>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/28/00 05:20PM >>>
>CB: And since several of the people discussing this are Marxists ,
>why is it that not one person that I can find so far has commented
>on what Marx said directly on the issues in question?
Hi Charles:
Look into the PEN-L archive or your In Box and find the following post of mine:
***** Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 04:04:55 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [PEN-L:3603] Primitive Accumulation, in (Polemical) Theory &
Empirical History *****
It has an extensive quotation from Michael Perelman's _The Invention
of Capitalism_, which I believe is very helpful. And let us know
what you think.
)))))))))))
Yoshie>
I am going to read the long passage from Michael,but I have a comment on your opening
below.
Primitive Accumulation, in (Polemical) Theory & Empirical History
by Yoshie Furuhashi
27 October 2000 08:12 UTC
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why does Lou take issue with Brenner & Wood? I think it's because
when Brenner & Wood _theoretically_ emphasize the primacy of class
struggles, class relations, & class formations as the crucial
determinants in the emergence of a new mode of production, Lou thinks
that they are (each in his or her own way) denying any other factor
in the _empirical history_ of the emergence of capitalism. As I
said, there is a good reason why Marx begins _Capital_ with a
structural analysis of what makes capitalism _what it is_ (the
generative mechanism of surplus _value_ extraction through the
capitalist market); he doesn't want us to fall for commodity
fetishism (= ahistorical thinking that retroactively rewrites the
history of _the world before capitalism_ in the images & categories
of full-fledged capitalism).
)))))))))
CB: First, I think that slavery and colonialism involved class struggles as much as
the inclosure movement in England. So, the claim that slavery and colonialism were
also originating causes of capitalism is just as much an emphasis on the primacy of
class and class struggles as the other.
Remember, the class struggles that resulted in capitalism were especially between the
newly rising bourgeoisie and the feudal ruling class, with peasants as a third
element. The result was a victory for the bourgeoisie, who became a new ruling class.
This same class, the bourgeoisie, faced African peasants/slaves to be, Indigenous
American foragers-land possessors/slaves and landless to be, and European peons sent
to the colonies in class struggles in slavery and colonialism.
On the theory, I am giving you a theoretical , not post hoc imagery history of the
causal relationship between slavery/colonialism and the origin of capitalism:
Capitalism , theoretically is, wage-labor + accumulation + competition. This was true
right at the rosy dawn of capitalism. The competition means that if any capitalist can
find a way to exploit oppressed-labor ( unwaged women's, slave, corvee, indentured
servant, any labor which as a cost significantly oppressed below the prevailing wage),
that capitalist will. This is a theoretical , not empirical, explanation as to why
slavery and colonial labor ( forms of oppressed labor that they could get going) was
combined with wage-labor at the origin of capitalism.
Basically, a capitalist will maximize profits by any means necessary. They are not
concerned that the whole system can not operate on oppressed-labor. There is a
tendency for some capitalists to seek and some capitalists will seek ways to exploit
oppressed labor.
