Steve
On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, Maureen Therese Anderson wrote:
> Michael Yates wrote:
>
> > Meszaros appears to see
> >capitalism as more or less the logical culmination of all class
> >societies. He speaks of the capital system, of which capitalism proper
> >is just the final end (he seems to think that the Soviet-type systems
> >are part of this capital system though not capitalist and not able to
> >stand up to capitalism proper). He seems to say that prior class
> >societies such as feudalism and slavery are just rather primitive forms
> >of the capital system, but that their logic leads ultimately to
> >capitalism which is the most refined form of exploitation ever devised.
>
> Don't know Meszaros, but the idea that other kinds of stratified societies
> are just primitive forms of capitalism seems a very wrong-headed way to go.
> No end of nonwestern counter-examples to this, but just sticking to the
> west: what about antiquity? It's not that there were any "objective"
> impediments to the development of capitalist competition in antiquity (no
> state tarrifs or monopolies, etc.). Seems like capitalism didn't evolve
> there because people lived and thought about things very differently. The
> idea of "buying someone's time" would have been utterly foreign (as it was
> for most of European history), and the slave-owning elites of antiquity
> looked down on trade as such as a rather base endeavor; acceptable enough
> for resident outsiders, but beneath the aspirations of well-situated
> citizens.
>
> Instead the elites idealized the self-sufficient agrarian household
> ("economics," oikos + nomos, the management of households, etc.). And that
> self-sufficiency ideal, as you probably know, has been shared by many
> so-called peasant societies in more recent times. Much to the annoyance of
> generations of colonial administrators and economists. Those annoyingly
> irrational peasants: when forced to produce some monocrop on the world
> market, they'd go and produce less rather than more as soon as the price
> went up. Imagine that! wanting to spend more time actually living their
> lives rather than accumulating a pile of exchange value!
>
> >His conclusion is that the capital system must be thoroughly rooted out
> >if humanity is to have any chance to survive.
>
> Well, he might well be right on this one. But if so, why give capitalism
> more power than it deserves by casting it as some natural progression,
> incipiently rearing its ugly head at every historical turn? Seems like
> those arguments play into the hands of those ubiquitous neoliberal
> ideologues with their end-of-history teleologies. I don't think we should
> be doing their work for them. Capitalism (not trade, not exploitation, not
> hierarchy, but capitalism) is relatively recent and historically unique,
> based on premises and social arrangements that would have seemed utterly
> bizarre to members of the overwhelming majority of societies that have
> existed across time and space.
>
> Maureen
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