From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Tue Apr 20 2004 - 10:16:35 EDT
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Additional note [on VFT] From: "Jur Bendien" <bendien88@lycos.com> Date: Tue, April 20, 2004 9:56 am Paul Zarembka asked about the expansion of capital involving non-capitalist modes of production. That is certainly relevant, since original accumulation (ursprungliche Akkumulation) which is also sometimes called primitive accumulation is a process which occurs all the time, i.e. it is a permanent characteristic of capitalism as a mode of market expansion. But the specific mode of destruction of non-capitalist property relations and their transformation into capitalist property relations, through robbery, plunder, looting, enslavement, debt, usury etc. is not something we can directly infer from the structure of the capitalist mode of production. Many different forms of replacing non-capitalist modes of production with capitalist ones are possible, and I think they mostly cannot be directly deduced from the defining characteristics of capitalism as a mode of production, they are historically contingent and depend on historically emergent power relations. In Marx's own time, Edward Gibbon Wakefield had a plan for the "systematic colonisation" of New Zealand; today we have the corporate transformation of Iraq on the basis of Pentagon blue-prints. The basic point to be made here is that e.g. looting and other forms of criminal disposession for the purpose of stimulating private capital accumulation are rarely a form of unequal exchange, or exchange of any sort, because property is simply confiscated and the victims get nothing. But the foundational principle of bourgeois society is not theft, but the ability to make money out of the labour of others through a system of contractual obligations within a legal system, which justifies the fact that some people gain more from trade than others do. This is also reflected historically in ideas of bourgeois morality and legality; there are legitimate and illegitimate ways of making money, and then the moral controversy centres on which ways can be justified and are compatible with the principles of fair competition. Thus e.g. legalised theft is permissible, only if it means everybody will be better off for it. Theft can be juridically redefined such that it is not theft but a legitimate form of trade. This is also how the invasion of Iraq has been justfied; okay, you have to dispense with legal niceties, and conquer this country, fight a war, dispossess some people, but, everybody will be better off in the end, when the civilising mission of imperialism has been completed (cf. Gregory P. Nowell, "Hobson's Imperialism: A Defense"). As regards "materiality", an interesting discussion of the cultural implications of its redefinition in modern society can be found in N. Katherine Hayles, "How we became posthuman", chapter 8: The materiality of informatics. Regards Jurriaan ____________________________________________________________ Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10
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