Subject: Re: Gramsci, Laclau, Mouffe (and Bhaskar) Date: Tue, 07 Mar 95 17:11:01 +0000 From: wpc-AT-cs.strath.ac.uk Andy writes -------------- Still, I want to defend my point. I routinely teach that chattel slavery as practiced in the New World is a fundamentally different social system from classical slavery; from the point of view of the plantation owner, I contend, plantation slavery in fact resembles capitalism to a large degree. >From the point of view of the slave, it's a little bit different... In other words, I look at plantation slavery as an intermediate mode between feudalism and capitalism, so I see a transition from slavery to feudalism as regressive. --------------- It is also arguable that in terms of technology the transition from slavery to capitalism in Europe was regressive - incipient mechanisation of farming in Gaul for example came to a halt. Slavery of the Roman type was a commodity producing mode of production and in many ways closer to capitalism than was feudalism, hence bourgeois historians like Momsen, Rostostozeff, Hichelheim etc routinely describe the roman economy as capitalist. Similarly the adaptation of roman law by bourgeois society shows their similarity. I do not see therefore that the development in the Americas is radically different from the classical form. --------------------------- Well, even though I have no evidence that it's happening, I don't think it's on the order of pigs flying. For example, I wouldn't be real surprised if feudal forms arose in Yugoslavia or Chechnya, following the almost total collapse of the social order. When I was in El Salvador in 1992 I visited a "cooperative" farm, which in its heyday had been owned by a member of the oligarchy and had been one of the most efficient mechanized cotton plantations in the country. The labor force was resident but they were wage workers (I should add that wages were extremely low, and attempts to unionize were met with murder). At the height of the war, the owner abandoned the property and a cooperative was formed. Now it's a big subsistence farm, and its organizational structure is much more like an Indian village than anything else. ----------------------- In the case of former Jugoslavia, I would find the reversion to feudal production relations very surprising. During wartime production technology regresses, but an industrial society recuperates very fast once peace comes. A non industrialised country like El Salvador is a different matter. Paul --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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