Hi all,
I have not been following this argument. But I can think of at least one
form of free labor that capitalism has never lived without - women's labor
in the home.
-Nico
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Colin Danby
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 2:51 AM
To: p2; pen-l
Subject: [PEN-L:3526] Re: 20Re: Brenner, C. L. R. Ja mes, & José Carlos
Mariátegui (was Re : Brenner Redux)
Jim D writes:
> Anyway, please don't just _assert_ that capitalism needs slaves, etc.
> Tell me the logic behind your argument.
There may be an ontological difference over what we mean when we say
capitalism -- is it an analytical category or an historical one. Mat,
when he says:
> Enslaved labor and the slave[ry] trade were central in the rise and
> development of the only capitalism that history has known. Any way
you cut it,
> it wasn't peripheral, it wasn't an aberration, it wasn't insulated, it
was a
> central and essential part of the capitalist mode of production.
and
> I don't have a problem with the notion of articulation of modes of
production.
is allowing for an analytical sepration between different ways of
extracting labor, but treats "capitalism" as something historically
specific and actually-existing. He asks us not to shut our eyes to
lived history and the fact that the actual rise of industrial capitalism
is closely linked with unfree labor. As it is with genocide,
colonialism, and modern racism.
Now, could industrial capitalism have developed differently? Could
capitalism manage on its own, without articulation to other modes? Who
knows. It's not a resolvable question, or even an interesting one.
It is a serious error to reason from the structural completeness of an
abstract model of capitalism to the notion that capitalism in the real
world is structurally complete and free-standing. (For about the same
reason that we shouldn't reason from the awe-inspiring structural
completeness of Walrasian general equilibrium to a real world without
power.) We should not confuse models with the things modeled.
(This is a problem Marx wrestled with -- there's a reason why _Capital_
sticks the problem of origins rather awkwardly at the end of the first
volume. It's a problem in any kind of structuralist thought. There's
no easy solution, but if you look at Marx's work as a whole I'd suggest
that he thought that concrete historical work and abstract analysis have
to talk to each other and push at each other's limits. Marxism is not
just volume 1 of _Capital_.)
If capitalism is actually densely intertwined with other modes, then it
doesn't have a simple historical trajectory, and we can't assume that it
is fully-structured or possesses independent laws of motion. This
distresses people who would prefer to do nothing but class analysis, yet
claim the high ground of social theory.
Best, Colin
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