me:
>Without the resulting creation of a mass proletariat, the >looting from the rest of the world would not have promoted capitalism. >It would have likely lead instead to wars and more wars, royal pomp >and imperial waste, i.e., a continuation of the feudal "order."
Louis:
Actually, Potosi was bigger than London in the 17th century. What do you think the miners were? Petit-bourgeois? Lumpen?
1. As you noted in a different missive, >If there was a surplus of workers, wage labor was the best way to exploit them. If there was a shortage, then slavery or other forms of bondage would work. This is the crux of the difference between Norwich in the 16th century and Potosi.< That is, in Potosí, "slavery and other forms of bondage" were dominant social relationship that the direct producers were involved in. This is neither a petty-bourgeois nor a lumpen social relationship. It's a non-capitalist one, i.e., non-proletarian. It's true that there were a lot of proletarian supervisors (i.e., slave-whippers) and the like. But there were not enough to create a self-sustaining system. There was not the "home market" that Marx talks about in CAPITAL, vol. I, ch. 30. In England, as Marx notes, the proletarianization (expropriation) of the rural producers created a market for food which allowed industrial capital (in both the city and the countryside) to blossom. But in the Spanish New World, in place like Potosí, as you say, bondage was the rule. This kept the wages of free proletarians down, limiting the home market. There was a market for food, but it was mostly imported or produced by slaves and/or bonded labor (or marginalized freeholders on minifundia). In addition, the entire system of Potosí was dependent on the amount of silver (and later tin) under the ground. When those supplies disappeared, so did Potosí's prosperity. As Eduardo Galeano points out, it then became a backwater. 2. I don't know where the theory that "If there was a surplus of workers, wage labor was the best way to exploit them. If there was a shortage, then slavery or other forms of bondage would work." comes from. It's very similar to the theory in an old paper by the late MIT economist Evsey Domar. He stated it in terms of the "man/land" ratio: when there are few workers relative to the availability of land, the only way that landlords could extract a surplus was to impose slavery or serfdom. It's a reasonable theory as far as it goes. If I remember correctly, Marx or Engels used something similar to explain the "second serfdom" of Eastern Europe. If so, that's probably where Domar got the idea. The problem is that it's one-sided, only looking at the capitalist (or other ruling class) motivation and ignoring the producers' resistance. There was a labor shortage after the Black Plague in Europe (in the mid 1300s). This pushed landlords to squeeze the producers more, to try to strengthen the ties of serfdom and similar bondage. But the producers fought back. In France, they actually were able to establish a significantly large rural class of smallholders. Further, there's a question of what do we mean by a surplus of workers? where did it come from? If there's a large class of smallholders and it's relatively easy for urban proletarians to get land or to leave the country, there may be a shortage of workers even though there may be "overpopulation" by the kind of Malthusian standards that Domar applies. That is, whether a surplus of workers exists depends of the relationship of ownership that whisper in the wings. It's not simply a matter of the "man/land" ratio. But a surplus of labor can be _created_ (as it was in England) if the class of smallholders is destroyed and/or prevented from coming into existence on a large scale. The surplus is created -- people are thrown off their land and have to live on their own personal resources -- and this provides the key basis for capitalist accumulation. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
