>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/31/00 10:24AM >>> Jim: Mat wrote: What is meant by "historically necessary"? I know what "necessary" means (as in oxygen being necessary to fire). What's the difference? are you saying that if there had been no (En)slavery, there would never have been capitalism? were there no substitutes (like grabbing the land and resources from the first Americans)? [on this see below.] Jim, your natural science analogy (repeated over and over again) is really lousy. You know well that social phenomena do not operate like natural phenomena. Social reality is historically contingent and complex in ways that are not fairly described by such natural science "laws." So, let's suppose there is some social phenomenon that has conditions of existence and conditions of production and reproduction. But there may not be one rigid, fixed set of specific conditions. I think I described exactly what I meant by "historically necessary." I said that the Enslavement Industry satisfied certain conditions for capitalism's existence and reproduction, but that they *might* have been satisfied in other ways, but in history they were not, and we do not *know* that they could or woud have been met otherwise, although it is possible, we can imagine a reasonable scenario in which they might have been met. (((((((((((((( CB: And we could probably imagine a way that the doubly free labor's role in capitalism might have been fulfilled by a different arrangement. Doubly free labor is established as "absolutely necessary" only by the same process as the Enslavement institution.
