>Aren't you interested in _my_ argument, as opposed to that of Wood &
>Brenner who may or may not disagree with me on the above?
>
>Yoshie
I would be happy to answer your argument. You write:
"Chattel slavery, indentured servitude, & other forms of unfree labor in
the history of modern colonialism increasingly took on the quality that was
*quite different* from pre-capitalist modes of unfree labor, *because* they
were determined by the expanding reproduction of the relation between
capital & free labor elsewhere (the expanded reproduction of the relation
between capital & free labor & resulting rise of productive
forces also made the main contribution to the *abolition* of chattel
slavery -- Cf. Eric Williams)."
I regard this as false to the core. In reality, the forms that capitalist
relations took in the New World were much more "advanced" than those in the
mother country. This I attribute to the tendency of feudal paternalistic
norms to be more easily dispensed with in places like Peru, Bolivia and
Mexico where the population was regarded as less than human. This is in
contrast to Europe where racism was less of a factor and where feudal
institutions persisted long into modernity. This is the explanation for
Bartoleme De la Casa's failure to persuade the Spanish crown to adopt the
same measures of justice for the Indian as existed in Aragon and Catalonia.
The Crown, understanding the possibilities that slave labor opened up in
the New World, preferred to regard the Indians as heathen worth killing in
the process of creating absolute surplus value. Of course, such Marxist
terms were not in currency at the time because Karl was not born yet.
Louis Proyect
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