Although Lou and I agree on most issues, I do not agree that there is not an important
role for acknowledging qualitative changes in modes of production. There may be a lot
of vulgarization of this that might be termed "stagism", but to get rid of
quantitative leaps or quantum leaps or qualitative changes in modes of PRODUCTION is
to fall out of a dialectical approach. As to what the qualitative changes are is based
on empirical observation, but this factual work is one of the main tasks that Marx and
Engels carried out with respect to Europe. With respect to other geographical areas,
European capitalism has come to dominate the other exploitative modes, and transform
them into capitalist relations of production. Thus, whether those other areas would
have become capitalist on their own is a moot point or somewhat dead issue. This is
one sense in which capitalism has knocked down "all Chinese Walls".
The notion of qualitatively different modes does not foreclose use of the concept of
mixed modes, as Marx himself used in analyzing capitalist slavery. In fact , for Marx,
the revival of the slave mode by the Europeans was a necessary condition for the
primitive accumulation of the capitalist mode, as has just been the subject of
argument on this list. This demonstrates that Marx's mode of production analysis was
not a rigid stagist analysis.
Marx places a lot of emphasis on production as the source of new value as opposed to
circulation or exchange. This is logically identical with his labor theory of value.
Also, private property in the basic means of production is common to all exploitative
modes. But the term in Marxism is an alternative, synonymous way of referring to the
relations of production.
The main purpose of capitalism in knocking down "all Chinese Walls" , in Marx's
conception, is to get at the labor power within the colonies and place it in
capitalist relations of production, although the wage-laborer does have an important
role as mass consumer as well.
Charles Brown
>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/27/99 11:33AM >>>
Louis wrote:
>I'm going to have much more to say about this after I've had a chance to
>finish reading the NLR article and "The Brenner Debate" but tentatively the
>problem seems to be that Brenner has a rather narrow definition of
>capitalism, which is what existed in the ideal case in England from the
>late 18th century onwards. I don't think this is a very dialectical
>approach, about which I'll have PLENTY more to say when my research is
>complete.
You also might want to look at the SCIENCE & SOCIETY collection on the
earlier Dobb vs. Sweezy debate on the rise of capitalism. I think the
editor was Rodney Hilton but I don't have the exact reference here. Brenner
is clearly in the tradition of that debate.
This definition business is crucial understanding the debates. Brenner's
definition of capitalism (in terms of the existence of "free" wage labor)
is narrower than the "capitalism = private ownership of the means of
production" (Barkley) definition or the common "capitalism = the market"
definition (not to mention "capitalism = greed" or "capitalism = the use of
machinery"). Brenner is talking about the full blooming of industrial
capitalism rather than what Marx considered to be incomplete forms of
capitalism (merchant capital, simply involved in buying low and selling
high, and money-dealing capital, a.k.a., usury.)
Differing definitions not only cause miscommunication but lead to different
time-schemes and interpretations of history. The market-oriented definition
tells us that capitalism began as a world system and/or arose from medieval
fairs (and the like) in W. Europe, whereas the Brenner/Marx definition must
focus on the revolutionizing of social relations in production, pushing us
to see "capitalism" as arising where something like the enclosure movement
occurred.
The choice of definitions is pretty arbitrary. {It's sort of like deciding
which language is best; I'd say it's Esperanto ;-) } However, I think what
makes one definition better than another is not the definition itself, but
how it fits into a broader theory. In physics, for example, the "mass" of a
particle is defined by its "force" and "acceleration" (and each of the
terms is defined by the other two) as part of the equation f = m.a. For
Marx (and in his somewhat abstract way, Brenner), "capitalism" is defined
by the specific theory of capitalism presented in CAPITAL.
One key is that many market-oriented theories see "market forces" as sort
of like an irresistable force, "knocking down Chinese Walls with cheap
commodities" (an inexact paraphrase of the MANIFESTO), linking up with
recent theories of irreversible and inevitable globalization. I think
Marx's ideas developed beyond that (just as he moved away from stage-ism),
so that the strength of the Chinese social formation in resisting the
globalization of the market also plays a role. In this view, the Opium War
and similar acts of aggressive violence were more crucial to "knocking down
the Chinese Walls" just as the forcible expropriation of the petty property
rights of English rural producers was needed to bring industrial capitalism
to the English countryside. (BTW, as Marx notes and economic historians
since then have emphasized, the property rights before enclosure were not
exactly feudal.) Mere marketization wouldn't do the trick: as several
penners have noted, before the Opium War and the like, the Chinese didn't
want to buy anything from the West.
(BTW, whatever one thinks of this theory, it hardly says that the English
or the W. Europeans were superior -- unless on defines "superiority" in
capitalist terms.)
Finally, I want to object to the dismissal of Brenner that seems to show up
so much in pen-l these days. Maybe he's Eurocentric, but it's academic
sectarianism to simply dismiss his research rather than looking for his
contributions along with his limitations. He's no Yeti-believer.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
