[lbo-talk] Understanding _Capital_ (Was Re: barbaric)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/8/07, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, yes, primitive accumulation is in the antechamber
> to capitalism. Once you get through the door, however,
> guns are replaced by contracts. You Proudhonists have
> resisted this elementary Marxist point for over 150
> years, insisting that capitalism is armed robbery
> (worse, calling this the Marxist view!), selecting
> quoting out of contexts the passages where Marx talks
> about force, and ignoring the analysis of Capital.
> Yes, Yoshie, I know that at the edges capitalism
> depends on armed force --as I said earlier, Weber,
> Nozick, Hayek, would all agree. But that's not how
> capitalism _works_.

You are confusing two different things: theory of what makes
capitalism what it is, unlike previous modes of production, and
analysis of what maintains the conditions of capitalist production in
the real world on the global scale are two different things.
Recognizing that force is essential to the latter doesn't make one
subscribe to the idea that labor alone creates all wealth, etc.  That
ought to be elementary.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
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