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Re: [ox-en] Primacy of Contract WAS Re: Primacy of State



On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Adam Moran wrote:
what about the capitalist mode of production ? the serf class are fed up
(fix and fertig ) with the landlords / guild masters, and get lured into
a better contract with merchant capital ... on the understanding that
they produce commodities, re-produce the capital invested and produce
profit for the capitalist ... the capitalist mode of production is born

Except that wasn't how capitalism was born. Capitalism was created (in
England) by laws that forced peasants off their land (enclosures),
prohibited them from hunting (game laws) and prohibited unemployment
(vagrancy and poor laws). Then either other countries followed suit on
their own, or the cheap products that capitalism created flooded the
foreign markets, opened by military power, and forced the population into
poverty and the labour market.

The introduction of capitalism was resisted both passively (vagrancy) and
violently (Luddism), and cannot be said in any way to have constituted a
'contract'. (I recommend reading Karl Polanyi's excellent The Great
Transformation.)

So the habit of forcing proprietary solutions down people's throats cannot
be said to be a recent invention ;-)

  - Per

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