moi:
>Further, there are problems with the concept of productivity. Labor
>productivity is not easy to compare between countries, especially
>between crops.
Louis Proyect wrote:
I would invite PEN-L'ers to read the article that contains the
agricultural comparisons between England and other nations. I should
add that while France was ahead of England in 1700, England jumped
ahead later on. The author, Robert C. Allen, actually wrote the
article to demonstrate the *increased* productivity of English
farming but not in the time-frame that is typical of Brenner, Wood
and company who find all sorts of miracles taking place in the late
middle ages. ...
Does this author address the problems with measuring productivity?
even Brenner makes mistakes here: in his books on the rate of profit
and recent economic stagnation, he sometimes uses the totally-bogus
neoclassical concept of "total factor productivity" as if it were
somehow valid. (At more than one UCLA seminar, I told him about this
and he ignored the criticism as far as I can tell.)
[The problem with the concept is that it adds apples and oranges,
i.e., labor and something called "capital" using the assumption that
these "factors of production" are paid according to their contribution
to production, their "marginal products." If the late Joan Robinson
isn't spinning in her grave because of Brenner's use of this concept,
she'd better start now.]
LP writes that >... while France was ahead of England in 1700,
England jumped ahead later on.<
It's been argued that among other places, China was also "ahead" of
England about the same time (however "ahead" is measured). But the
point of capitalism is not who is ahead at any single point in time.
(That's always changing.)
The question is the rate of _accumulation_ and the structural basis
for faster accumulation. Brenner's stuff is about the creation of that
kind of structural basis: proletarianized agriculture has a greater
potential for capitalist accumulation than does French-type
small-holder agriculture of that era.
and: >... Robert C. Allen, actually wrote the article to demonstrate
the *increased* productivity of English farming but not in the
time-frame that is typical of Brenner,"<
What time period is relevant to the issue of the creation of
capitalism as a mode of production? it seems to me that we can see a
two-step process:
(1) the expropriation of the agricultural producers, which creates
merely direct and redistributive benefits (i.e., looting rewards) to
the landlords; and
(2) the later realization of faster accumulation, productivity, and
economic growth (as usually measured). Of course, this was not part of
the landlords' intentions, except in the idealized tales of bourgeois
economic history textbooks (Turnip Townsend and all that).
I should add that I learned of the article in Robert Albritton's "Did
Agrarian Capitalism Exist", which appeared in the April 1993 Journal
of Peasant Studies. It is a totally devastating critique of the
Brenner thesis that I will return to when I get a chance.
I'd like to here what you have to say about that. Of course, the
answer to Albritton's question depends on one's definition of
capitalism. A.G. Frank and others seem to equate capitalism with the
existence of markets in final commodities (consumer & investment
goods). Marx and others equate capitalism with the existence of
proletarian labor ("free in a double sense").
Further, when capitalism "exists" is often a matter of opinion because
of uneven development. The enclosure movement -- which people like
Marx saw as a precondition for the existence of capitalism in England
-- was uneven, coming in waves and hitting different parts of the
country at different times. There are still parts of England that
haven't been enclosed, I am told (by someone from that non-enclosed
region).
When did capitalism suddenly cross the threshold and "exist" for
English agriculture -- or England -- as a whole? If we require 100%
enclosure, it still doesn't exist. The existence of capitalism thus
depends on how one defines the threshold.
More likely, the story is best seen as a process. Enclosure and
similar moves (shutting off forests to "poaching," etc.) created a
flow of proletarianized labor-power that was sometimes enough and
sometimes insufficient for industrial capitalism's ravenous maw. Then,
at some point in the 19th century, mechanization of production (the
"real" subjection of labor by capitalism) meant that flows of labor
from agriculture were no longer needed. This likely weakened any urban
capitalist support for rural efforts at furthering enclosure.
Thus, the Brenner thesis about agriculture is more about the existence
of the process than the existence of full-blown capitalism in English
agriculture. It's more about the creation of a structural basis for
capitalist accumulation than it is about the existence of pure
capitalism (however defined).
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your
own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
