In message Sun, 1 Oct 1995 12:14:52 -0700,
wpc@clyder.gn.apc.org (Paul Cockshott) writes:
> Mike
> ----
> Yes, that is true and so one wonders how and where this is to be
> integrated. Perhaps that is book 7. Ie., once we have the picture of the
> capitalist world market, perhaps that is the very point at which it is
> ctearly established that this does not exhaust the world, that something
> exists outside, that it is necessary to consider that which is outside
> and
> then its interactions with the capitalist world economy.
>
> Paul
> ----
> This may be partly a matter of geographical perspective.
> In North America, the assumption that agriculture is capitalist
> and that landed property takes on a specifically capitalist form
> is manifestly reasonable. But South America, the idea that
> non-capitalist social relations are 'outside', would be less
> plausible. Here in Britain, although at the economic level
> the non-capitalist aspects of landed property are slight, things
> like the right of the duchy of Lancaster to the property of
> all who die intestate in the duchy, the cultural effect
> remains considerable. There is a sense in which not only
> has landed property been subordinated to capital, but,
> landed property has culturally subordinated the capitalist
> class.
>
I certainly agree with Paul that one cannot treat non-capitalist
relations as "outside" in the real world. What I meant was that they were
"outside" logically but that there was a point at which it was necessary to
embrace and include them if we were to understand the critical interactions
between capitalism and non-capitalism and thus the two themselves. Where the
examination of non-capitalist relations falls is a question that cannot be
determined arbitrarily in advance. Eg., I argue that the question of
patriarchy emerges as soon as we begin to study the side of wage-labour, ie
as soon as workers are considered as the subject (rather than as that which
stands outside capital); however, clearly, this subject would also come in
the context of an examination of the state within capitalism.
in solidarity,
mike
ps. on the island I am writing from there is not much sign of capitalist
relations although exchange relations (as in the export of an illicit
slbstance as main cash crop) prevail.
---------------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Economics Department, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office: (604) 291-4669; Office fax: (604) 291-5944
Home: (604) 255-0382
Lasqueti Island (current location): (604) 333-8810
e-mail: mlebowit@sfu.ca