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

[Tim]

On Wed, 2007-03-07 at 22:10 -0800, andie nachgeborenen 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_. As Rosa Luxemburg said, we have
> not caught up with Marx yet. And that was 100 years
> ago! Thanks to you Proudhonists, we show no signs of
> doing so.

Woah, I'm no Proudhonist, or I don't think so. I was trying to argue
against Dmytri's (Proudhonist) idea that the existence of an
exploitative class is somehow an interference with a system of free
exchange, which seems to be why he thinks capitalism must involve the
continuous application of force.

I guess I shouldn't have mentioned the use of force in primitive
accumulation, as out of context that does suggest the "armed robbery"
view. But the point I wanted to make was that the existence of free
exchange presupposes class society - that is, the Proudhonist argument
for free exchange is basically an argument for capitalism; in other
words, I agree with you. 

-- 

    "Boredom is the threshold to great deeds."

                                              -- Walter Benjamin