Charles wrote:
> As far as what Rob said, if there was wage-labor without accumulation,
> it would not be capitalism.
During the 1930s in the US, there was little or no accumulation for a few
years (for the economy as a whole). Does that mean that there was no
capitalism? Accumulation is one result of capitalism's "normal"
functioning. But if over-accumulation occurs (as I think happened in the
1920s), disaccumulation -- the destruction of capital -- results. "Normal"
isn't universal.
>Accumulation necessarily entails creation of slave-labor, in the
>metaphorical sense, as you put it. Non-wage or "slave" labor is a
>necessary condition or feature of capitalism.
I don't accept the "metaphorical sense" of slavery (as in "wage-labor =
wage slavery" or "non-wage labor = slave labor") as a useful
social-scientific concept, except in terms of rhetoric. It avoids the key
question, leading to a lack of intellectual clarity.
(I'm sorry, but it's like the issue of whether or not corporations pass the
corporate tax on to consumers or their workers. I asked the question and
more than one person said that this tax incidence question was irrelevant
because we need to encourage people to focus on corporate power. I'd hope
that the left would get beyond such rhetorical stuff, and try to understand
what's going on, as a guide to practice.)
Now, I should admit that Marx's theory ("doubly free wage labor =
industrial or full-blown capitalism") is, like all theories, metaphorical
(or a simile, saying that capitalism is _like_ the theory). However, it
also has a lot of internal logical coherence and I've found that it helps
me understand the empirical world.
>The factual concomitance of wage-labor and non-wage labor in the actual
>history of capitalism is not a chance event. It is a necessary result of
>the essence of capitalism. Actually existing chattel slavery was an
>expression of this necessity.
This is something that has to be proved. As I said, in order to deal with
the counter-factual "capitalism starting off without slavery present," one
needs to have a very clear theory of what capitalism is. My theory says
that counter-factual is possible, if unlikely in the actual history of
humanity, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
I was wrong, however, because there are other methods of showing that this
counter-factual could never exist. You are using one of them, that of
redefining slavery so that _by definition_ "capitalism without slavery" is
impossible. That works if people accept your definition. As noted, I don't.
>There is more to Marx's definition of capitalism than wage-labor.
>Accumulation is as much a part of Marx's definition of capitalism as
>wage-labor. If capitalists confined themselves to simple reproduction,
>they would not be capitalists. Capital must expand, accumulate to be
>capital. Non-self-expanding surplus-value is not capital.
see above, the reference to the 1930s.
> And, as Marx says the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation is
> to create non-wage labor right along side of wage-labor.
where does he say this?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
