Re: [ox-en] Re: Superior results? (was: Re: [ox-en] Free Software and social move
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:31:43 +0100
Dmytri Kleiner writes:
Hobsbawn shows clearly that this made possible as result of the
existence of a precarious landless proletariat as a result of
the enclosures and the poor laws, the availability of cheap
cotton produced in colonial slave plantations and the
ban on cotton textile imports.
Capitalism works by employing violence to control markets
and exploit labour.
It was exactly Hobsbawn from whom I learned in a lecture that he gave in
Vienna in the Institute of advanced studies in the seventies, that all
these measures were intentionally set by a large portion of the English
Gentry who was allready geared towards capitalist mode of production.
Hobsbawn explained that - before that happened - Adam Smiths "Wealth of
Nations" had successfully been directed as a propaganda piece towards the
feudal aristocracy. Between the lines one could sum up the message in: "If
you want to continue your feudal wars and comply with new wealth
standards, you need to have a lot of gold to pay your armies and enlarge
your palaces. So I am going to show you a superior mode of production
which delivers much more wealth than your previous tenant system which
just creates a poor agricultural surplus."
Enclosures and poor laws thus cannot be explained without an active role
of the aristocracy, I agree with you that the whole system is based on
structural and open violence, but thats not an argument against Stefans
remark about superiority. Capitalism was favored as mode of production
because it was an efficient wealth - creating mechanism, which equals
accumulation of abstract wealth, gold. And there was no ideological
problem to cut on free trade, thus allow internal accumulation and
increase productivity, to combine aggressive trade with stealing and
plundering and so on.
Some in here assume that SOME owners of property are doing a similar shift
towards peer production today. They are externalising many elements of
production to outside sources because it is incredibly profitable NOT to
organize the whole production process but reap the benefits of
indeppendent producers. the final packaging and branding is of course
exclusive domain of the ones who have the economic means. Here is an
interesting and crucial point: the creation of a class of producers who
are still completely depending on external marketing, but increasingly in
control of their immediate production environment and of an amazing amount
of knowhow and intellectual resources. So they have gained a first active
role by establishing the commons and introducing a new factor into
capitalist competition, convincing lots of firms to build on the commons.
We all agree that exactly in this situation of an external "womb" aka
commons-friendly capitalism there is an amazing potential for this class
to further organize and gain real independence and strength. Only the
"how" seems to be contested.
Franz
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