Pericles, 495 – 429 BC
CHAPTER I
Pre-Capitalist Relations of Production
Work is Central to Our Existence and Who We Are
Modern human beings have existed for
at least 50,000 years. About 11,000 years ago, our ancestors learned to grow
crops and raise animals. Today, almost all adults still spend most of their
waking hours hard at work earning a living and raising their children. The
struggle to pay for housing, food, medical care, schooling, transportation,
etc. still dominates our lives. All over the world, workers still exert their
physical, mental, and emotional efforts, sometimes up to 14 or 16 hours per
day, often 6 or 7 days per week, producing, transporting, growing, selling,
serving, cleaning, and creating. Work is indeed central to our existence and
identity.
It is through work that we build
human civilization. Our work changes the “object” of our labor, whatever that
object may be. A barber improves the customer’s appearance; the farmer helps
the crop grow; the bus driver moves passengers from one place to another; the
electronics assembler makes a computer from parts; the theoretical scientist
increases our knowledge.
Human beings are social animals and
tool-using animals. These two characteristics shape the way we work. We
work together to gather and reshape nature’s resources, and we use means
(tools) and methods of production that other human beings have already
produced. Our work creates goods and services for immediate consumption and
semi-finished products and tools/machinery for future production.
Now, in the 21st century,
all work is part of an elaborate worldwide division of labor in which each of
our efforts is a tiny but significant part of a mighty production and
distribution system that enables seven billion people to live and reproduce.
Pre-Capitalist Relations of Production
To understand any society, we must
understand both the technical level (means and processes) of production
and the relations of production. “Relations of production” refers
to the relationships between the major
groups (classes) of people in the production and circulation
of goods and services (production
process).
Relations of production change, just
as means and processes do. The dominant (main) production relationship in a
society gives its name to the society. So far, humans have built hunting and
gathering, slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist societies. Different
relations of production instill different belief systems (ideologies),
laws, and customs. The transition periods, when competing relations of
production battle for dominance, are times of great class struggle and
instability. The winning set of production relations will shape human
consciousness and behavior for a long time to come.
Hunting and gathering was
the earliest type of production. People had Stone Age technology, so they could
not regularly produce and store a surplus (extra, for later use). Means
of production were primitive tools (hatchets, arrows, throwing tools) made
from stone, bone, and wood. Anthropologists theorize that the main division of
labor was between women (mostly gatherers) and men (mostly hunters), and that relations
of production were mainly cooperative.
Slavery appeared in
human history at the start of the Bronze Age, which began about 3300 BCE
(Before the Common Era) in Asia and the Middle East. Slave owner/slave
relations of production became dominant when slaves produced a surplus on a
regular basis. This occurred when humankind grew crops and domesticated wild
animals into herds. Slavery is a form of exploitation, in that the
slave’s owner appropriates the surplus. The production relationship between
slave and slave owner is “antagonistic,” as opposed to “cooperative.”
Slavery likely existed in every
ancient civilization, from the Middle East to China and India, in Africa,
Europe and the Americas. On an intermittent basis, it even continued as feudal
and then capitalist production relations became dominant. For example, until
the US Civil War abolished slavery in 1865, both slave and capitalist relations
of production competed for dominance in the United States. Their ideologies,
legal systems, and customs also competed.
Within slave societies, other
relations of production also existed. Non-exploitative relations of production
included self-employment for the family (peasants, artisans) as well as hunting
and gathering for the clan. Class-based (exploitative) relations of production
included feudal (lords/serfs) and capitalist (employers/wage-laborers).
In the modern era, slavery was
outlawed in Russia (1723), Germany (1822), Mexico (1829), Britain (1834),
Tunisia (1846), United States (1865), Brazil (1888), China (1910), Iraq (1924),
Saudi Arabia and Yemen (1962). The world is now officially free of slavery, as Mauritania
abolished slavery in 1981. However, the effects of slavery are still felt. For
example, in the United States, 150 years after a bloody civil war ended
slavery, racially discriminatory attitudes and practices remain. And, as United
Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recently stated, “Debts, trafficking in
humans, sexual exploitation, child work, forced marriages and children soldier
recruitment [continue] as contemporary tactics for slavery.”[i]
Feudalism and feudal
production relations came to dominate in Asia, Europe, and elsewhere during the
Middle Ages. Feudalism appeared in China as early as 1122 B.C.E. and in Europe
from about 900 A.D.
Feudal relations of production are
between landowners (king, nobility, church, non-cleric landlords) and serfs
(peasants). The landowners are “masters.” Serfs are “servants,” primarily
agricultural workers who are partly slave and partly free. The serfs lived on
their masters’ land and were required to farm it without compensation, and
feudal law prohibited them from leaving. They farmed some land for themselves
but were required to pay taxes of 50% or more on production from that land.
Serfs also had to serve in their masters’ armies and labor on their rulers’
construction projects, such as irrigation systems, temples and churches,
castles, military fortifications, and burial chambers.
In feudal societies, serfdom
co-existed with slave labor, wage labor, tenant farming, independent peasantry,
free artisans, mercantile capitalists, long-term apprentices, and hunting and
gathering.
France
abolished serfdom in 1789, Russia in 1905, and China in 1911 with the Xinhai
Revolution. However, feudalism’s influence over people’s lives carried forward.
For example, the feudal belief that nobility are entitled by God to rule
society carries over to the capitalist notion that the wealthy are wealthy
because they are the best, smartest, most capable people.
|
Discussion Questions
1. Which
type of worker is more productive, a slave or a serf? Discuss.
2. Describe
two ideas that you think slave owners used to strengthen slavery.
3. Describe feudal ideas that have
carried over to capitalism and/or socialism in your country.
[i] March 25, 2012, United
Nations, “First International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery
and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Post a Comment