From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Sep 10 2006 - 10:12:56 EDT
Just quickly, I do not know what Marx had in mind here. I do know Marx & Engels dated the beginning of the "capitalist era" in Western Europe at 1600AD. Various arguments can be made about that, using various criteria. The origin of capital markets (long-term loan money) in North Holland can be traced back to the end of the 14th century, using public authority records that have been preserved - it is quite possible the capital markets originated with public debts (in some cases Dutch state authorities borrowed internationally); the origin of substantive markets for goods can be traced back to the 1200s, a land market existed in the 1400s. Episodic wage labour was already known here in the 1300s. The development of markets occurred hand-in-hand with the development of public authorities and contracting institutions that defined/protected property rights, thus, state and market were "twins" from the very start. I do not subscribe to an orthodox Marxist theory of original accumulation though, because I think these origins involved both the gradual, incremental expansion of markets, expropriation/indebtedness/privatisation, unequal exchange in trade, and state policy. Thus, the question of how the original capitals accumulated is a more complex story than Marx suggests in his brief discussion. The actuality of the problem of original accumulation is however demonstrated e.g. by the UNCTAD report I cited previously. How can you create markets where none or few exist? How can local capital be channeled into job-creating production? This is centrally a problem of property relations and social relations, but this problem is typically expunged from economic theory - it is said to be a "legal" or "socio-political" or "cultural" problem, i.e. an extra-economic "environmental" problem concerning various forces which impede the efficient operation of markets. Basically the economic wisdom here can be summarised by saying is that "you have markets if you have a supply and demand for goods and services with market prices". But that is a bit of a non sequitur. Thus the official reason given for the lack of broadbased capital accumulation in Third World countries is typically the absence of "institutional structures" regulating market trade. A more likely reason is that capital seeks the best returns in the world market such as it exists, and this often negates the requirements of balanced economic growth within a country. Export-led development, which is the true foundation of "globalisation", may enrich a select group of exporters, but does not necessarily benefit the society as a whole, making the whole society wealthier. Specifically, in the Third World you could have a lot of peasants thrown off the land, without this propertyless proletariat becoming employed in industrial production - in part because local industrial production could not compete internationally, in part because the locally accumulated capital was placed in more profitable, less risky but non-productive, non-jobcreating areas, or it left the country. Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Sep 30 2006 - 00:00:06 EDT