital appears as the historical form of capital long before capital
established its own domination over production. Its existence and
development to a certain level are in themselves historical premises for
the development of capitalist production...The independent and
predominant development of capital as merchant's capital is tantamount
to the non-subjection of production to capital, and hence to capital
developing on the basis of an alien social mode of production...It is in
the circulation process that money develops into capital. It is in
circulation that products first develop as exchange-values, as
commodities and as money. Capital can, and must, form in the
process of circulation, before it learns to control its extremes--the
various spheres of production between which circulation mediates.
So long as merchant's capital promotes the exchange of products between
undeveloped societies, commercial profit not only appears as
outbargaining and cheating, but also largely originates from
them...[T]he great revolutions which took place in commerce with the
geographical discoveries and speeded the development of merchant's
capital constitute one of the principal elements in furthering the
transition from feudal to capitalist mode of production. The
sudden expansion of the world-market, the multiplication of circulating
commodities, the competitive zeal of the European nations to posess
themselves of the products of Asia and the treasures of America, and the
colonial system--all contributed materially toward destroying the feudal
fetters on production. (Marx, _Capital_, vol. 3, ch.
XX)
mf
-----Original
Message-----
From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date:
Sunday, September 26, 1999 7:16 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:11718]
Re: Re: Re: more on col'ism
Barkley wrote:
>>>Capitalism = private ownership of the means of
production as the predominant pattern in a
society.<<<
Doug wrote:>> What about
the reinvestment-of-surplus part and the imperative to
grow?<<
Bill writes: >Don't these two follow
from the definition? Doesn't a battle of each against all
force this?<
Barkley's definition does not distinguish
between simple commodity production and capitalism.
The
latter is not only private ownership of the means of production, but
also the proletarianization of labor (the "double freedom"
that Marx wrote about). Without the proletarianization of labor (or
directly-forced labor, which does not have to be part of
capitalism), surplus-value cannot be produced.
A pure system
of simple commodity production is nothing but the competition among
peers (sort of like Walrasian GE). There's no class that's dependent
on the employers for their survival, so there's no production of
surplus-value. They peers compete, but each one that gets a
surplus-value (M' > M) gets it at the expense of other competers
(who suffer from M' < M). If one or a number of them can continue
winning for awhile, in theory they could proletarianize the others,
creating a capitalist system. But it didn't work that way in
practice, in actual history. The folks who were proletarianized were
forced into their status.
Once people are proletarianized,
then there's a basis for accumulation. This implies that competition
encourages accumulation.
Just because Marx said such things
doesn't mean that they're true. But in my humble opinion, this is
the best theory of capitalism around, in terms of helping us
understand the world, understanding what's wrong with it, and even
providing us some guidance for action. For example, Barkley's
definition can easily be seen as applying to ancient
Rome.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
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