Milton the Anarchist Re: "post-leftism"

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Aug 19 16:35:17 PDT 2002


s-t-t at juno.com wrote:
>
> Brian O. Sheppard x349393 writes:
>
> > Coercion doesn't involve merely shooting people. I, for one, was
> > discussing the coercion of wage slavery, not armed militias forcing
> > people to make airplanes.
>
> Please, define coercion.
>

To describe "wage slavery" as coercion simply robs both "wage slavery" and "coercion" of meaning. Capitalism can't exist (and couldn't come into existence) without a great deal of coercion -- but what makes capitalism capitalism is that the actual extraction of surplus is performed through "economic" means rather than (as in all tributary modes of production) through direct coersion.

Moralism again fucks up understanding. The term "wage slavery" itself is a metaphor, and primarily an agitational rather than an analytic metaphor. But wage slavery is, precisely, _not_ slavery, nor is property theft.

Carrol



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