Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 17:21:02 -0400
From: james m blaut <70671.2032-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: M-I: proletarians (from Jim B)


James:

The Eurocentrism in your pont #1 is half drowned in jargon. 

"But while the relationship of the capitalist world to its exterior was
accidental and contingent (and perhaps all the more barbaric for that), its
internal relationship of capital to labour is what is essential to its
reproduction."

Are you talking about the origins ofg capitalism? Then how can a
not-yet-existent capitalism have  "internal" and "external" ("accidentasl
and contingent") relations. If you're talking about the historical
development of capitalism, you're asserting  that the "exterior was
accidental and contingent" -- meaning I suppose that non-Europe,
historically, was "exterior" to real capitalism.

More Eurocentric mistakes in point #1:

"Various instances of plunder, such as the seizure
of Gold from the Americas, or slaves from Africa are historical factors
in the development of capitalism, but they are not intrinsic to
capitalist development."   

"The original, primitive accumulation of capital, is itself not an
intrinsic characteristic of capital. But surely this is a paradox?...At the
core of this question is the difference between Marx's logico-historical
method and the teleological method of Hegel and romantic historiography."  

"The use values
produced outside of the capitalist world continued to be a raw material
for capital, insofar as they could be made the repository of exchange
value."

Most gold was not "seized" but mined by wage workers. Slaves were caputred,
but (a) they produced profits for capitaliasm and (b) probably half the
people involved in the slave trade\slave plantation complex were not slaves
but wage-workers. This stuff is not "external" to capitalism and it was
production, not exchange, and it was definitely not "primitive
accumulation." 

As to point #2: This is nonsense: 

"...the low growth rates in the advanced world compared with the much
higher growth rates in some parts of the developing world." 

-- unless these "parts" are a few small countries in East Asia plus
long-since-developed Japan.

More nonsense:  

" The relatively (relative to
population) low density of wage labourers in the underdeveloped world
places a limitation on the capacity of capital to exploit those people."

You've got your numbers all wrong.

And also this:

"Where subsistence farming is the norm, surpluses can only be plundered
through trade, usury and so on." 

Subsistence farming does not really exist anywhere. And most peasants are
renters, not landowners, and usually work part-time for wages. Therefore
the next passage is gobbledygook: "The disadvantage of such a system for
the capitalist is that without direct control over the production process,
there is no possibility of cranking up the rate of exploitation by
improving productivity."

If God didn't love poor people he would not have made so  many of them.
This vitiates your next point: "Put crudely, a Kenyan farm-labourer might
live in greater penury, but a South Korean factory worker is more exploited
- putting no moral interpretation on that purely scientific
term." Numbers wrong again.

But you point #3 is thoughtful. 

Fraternally 

Jim Blaut

3. Marx's theory of capital was Eurocentric, to the extent that Capital
reached its highest point of development, in Marx's day, in Europe. The
question was not posed in those terms while he was working. Rather, he
was keen to ward off the accusation that he was 'Anglo-centric' (to use
modern terminology) in using the English factory system as a model of
social development. His rejoinder was simple: Don't be deceived, this is
your future I am showing you. He meant that what seemed to be a
Characteristically English (or Dutch) development, capitalism, would
become generalised throughout the world. On that score, he was right,
and provided us with the best defences against that system in his anti-
capitalist theory.

Marx's studies on non-capitalist modes of production were diligent and
interesting, but I don't think it is necessary to make a definitive case
for these. It is alleged, but less often demonstrated, that he and
Engels were dependent on sources that have since been overthrown (like
Morgan). His discussion of Asiatic modes of production, or even feudal
society are not presented as definitive investigations, but only
attempts to contrast the mode of production of capital, from that of
other societies: his object of enquiry was capital and only capital.
Wherever he seems to stray from that subject, his interest is, apart
from an admirable Victorian inquisitiveness, to illuminate the
capitalist mode of production. If Marx still has something to tell us
about world developments it is only because capital is the dominant
social relationship today.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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