Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 13:28:00 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: capitalist cuba?


commie-zero-zero:
>of course, this is prolly more abstraction at such a high level -- or some
>sort of logical leap, by your calculations -- that you'll not want to deal
>with it.

That's right. I am looking for something like this to complement the
abstractions. When you find something in the
aufausgehebenglockenspielmitplatzendorf that reads remotely like this on
Cuba, give me a holler:

In the Danubian Principalities the corvée was mixed up with rents in kind
and other appurtenances of bondage, but it formed the most important
tribute paid to the ruling class. Where this was the case, the corvée
rarely arose from serfdom; serfdom much more frequently on the other hand
took origin from the corvée. [11] This is what took place in the Roumanian
provinces. Their original mode of production was based on community of the
soil, but not in the Slavonic or Indian form. Part of the land was
cultivated in severally as freehold by the members of the community,
another part — ager publicus — was cultivated by them in common. The
products of this common labour served partly as a reserve fund against bad
harvests and other accidents, partly as a public store for providing the
costs of war, religion, and other common expenses. In course of time
military and clerical dignitaries usurped, along with the common land, the
labour spent upon it. The labour of the free peasants on their common land
was transformed into corvée for the thieves of the common land. This corvée
soon developed into a servile relationship existing in point of fact, not
in point of law, until Russia, the liberator of the world, made it legal
under presence of abolishing serfdom. The code of the corvée, which the
Russian General Kisseleff proclaimed in 1831, was of course dictated by the
Boyards themselves. Thus Russia conquered with one blow the magnates of the
Danubian provinces, and the applause of liberal cretins throughout Europe. 

According to the "Réglement organique," as this code of the corvée is
called, every Wallachian peasant owes to the so-called landlord, besides a
mass of detailed payments in kind: (1), 12 days of general labour; (2), one
day of field labour; (3), one day of wood carrying. In all, 14 days in the
year. With deep insight into Political Economy, however, the working-day is
not taken in its ordinary sense, but as the working-day necessary to the
production of an average daily product; and that average daily product is
determined in so crafty a way that no Cyclops would be done with it in 24
hours. In dry words, the Réglement itself declares with true Russian irony
that by 12 working-days one must understand the product of the manual
labour of 36 days, by 1 day of field labour 3 days, and by 1 day of wood
carrying in like manner three times as much. In all, 42 corvée days. To
this had to be added the so-called jobagie, service due to the lord for
extraordinary occasions. In proportion to the size of its population, every
village has to furnish annually a definite contingent to the jobagie. This
additional corvée is estimated at 14 days for each Wallachian peasant. Thus
the prescribed corvée amounts to 56 working-days yearly. But the
agricultural year in Wallachia numbers in consequence of the severe climate
only 210 days, of which 40 for Sundays and holidays, 30 on an average for
bad weather, together 70 days, do not count. 140 working-days remain. The
ratio of the corvée to the necessary labour 56/84 or 66 2/3 % gives a much
smaller rate of surplus-value than that which regulates the labour of the
English agricultural or factory labourer. This is, however, only the
legally prescribed corvée. And in a spirit yet more "liberal" than the
English Factory Acts, the "Réglement organique" has known how to facilitate
its own evasion. After it has made 56 days out of 12, the nominal day's
work of each of the 56 corvée days is again so arranged that a portion of
it must fall on the ensuing day. In one day, e.g., must be weeded an extent
of land, which, for this work, especially in maize plantations, needs twice
as much time. The legal day's work for some kinds of agricultural labour is
interpretable in such a way that the day begins in May and ends in October.
In Moldavia conditions are still harder. "The 12 corvée days of the
'Réglement organique' cried a Boyard drunk with victory, amount to 365 days
in the year." [12] 

If the Réglement organique of the Danubian provinces was a positive
expression of the greed for surplus-labour which every paragraph legalised,
the English Factory Acts are the negative expression of the same greed.
These acts curb the passion of capital for a limitless draining of
labour-power, by forcibly limiting the working-day by state regulations,
made by a state that is ruled by capitalist-and landlord. Apart from the
working-class movement that daily grew more threatening, the limiting of
factory labour was dictated by the same necessity which spread guano over
the English fields. The same blind eagerness for plunder that in the one
case exhausted the soil, had, in the other, torn up by the roots the living
force of the nation. Periodical epidemics speak on this point as clearly as
the diminishing military standard in Germany and France. [13] 

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org




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