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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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