Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 12:25:33 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: re: grundrisse etc discussion


Forrest T Hylton wrote:

> <snip>  In their forthcoming work on the
> composition of the Atlantic proletariat in the seventeenth and eigtheenth
> centuries, Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh set out to demonstate
> that proletarian *subjectivity*- whether of the slave, the indentured
> servant, the wage slave, the domestic worker/slave, the tavern owner, the
> pirate, the sailor, etc.- provides the fuel for capitalist development,
> insofar as capitalist planners had to respond, at every point in the
> plantation-port circuit, to proletarian counter-planning. <snip>

If we are to include slaves, indentured servants, tavern owners, and
pirates in our definition of proletarians, then the term itself loses all
(historically specific) meaning. Indeed, the term "proletarian" would
become an eternal trans-historical category divorced from any specific
relation to capital. Furthermore, I fail to see how all of these groups 
had "proletarian subjectivity". E.g. since when do tavern owners view
themselves as proletarians?  Did slaves view themselves as proletarians?

Now, I agree that it is worthwhile to investigate the formation and
autovalorization of "new social subjects", but ... please ... let's not
conflate all social subjects which are not capital with proletarians.

Jerry




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