David wrote:
>We all apparently agree that "markets" exist since the beginning of
>recorded history. But marxists distinguish "capitalism" as something
>historically unique. If the defining characteristic of "capitalism" is
>not markets, what is it?
There's been some debate about this issue on pen-l, with some defining
capitalism as being defined as a system of markets (or refusing to define
capitalism at all), but at least on this question (though few others), I
guess I'm an orthodox Marxist.
Capitalism is typically characterized by markets, it is true, but I don't
see markets as the "defining characteristic" of capitalism. Capitalism is
first an foremost a system in which workers are proletarianized. This means
that workers are free in two complementary ways: (1) they are free of the
direct application of force by the folks who employ their labor-time,
unlike under feudalism or slavery; and (2) they are free from having direct
access to the goods and services that allow them to survive as human
beings, so that they have little or no choice but to work for the
capitalist class. They may have some choice about _which_ capitalist to
work for (at least when unemployment and other aspects of the "cost of job
loss" are low), but they have no choice about paying the capitalists
surplus-value in exchange for survival. (BTW, I'm still looking for a
specific reference for that quote.)
Though the capitalism that Marx described (19th century liberal capitalism)
had a big emphasis on markets or commodity production, there are a lot of
concrete variants of capitalism which downplay the role of markets or embed
them in other institutions (from Nazism to the Japanese system to social
democracy). In Marx's tradition, Lenin defined capitalism as "generalized
commodity production," in which labor-power is treated as a commodity
(i.e., as if it were a product produced simply for sale). I would say that
this is a pretty abstract definition, but that the concrete versions of
capitalism are close enough that they can be called "capitalist."
In addition to the proletarianization of labor, the kind of capitalism
we're most used to involves the private ownership of the means of
production (factories, machines, etc.) by a small monority. However, there
have been examples of state capitalism, as in Algeria, where the state
owned the oil refineries and the like, but workers were by-and-large
proletarianized. I wouldn't use this term to describe the old Soviet
system, because the whole system involved labor-power being _scarce_
(rather than jobs being that way, as is normal under capitalism) and people
not working especially hard.
>I assume the answer focuses on expropriation of surplus labor value by
>those who own the means of production. If so, and such expropriation
>would appear to be historically pervasive going back thousands of years
>(slavery, feudalism, etc.), am I correct in understanding that marxists
>define "capitalism" as expropriation of surplus labor value in the context
>of an industrialized society?
Feudalism and slavery involve the direct application of force by the boss
to the "employee" in order to extract surplus-labor. Capitalism does not,
except in extraordinary circumstances (as with some efforts to break
strikes or the Nazi move to create state-slaves).
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
"From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A.
There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray.
Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash.
Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash
(chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed
We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best."
-- Terry Allen.
