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NAFTA, Capitalism and Alternatives: Debate, V/1
On Thu, 27 Apr 1995, Victor O. Story wrote:
> I agree. If we want to talk about development in realistic terms we are
> talking capitalism. That is why in practical terms, all the weeping and
> teeth grinding over the concept of capitalism is a waste of time.
Victor: If there is one thing people have done very little here, it is
discussing the "concept" of capitalism. Certainly, I haven't heard any
"weeping and teeth grinding". What there has been is a discussion of the
real historical phenomena of capitalism and whether we should say Ya
Basta! and move on to some other, less brutal, ways of organizing society
> We
> should be discussing development, not fixating on how sentimental we feel
> about anti-capitalist rhetoric. Our adolescent memories of righteous
> indignation with the injustices of the world and the attachment of our
> egos to symbols of bygone Marxist heroes and May Day rallies are pathetic
> excuses for serious analysis of problems of ordinary people who live and
> breathe.
>
> Victor
>
Victor: We HAVE been discussing "development". You just don't like what I
have had to say about it. And instead of responding to the arguments made
you have now resorted to rather ugly personal characterizations. This is
not good style Victor. Makes YOU look bad. That little paragraph you just
pinned is called an "ad hominem" attack, i.e., "an attack on an
opponent's character rather than by an answer to his contentions"(Webster)
On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, Victor O. Story wrote:
But I am Marxist in much of my own ideological leanings. My objection is
to the pat, crude Marxism on these lists that is the same old knee-jerk
rhetoric.
Victor: Why is it that you never respond to what I answer? You made this
reference to "old knee-jerk rhetoric" before, and I cited a few examples
of such rhetoric and noted their absence. Where is all this rhetoric you
keep talking about?? You love to say this, with as much contempt as you
can pack into your words, but you never give us any examples. Curious.
As for your assertion that you are a Marxist in your "own ideological
leanings", I wonder what that means, especially since the only kind of
Marxism you seem to recognize is a kind that you despise? What does it
mean to say you are a "Marxist" when you support capitalist development?
"Marxism", as I understand it, is a theory and a politics of critiquing
capitalism within the process of seeking to overthrow it and go beyond
it. The only people I am familiar with who call themselves Marxists while
supporting capitalist development were those like the Italian communist
party hacks who produced a steady stream of Marxist theory and rhetoric,
while supporting not only Italian capitalist investment and containment
of worker struggles but also the vicious political repression of all who
opposed them. I think that if you feel compelled to support capitalist
development because you can't see any alternative, then you should give
up thinking of yourself, or describing yourself as "Marxist". You
obviously have been able to see the dramatic contradiction between the
rhetoric of the old Soviet leadership which called itself Marxist while
exploiting the hell out of the working class. I'm sure you don't want to
get caught in the same contradiction between rhetoric and action.
> All your talk about collective farming seems like it is drawn
>from some sense of heartfelt sympathy, i.e., your tender feelings for
>the poor little peasants, than serious analysis. Have you read the
>studies of the failure of the Mexican ejido system? The idea of
>collective
>farming as an alternative to capitalism is not a new idea. It is what
>the Mexican state, that these so-called leftists on the lists so boldly
>condemn, has been experimenting with since 1920! I study this problem
>seriously, and I find it offensive to have people throw around shallow
>rhetoric in the place of serious analysis based on concrete experience.
Victor: Yes, I have read the studies. And I have read studies of
"collective farming" elsewhere as well. I just come to very different
conclusions than you do, as have many others. In the Soviet Union and
China the state used collective farms to collect the surplus of peasant
production to finance state managed industrialization. In both cases a
highly exploitative system. In Mexico, as I read the story, the situation
was in some ways worse. Land reform was pursued primarily to settle a
restless peasantry, the crumb thrown to them to get them to give up the
revolution they initiated.
I think when you say the Mexican state has been "experimenting with
collective farming since 1920" you are seriously misleading. The
statement gives the impression that the Mexican state through its weight
behind the ejido, when in fact the state sought constantly to undermine
any "collective" character to their operation. The first Ley de Ejidos
in 1920 mandated that all cultivatable land given to Ejidos should be
divided up among individuals --hardly a move designed to "experiment" with
collective operation. In 1925 the Rey de Riegos promoted the formation of
a rural middle class, i.e., small/medium private holders, "as the
strategic key to promoting the establishment of new irrigated areas and
more highly developed agriculture." As is well known beginning in 1934
Cardenas' government stepped up the pace of redistributing land (20
million hectares among 11 thousand ejidos between 1934 and 1940) and "in
principle" the ejido became the core of the agraian economy. Things
looked particularly serious when the government delivered arms to the
campesinos for them to defend their lands. Of course, the same measure
demonstrated how much the government had NOT done to break the power of
the old landlords or to abandon other pressures for "privatization"
(outside individual holdings in the ejido). By 1938, the government was
even taking some land away from the ejidos and giving it back to their
orginal owners. How much land the campesinos got and how much the
landlords lost seems to have been largely a measure of peasant power. In
Zapata's Morelos all the really big haciendas were redistributed. In the
North they were not.
Under Camacho any support for "collectivism" became increasingly
subordinated to "modernization" via private holdings. Even before
that it was the case that the state provided relatively little support
for investment in ejidal or communal land. I'm not arguing that the state
did nothing at all, obviously it did, but it appears to have been far
more concerned with political control than with the development of ejidos.
It is well known, for example in the Northwest that the huge hydraulic
projects the government financed largely bypassed the ejidos
and poured their water into private lands carved out of the desert
(San Joaquin Valley style). It is also worth remembering that as the
Rockefeller investment in Mexican social engineering (first public
health and then agricultural technology to raise output and
stabilize the countryside) began to bear fruit in the form of new,
high yielding wheat varieties, the "developers" directed their new
discoveries to the better-off private farmers. Their "miracle" wheats
prospered in the newly irrigated lands, most of which were private, not
collective operations. They got the new varieties, the fertilizers, the
carefully controlled irrigation, the pesticides, etc. that their poor
ejidal neighbors couldn't afford. They got this, of course, because they
had the money and/or got the credit necessary --credit denied the vast
majority of ejidal producers. What all this history makes clear, as far
as I am concerned, is that the Mexican state, while sometimes overseeing
the redistribution of land to pacify the countryside, has never really
"experimented" in a serious way with "collectivization", i.e., with
supporting communities develop their own autonomous, collective ways of
operating and providing them with the investment support they would need.
Instead the state has supported a land distribution system which has
divided to conquer, which neglected the needs of poor communities while
favoring private agribusiness throughout the post WWII period. The
successes of the "green revolution" of the 1950s and 1960s were almost
entirely private in nature, for the reasons mentioned above. While the
green fields of agribusiness boomed in Sonora and Sinaloa in the North
West,the campesinos of Chiapas and other areas continued to languish in
neglect, largely at the mercy of casciques and landlords, police and
military.
Moreover, the Mexican state has also stood by for decades while land has
been stolen from the ejidos by landowners, failed to provide
protection to campesinos who have fought back, installed and operated
local power structures to obfuscate and frustrate campesinos' legal
efforts to meet their needs. Even in its most rhetorically
pro-collectivization moments (Cardensas late 30s, mid 70s) the state has
either refused to give up control or sought control via top-down
mechanisms. The kind of bottom-up collective self-organization that I
have talked about has NEVER been neither a state objective nor given
state support. Therefore, I conclude, that the "collectivization" which
you say has been "experimented" with and failed, has really been the
state efforts to organize the peasantry in its own interests from above.
> The neoliberals blow us lefties away because they at least know what
>they
>are talking about when they analyze the economy. Collective ejidos are
>a tired old idea! They were tried in Mexico in the 20s, the attempt was
>intensified in the 30s, and what was the problem? They required credit,
>technology, etc, etc, all the components of the capitalist developers
>they were made to overcome. How pitiful!
Victor: As I have just indicated they were NOT "tried". What you say here
makes no sense. "They required credit, technology, etc., etc., all the
components of the capitalist developers they were made to overcome." Of
course, within a larger capitalist framework they needed credit --when
everthing has a price and can only be obtained through the market, of
course you need credit. What is "pitiful" about that? Hand over the
production of agricultural research and input production to the ejidos
then they won't need credit, they'll just produce it for themselves. But
that, of course, was never a question in a capitalist economy --as Mexico
has always been. The ejidos were NOT made to "overcome" the need for
inputs in agriculture, how could they be? They were not even made to
"overcome" capitalist agriculture. As I have briefly indicated above,
and you know well if you really "study these matters seriously" the
state not only never abandoned capitalist agriculture but has actually
given it most of its support. As some have argued, the ejidos appear in
historical retrospect, cutting out all the hype and rhetoric, as
temporary holding pens for the rural population, organized so that they
could partially feed themselves but would still need to resort to wage
labor (e.g., work on the wealthier private farms) and those wages could
be held at ridicuously low levels precisely because they had just
enough land for a milpa or two for partial subsistance.
It should be said that this story is not limited to Mexico. The early
post WWII enthousiasm of American elite policy makers for land reform
(after the loss of China) disappeared quickly whereever they lacked the
military power to totally control the process. Where they did have it
(Japan, S.Korea, Taiwan, Germany) they were able to stabilize the rural
population on the land --until they were needed. Where they did not
have the power they switched to other forms of social engineering and
ultimately technolgical fixes like the Green Revolution grains (India,
Philipines etc.)
======================================
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173
USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 471-3211
Fax: (512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave@mundo.eco.utexas.edu
======================================
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