>The nomads are on the move >Jonathan
YF: The process of primitive accumulation -- separating peasants from land and proletarianizing them -- is surely at work in the poorer nations worldwide, pushing multitudes of ex-peasants onto nomadic paths of internal migration, in part replicating the process of what happened earlier in the richer nations. What's different is that the richer nations' power elite had a much easier time dumping their surplus populations into other countries -- often in their colonies -- when their nations were experiencing primitive accumulation. "[A] youngster enjoying dual citizenship of India and the US, and marrying a Guatemalan of mixed Greek-Slav extraction" is exceptional, and such an experience will not be generalized (much less as "a right for all"), to quote from the exchange between John and Doug to which I was responding. Whether today's primitive accumulation will lead to a deeper "national integration" (to use Doug's term) or a catastrophic national dissolution depends on many factors in each case. In the case of China, the developing China bubble is worrisome (Cf. Keith Bradsher, "Is China the Next Bubble?" <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/business/yourmoney/18china.html>).
HK: Not sure I see what the point is you are making - You probably do not care, but still. As far as dumping
of surplus populations goes, well the early accumulators making the industrial revolutions were not entirely un-happy about the surplus population, as I am sure you will agree. Re: the easier time early immigrants had as compared to now, not sure that the populacing of van diemens land was all that easy for the denizens of the rougher trades of London.
4) Digest 2236: Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004; Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
CC: Nations as such are not exploited; even whole peoples, as such, are never exploited. The myth of "exploited nations" (which corresponds to the myth of exploiting nations) is what led Jim Blaut astray in his analysis of imperialism.
REPLY HK: Sorry, I dont know Jim Blaut, nor thus know his descent into such stray paths. Please explain. Nonetheless, I cant easily agree here with you. Thus even given sectional & class contradictions, large sections of the population of an oppressed nation can and do come together. I do not think you can easily provide an explanation for what happened in China, or Vietnam etc etc without recourse to some accommodation to the view that even whole peoples, as such, are . . . exploited . While some here will find it repugnant to cite M etc all the time [Dogmatic past-seeker etc etc&] all I can do is to say that M/E/L (Shall we leave JVS out of this to not complicate it even further?) did use such terms as East Indies
& India
as the subject of exploitation. Perhaps the semi-random plunder of Ms citations in the volume M&E ON Colonialism
; Moscow; p. 202: From Capital Volume 1; XXXI:
The discovery of gold & silver in America, the extirpation of enslavement , the beginning of the conquest & looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
or for instance: Englands Balance of Trade
Capital Volume III,
Chapter XXXV,
precious Metal & Rate of Exchange etc
:
India alone has
to pay 5 million in tribute for
good government
, interest & dividends
on British capital etc, not counting the sums sent home annually by
officials as savings form their salaries, or by British merchants as a
part of their profit to be invested in England&
In M&E ON Colonialism ; Ibid; p. 307.
CC: The empire probably cost the "whole people" of England far more than it gained them. It was partly away not just of exploiting foreign workers or even of tribute but of in effect using the empire to pump surplus value out of British workers.
HK: Here I would probably agree with you. Even when M & E & L talked of the labour aristocracy gaining form the ill-earned wages of imperialism, they always stressed that this was a very small minority. In fact I am aware of a detailed calculation performed to lay out the total bribe
to the working-class as being non-existent. But as far as I can see, most of the writings tress the political part of how much the British workers had lost by participating in the scheme of colonialism. The writings on Ireland (See Marxs secret letter to the International) are redolent of why the revolution cannot break out until the British workers support the Fenians & Irish workers. Etc.
CC: That is why, for example, the sheer economic effect of outsourcing labor to India or China is rather secondary to the political impact it has on u.s. workers.
HK: I think this however is a little step too far. What on earth can be the economic (as opposed to the political) effect of unemployment than primary rather than secondary on the worker in the USA? Perhaps you think there is no connection between USA U/e & outsourcing; or that the USA worker does not understand that there might be a link? --------------------------------------------- Digest 2236:Message: 8; Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004; From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
WS: It would make sense to first define the term "exploitation." The common meanings of the term are (i) use for profit (no pejorative connotation as it implies any commercial transaction) and (ii) use without just compensation (with a pejorative connotation).
Of course, the problem of the latter is what constitutes "just." Marx addressed that problem in his definion of value by arguing that under capitalism commodites are exchanged, on average, at their value, so form that point of view no unequal or "unjust" exchanges exist, at least in a long run. Exploitation obtains somewhere else, namely because labor under capitalism is treated as any other commodity, but in fact it is unlike any other commodity in the sense that it can produce suprlus value whereas other commodities cannot. So capitalists buy labor at their "market value" (defined by the cost of reproducing it) but in fact they get as a windfall more than that, namely the surplus produced by labor, which they keep to themsleves in the form of a profit.
>From that point of view, the question whether India is exploited is impossible to meaningfully answer, if not totally meaningless, in the same way as the question whether, say, people are poor, good, tall or whatever - because the anaswer depeneds on whom under what condition. "India" or any other aggregate cannot be exploited, just as it cannot think, feel and do any other thing that humans do. The term exploitation can apply only to a part of the India's population, namely that part which sells its labor power to owners of means of production (domestic and foreign), but the same pertains to any other country. So the only meaningfula way of talking about "India's exploitation" is to compare it to other countries in terms of the share of its population selling their labour power or the exchange value of that labor power.
I think that adding "imperialism" to the mix, which was done mainly to serve the interests of Russian and affilated national elites competing against Western capitalists, destroyed the concept of economic class and replaced it with the notion of national identity - a clever device that fused the goals of the national elites with those of the working class and set them against a foreign bogey man.
Again, "exploitation," or privatization of the surplus produced by labor, is defined not by national identity, but by property relations. The proposition that "countries are exploited" is at best a shortcut for saying that "most peopl ein that country are exploited" - but otherwise devoid of empirical meaning.
Wojtek
HK: With respect, your line of reasoning seems to me specious. It starts with the summary of the extraction of surplus value in the nexus of worker-employer. It ends with a simple denial that such relationship can be applied to a state in entirety. It is a little like the views stated above of the impossibility of talking of revenues form India
as they somehow obscure the relation between the peon Indian & her/his Zamindar or whatever. Your second point seems to me a little leap from your first denial of any surplus value you move to asserting that the word imperialist
was added into the stew by Russian interests: WS - I think that adding "imperialism" to the mix, which was done mainly to serve the interests of Russian and affilated national elites competing against Western capitalists, destroyed the concept of economic class and replaced it with the notion of national identity - a clever device that fused the goals of the national elites with those of the working class and set them against a foreign bogey man.
But Wojtek, the terminology of imperiliasm surely did tno derive from Russian interests? By the way, wihihc Russians are we talking about here?
______________________________________________ Digest 2236: Message: 10; Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004; From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
JKS: Yes, it is, if it involves net surplus value transfer under coercive conditions (hereassummed in the miserty bit). When he cared about these thinggs, Roemer used to say taht this kind of example showed that exploitation is not the problem with capitalism; the problem is inequality -- thar the conditions are coercive.
jks
Comment: I was not sure to which point JKS is replying. I also do not know Roemers work. What would/where would you recommend for a lightweight non-economic person to start with? -----------------------------------------End Part 1-------------------------Part 2 got through yesterday..................