From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Sep 28 2004 - 10:43:18 EDT
Paul C Jerry I have never claimed that the law of value became progressively stronger in a monotonic way throughout history. The collapse of the slave mode of production certainly introduced a shrinkage both of monetary economy, commodity production and labour mobility. As such feudalism was far less influenced by the law of value than was slavery. The retrogression in general economic development associated with the collapse of slavery affected all sorts of areas: the effect of the law of value, the possibility of efficient bureaucracy due the collapse of monetary circulation, general levels of education, technical development, trade, division of labour etc. One sees the same effects both in Western Europe in the late 4th and 5th centuries as in Haiti after the end of slavery at the start of the 19th century. I know that Lynn White, argued that some technologies - iron smelting the stirrup and the uses of legumes in the agricultural cycle, did advance in the immediate transition to feudalism, but it is clear that the general division of labour, trade and commodity production experienced a profound retrogression. I do not hold that real history is one of monotonic progress. There are retrogressions caused by the internal contradictions of modes of production which are not necessarily superseded right away by a more developed mode. ------------------------ Jerry Hi Allin. > > As for social formations where the slave mode of production > > dominated, it makes no sense whatsoever to talk about the effort of > > slaves to leave one sector and enter another in search of a higher > > "return to labor." > No, but it makes good sense (as Paul has already pointed out) to talk > about the masters' reallocating the labour of their slaves in search > of higher return. In relation to the question of whether the law of > value tends to operate, the effect is much the same. I believe there is a disconnect between your theoretical position and your historical claims. It has been your position (and that of Paul C and Ian W. and Howard, I think) that the law of value while not as dominating as under capitalism became *progressively stronger* under pre-capitalist modes of production. Yet what you refer to above -- the ability of slave owners to re-allocate slaves for other purposes -- did not exist *afterwards* under feudalism. Indeed, feudal lords had very limited rights in terms of changing the type of labor performed by serfs. The customs and traditions of the manor generally meant that serfs couldn't be separated from the land or placed in other occupations by the lord (except in some cases to perform military service). In that sense, there were far less limits on the ability of masters under slavery to re-allocate slave labor and, thus, far more limits on the ability of feudal lords to re-allocate the labour of serfs. Moreover, under feudalism there was no meaningful mobility of labor for artisans who were 'locked into' particular (skilled) trades. Furthermore, there were enormous 'barriers to entry' in terms of the mobility of labor _into_ those trades. The above flatly contradicts your perspective that the law of value and the mobility of labor became progressively more pronounced historically. Indeed, for an entire epoch of human history (feudalism) there was _less_ mobility of labor when compared to a more 'primitive' mode of production (slavery). That doesn't sound like a meaningful trans- historical social 'law' or 'tendency' (if there are such things), does it? The real problem with the positing of trans-historical 'laws' is that they obscure our understanding of bourgeois society. Indeed, we saw this in this thread. A claim was made that there was a 'tendency' for wage equalization that was asserted to hold under capitalism. Yet, as Paolo and I have suggested, once the institutional characteristics and dynamics of capitalism are considered, no such 'tendency' can be said to exist. In solidarity, Jerry
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