Michael Perelman wrote:
>Slaves in many places directed the work. For example, in S. Carolina,
>they were the only ones who originally knew how to grow rice.
>
>Also, they grew many of their own vegetables frequently.
This is important. While chattel slavery & other forms of unfree
labor may be thought of as transitional forms in the process of
proletarianization, most slaves & other unfree laborers like peons on
haciendas were not separated from land & subsistence agriculture.
Upon such unfree laborers, therefore, market discipline did not work
directly (hence the use of force on laborers), for they had to
neither sell their labor power in nor buy consumption goods from the
market to reproduce themselves (as slaves, peons, etc.).
Underdevelopment of Latin America was overdetermined by (A) the
hacienda economy's ability to block the development of the domestic
mass market & (B) plantation owners' dependence upon export; A & B
mutually reinforced each other -- the root of dependent development.
Haciendas & like forms of landlordism -- & plantation owners' class
power -- were much harder to ruin than free peasantry under market
discipline (who, to reproduce themselves as peasants, had to succeed
in market competition -- most of them failed, thus becoming
proletarians). Without attention to this internal class relation,
external dependence cannot be satisfactorily explained.
Theotonio Dos Santos characterizes what he calls the "historic forms
of dependence" thus (in an abridged version of his paper "The
Structure of Dependence," printed in _The American Economic Review_
60 [May 1970]):
***** The internal productive structure is characterized by rigid
specialization and monoculture in entire regions (the Caribbean, the
Brazilian Northeast, etc.). Alongside these export sectors there
grew up certain complementary economic activities (cattle-raising and
some manufacturing, for example) which were dependent, in general, on
the export sector to which they sell their products. There was a
third, subsistence economy which provided manpower for the export
sector under favourable conditions and toward which excess population
shifted during periods unfavorable to international trade.
Under these conditions, the existing internal market was restricted
by four factors:
(1) Most of the national income was derived from export, which was
used to purchase the inputs required by export production (slaves,
for example) or luxury goods consumed by the hacienda- and
mine-owners, and by the more prosperous employees.
(2) The available manpower was subject to very arduous forms of
superexploitation, which limited its consumption.
(3) Part of the consumption of these workers was provided by the
subsistence economy, which served as a complement to their income and
as a refuge during periods of depression.
(4) A fourth factor was to be found in those countries in which land
and mines were in the hands of foreigners (cases of an enclave
economy): a great part of the accumulated surplus was destined to be
sent abroad in the form of profits, limiting not only internal
consumption but also possibilities of reinvestment [Paul Baran,
"Political Economy of Growth", Monthly Review Press, 1967). In the
case of enclave economies the relations of the foreign companies with
the hegemonic center were even more exploitative and were
complemented by the fact that purchases by the enclave were made
directly abroad.
<http://robinsonrojas.com/santos1.htm> *****
Yoshie
