File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9712, message 276


Date: Tue, 16 Dec 97 22:47:44 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Was Marx for capitalism?





	

		Comrade L.P.,



	Your argument is so much self-delusion.  First, I'm unimpressed by
the statistics that the Sandinistas gave you in the politico-tourism
brochure, but that's not important.  What is important is that you cannot
take social relations of production out of context and use them for an
argument.  The fact that tenant farmers who didn't own the land find
themselves out on their ears when the land-owner finds something more
profitable than tenant farming does not argue for tenant farming.  You
also ignore the fact that people whose families are small land owners have
left their villages and paid good money to cross the border to be wage
slaves in America.  There are villages that empty out seasonally when the
men come north for Pennsylvania mushroom harvesting.  If you talked to
those Pueblanas on the NYC streets (and I've worked with my share) you'll
find them disdainful of life back in their still existing villages back
home and be amazed at how hard they worked in Mexico City, Lima, and
Guayaquil to get the money to bribe border guards and come north and be
wage slaves.  Interviews with maquilla d'oro workers find that these
(mostly) women like wage work because it gives them independence from
their men and families.  Is this an endorsement of maquillas?  Of course
not, it's simply an echo of Marx's own observation that capitalism
revolutionizes pastoral life.  



	Speaking of which, you yourself point out that crop prices can't
support tenant farmers.  What good is it going to do for them to produce
more of the crops that they can't get a good price for?  Make sense,
Proyect, there's no point doing land reform that only produces staples on
an uneconomic basis.  Let agricultural capital be used most efficiently
for what sells best.  Tenant farming is an uneconomic anachronism by your
own analysis.  


	peace







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