>Writes Paul:
> > Rob raises an interesting question. If, due to subcontracting
> > labour, wage labour becomes a minority of workers in developed
> > "capitalist" countries, does that mean they are no longer capitalist?
Colin writes:
>Absolutely.
If it's not capitalist, what is it? what is _your_ definition of capitalism?
>Not to mention lots of subcontracting and putting-out in the 3W.
Why isn't this dominated by capitalism? in W. European history, putting-out
(so-called protoindustrialism), when combined with the dispossession of the
rural direct producers, led to the development of full-scale (industrial)
capitalism. Why or how is the 3W different? is there no dispossession of
the rural direct producers? (where "dispossession" means that they lose
their direct access to the means of production and subsistence, so that
they are proletarianized.)
>Not to mention close links between capitalist labor and exploitation in
>households, in a variety of settings.
>
>Not to mention the manifold ways that capitalist workplace discipline
>draws on gender and race.
As I've said several times I see the real, empirical, world is a
combination of various social institutions -- including those of patriarchy
and ethnic domination, along with capitalism. It's a "complex social
formation dominated by capitalism."
Among other things, while patriarchy and ethnic domination are totally
obnoxious, they are very conservative systems of domination. They don't
expand, metastasize, the way capitalism tends to do. It's a simpler process
of the privileged (males, whites, etc.) struggling to preserve their
privileges or to return to the "good old days."
>None of this is to say that X is "necessary" for capitalism because
>capitalism is used here as an analytic category, for which nothing can be
>"necessary."
It seems to me that if one has a theory of capitalism (I get mine from my
interpretation of Marx), that theory can involve certain factors being
necessary to the existence and persistence of that mode of production. For
example, without some social-institutional system (like the family) that
reproduces labor-power as a commodity, capitalism can't exploit labor-power
for long, so that eventually the production of surplus-value dries up, as
does accumulation. If the resulting system is a version of capitalism, it's
a very stunted one -- or a completely different one (e.g., socialism), in
which labor-power is not a commodity.
>The problem arises in sliding from "capitalist" to "capitalism," and
>exactly what ontic status we give the noun.
I admit to seeing capitalism as real ("having ontic status"), which means
that (1) the theory of capitalism necessary to saying that it exists makes
logical sense and (2) it fits the empirical data as far as I can tell. How
is capitalism unreal?
>When Jim writes
> > The thing about capitalism being dominant is that it tends to remake
> the world in its own image, so that the historical trend is toward the
> universalization of capitalism (sometimes called "globalization").<
>
>I can maybe go along at a very loose metaphorical level, but I'm getting
>increasingly uncomfortable with attributing historical agency to a
>thing. Especially when the agency attributed to it is virtually all-powerful.
I don't see why we can't attribute "laws of motion" to capitalism, which
make it an (unconscious) agent. Besides, capitalism isn't a "thing," but is
instead a system of social relations. A social-institutional system can
have real effects on the world without being a planned organization. The
"anarchy of production" has a real effect on the world, especially since
under capitalism it is driven by a single major principle, aggressive
profit-seeking and capital accumulation.
I did not attribute omnipotence (or being "virtually all-powerful") to
capitalism, since other societal institutions, such as patriarchy and
ethnic domination, have the ability to resist. You'll note that I used the
word "tends" before "remake the world in its own image." Please don't
misrepresent what I say.
(One of the problems with the recent discussion of Brenner is that Louis
seems more interested in the perceived _implications_ of what Brenner said
than in what the guy actually said. Yoshie, on the other hand, emphasized
the latter. Please don't talk about the implications of what _I_ say
without first being clear about what I actually said. I think Yoshie's
method is best for promoting productive discussion.)
>It is one thing to make a synchronic analysis of a full-blown capitalist
>economy, as Marx does, bringing out the structural factors and hence
>downplaying agency. This is surely useful, even if the sociology gets
>short shrift. It is another thing to make a diachronic i.e. historical
>argument which downplays agency by attributing change to an impersonal
>juggernaut (or a sort of social virus). This is precisely why so many
>discussions of "globalization" are so mushy.
If the working class and other anti-systemic forces were well-organized and
conscious of the nature of the system, I would not "downplay" their role in
"diachronic" (dynamic, empirical) analysis. (These forces definitely
deserve more emphasis if the question is "what is to be done?") The
capitalists (and their non-capitalist allies) are well-organized and quite
conscious of the nature of the system. Unfortunately, their organization
and actions typically reinforce the general trend resulting from
capitalism's laws of motion (with the main debate being about how to manage
its contradictions). (BTW, Marx doesn't simply present a structural
analysis, since he is a dynamic thinker.)
Just because capitalism acts like an impersonal juggernaut (with a lot of
personal backing from those with power) or as a virus doesn't mean that it
can't be opposed.
You are right that Marx's analysis gives sociology short shrift (for
example, ignoring the role of informal work groups in capitalist
production). That doesn't mean that such sociology can't be brought in (as,
for example, Mike Lebowitz argues in his BEYOND CAPITAL). Further, one of
the main tendencies of capitalism that Marx emphasized (see also Braverman)
is to try to de-sociologize the world, to try to turn the whole world into
one big market of atomized individuals, to make Mrs. T's slogan that "there
is no society, just individuals" true in practice (except for the need for
a state to protect capital).
You are also right that most discussions of "globalization" are mushy. I
think that the tendency toward "universalization" of capitalist social
relations is a much clearer concept, especially since it happens
domestically (e.g., in the "deregulation" movement of the late 1970s) and
well as globally.
>Thus I much agree with Yoshie that:
>
> > What is happening in our post-Socialist & post-Social-Democratic
> > epoch is that early transitional forms of emerging capitalist
> > relations have returned.
I agree too.
>But would suggest simply reconceptualizing this to see capitalist
>production as existing in a variety of forms, without any innate 1-2-3
>logic. A similar point could be made about this business of moving from
>merchant to industrial capitalism.
The idea that capitalism has a certain "logic" to its laws of motion does
not deny that _in practice_ (at a lower level of abstraction), capitalism's
"logic" doesn't work following some sort of simple scheme. (This is one of
Sweezy's points in chapter 1 of THE THEORY OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT.)
>While this simplified historical model makes a few useful points it
>downplays the role that merchanting plays in making even the most
>industrial capitalism function (and that merchanting played in allowing
>the industrial rev to take off). This is *not* to say that industry does
>not matter or to take one of those positions that sees merchant capitalism
>as the most essential or universal form.
_Of course_, "merchanting" plays a role in making industrial capitalism
function. In Marx's theory (which makes sense to me), merchant capital is
an incomplete form of industrial capital. It involves "buying low and
selling high" (in Braverman's useful phrase, buying the surplus-product of
one non-capitalist mode of production and trading it for that of another,
grabbing a piece of the action in the process). When full-scale
(industrial) capitalism arose, it incorporated merchant capital as part of
its system (so that merchants facilitate the trading of capitalist
surplus-products).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
