From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Sun Nov 26 2006 - 04:50:35 EST
> >I suspect that there is a more basic biological imperative. >Look at the comparative survival and reproduction rates of >slave owners versus non slave owners. The slave owners will >have been better fed and more likely to see their children >survive. This trait is shared with ant slavers. Paul, I suggest that you consult Allin who lives in North Carolina to determine how wildly inaccurate this statement regarding treatment of children is. There were also breeder states in the US. At any rate, while some define capitalism in Weberian fashion as the accumulation of capital by peaceful means, it's probably better described as the maintaining and enlarging of a fund for luxury consumption for a possessing class by means of the valorization of capital and the capitalization of surplus value. Capitalists may well have to decide whether to consume more nor or maintain and increase their consumption base in the future by continued investment, but I agree with Andrew Trigg that there is autonomy to their luxury spending or that their luxury spending is what drives the system. There is no motive to accumulate if that is throttled. Trigg's work is seeming more important to me the more I think about it. Now that luxury fund will allow for higher survival rates, and the keeping of dependants; I still don't think this makes parasitism in ants anything like slavery in which in the US case 'the half black children" were enslaved and some women were turned into breeders of human commodities. Orgiastic and unlimited luxury spending was the driving force behind the capitalist plantations, not reproductive success, relative or otherwise. In other slave systems, sexual pleasure was the driving force or the need for loyal troops free of any counter obligations. I am not against all forms of ethology; I learned from Patrick Bateson's popular book--especially useful insights on prenatal and perinatal care. But entomology has exactly nothing to teach us about slavery dynamics, especially the creation of breeder states. The collapse of the slave trade does and that had many causes again about which entomology has nothing to teach us. On a point of agreement: I think we agree that there is no reason that the exploited surplus value producing work force can't be pinned down by extra economic coercion--as have been slaves, servants in husbandry, contract laborers, those whose wages were with held or paid in scrips, children. There is nothing essentially peaceful about capitalism in the Weberian sense. Rakesh
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