The Accumulation Of Capital Part 33

Though prices for farm produce were rising, the tenant farmer was more and more rapidly stepping into the shoes of the independent farmer. And although much more than one-third of all farmers in the Union are now tenant farmers, their social status in the United States is that of the agricultural labourer in Europe. Constantly fluctuating, they are indeed wage-slaves of capital; they work very hard to create wealth for capital, getting nothing in return but a miserable and precarious existence.

In quite a different historical setting, in South Africa, the same process shows up even more clearly the 'peaceful methods' by which capital competes with the small commodity producer.

In the Cape Colony and the Boer Republics, pure peasant economy prevailed until the sixties of the last century. For a long time the Boers had led the life of animal-tending nomads; they had killed off or driven out the Hottentots and Kaffirs with a will in order to deprive them of their most valuable pastures. In the eighteenth century they were given invaluable a.s.sistance by the plague, imported by s.h.i.+ps of the East India Company, which frequently did away with entire Hottentot tribes whose lands then fell to the Dutch immigrants. When the Boers spread further East, they came in conflict with the Bantu tribes and initiated the long period of the terrible Kaffir wars. These G.o.d-fearing Dutchmen regarded themselves as the Chosen People and took no small pride in their old-fas.h.i.+oned Puritan morals and their intimate knowledge of the Old Testament; yet, not content with robbing the natives of their land, they built their peasant economy like parasites on the backs of the Negroes, compelling them to do slave-labour for them and corrupting and enervating them deliberately and systematically. Liquor played such an important part in this process, that the prohibition of spirits in the Cape Colony could not be carried through by the English government because of Puritan opposition. There were no railways until 1859, and Boer economy in general and on the whole remained patriarchal and based on natural economy until the sixties. But their patriarchal att.i.tude did not deter the Boers from extreme brutality and harshness. It is well known that Livingstone complained much more about the Boers than about the Kaffirs. The Boers considered the Negroes an object, destined by G.o.d and Nature to slave for them, and as such an indispensable foundation of their peasant economy. So much so that their answer to the abolition of slavery in the English colonies in 1836 was the 'Great Trek', although there the owners had been compensated with 3,000,000.

By way of the Orange River and Vaal, the Boers emigrated from the Cape Colony, and in the process they drove the Matabele to the North, across the Limpopo, setting them against the Makalakas. Just as the American farmer had driven the Red Indian West before him under the impact of capitalist economy, so the Boer drove the Negro to the North. The 'Free Republics' between the Orange River and the Limpopo thus were created as a protest against the designs of the English bourgeoisie on the sacred right of slavery. The tiny peasant republics were in constant guerilla warfare against the Bantu Negroes. And it was on the backs of the Negroes that the battle between the Boers and the English government, which went on for decades, was fought. The Negro question, i.e. the emanc.i.p.ation of the Negroes, ostensibly aimed at by the English bourgeoisie, served as a pretext for the conflict between England and the republics. In fact, peasant economy and great capitalist colonial policy were here competing for the Hottentots and Kaffirs, that is to say for their land and their labour power. Both compet.i.tors had precisely the same aim: to subject, expel or destroy the coloured peoples, to appropriate their land and press them into service by the abolition of their social organisations. Only their methods of exploitation were fundamentally different. While the Boers stood for out-dated slavery on a petty scale, on which their patriarchal peasant economy was founded, the British bourgeoisie represented modern large-scale capitalist exploitation of the land and the natives. The Const.i.tution of the Transvaal (South African) Republic declared with crude prejudice: 'The People shall not permit any equality of coloured persons with white inhabitants, neither in the Church nor in the State.'[398]

In the Orange Free State and in the Transvaal no Negro was allowed to own land, to travel without papers or to walk abroad after sunset. Bryce tells us of a case where a farmer, an Englishman as it happened, in the Eastern Cape Colony had flogged his Kaffir slave to death. When he was acquitted in open court, his neighbours escorted him home to the strains of music. The white man frequently maltreated his free native labourers after they had done their work--to such an extent that they would take to flight, thus saving the master their wages.

The British government employed precisely the opposite tactics. For a long time it appeared as protector of the natives; flattering the chieftains in particular, it supported their authority and tried to make them claim a right of disposal over their land. Wherever it was possible, it gave them owners.h.i.+p of tribal land, according to well-tried methods, although this flew in the face of tradition and of the actual social organisation of the Negroes. All tribes in fact held their land communally, and even the most cruel and despotic rulers such as the Matabele Chieftain Lobengula merely had the right as well as the duty to allot every family a piece of land which they could only retain so long as they cultivated it. The ultimate purpose of the British government was clear: long in advance it was preparing for land robbery on a grand scale, using the native chieftains themselves as tools. But in the beginning it was content with the 'pacification' of the Negroes by extensive military actions. Up to 1879 were fought 9 b.l.o.o.d.y Kaffir wars to break the resistance of the Bantus.

British capital revealed its real intentions only after two important events had taken place: the discovery of the Kimberley diamond fields in 1869-70, and the discovery of the gold mines in the Transvaal in 1882-5, which initiated a new epoch in the history of South Africa. Then the British South Africa Company, that is to say Cecil Rhodes, went into action. Public opinion in England rapidly swung over, and the greed for the treasures of South Africa urged the British government on to drastic measures. South Africa was suddenly flooded with immigrants who had hitherto only appeared in small numbers--immigration having been deflected to the United States. But with the discovery of the diamond and gold fields, the numbers of white people in the South African colonies grew by leaps and bounds: between 1885 and 1895, 100,000 British had immigrated into Wit.w.a.tersrand alone. The modest peasant economy was forthwith pushed into the background--the mines, and thus the mining capital, coming to the fore. The policy of the British government veered round abruptly. Great Britain had recognised the Boer Republics by the Sand River Agreement and the Treaty of Bloemfontein in the fifties. Now her political might advanced upon the tiny republics from every side, occupying all neighbouring districts and cutting off all possibility of expansion. At the same time the Negroes, no longer protected favourites, were sacrificed. British capital was steadily forging ahead. In 1868, Britain took over the rule of Basutoland--only, of course, because the natives had 'repeatedly implored' her to do so.[399] In 1871, the Wit.w.a.tersrand diamond fields, or West Griqualand, were seized from the Orange Free State and turned into a Crown Colony.

In 1879, Zululand was subjected, later to become part of the Natal Colony; in 1885 followed the subjection of Bechua.n.a.land, to be joined to the Cape Colony. In 1888 Britain took over Matabele and Mashonaland, and in 1889 the British South Africa Company was given a Charter for both these districts, again, of course, only to oblige the natives and at their request.[400] Between 1884 and 1887, Britain annexed St. Lucia Bay and the entire East Coast as far as the Portuguese possessions. In 1894, she subjected Tongaland. With their last strength, the Matabele and Mashona fought one more desperate battle, but the Company, with Rhodes at the head, first liquidated the rising in blood and at once proceeded to the well-tried measure for civilising and pacifying the natives: two large railways were built in the rebellious district.

The Boer Republics were feeling increasingly uncomfortable in this sudden stranglehold, and their internal affairs as well were becoming completely disorganised. The overwhelming influx of immigrants and the rising tides of the frenzied new capitalist economy now threatened to burst the barriers of the small peasant states. There was indeed a blatant conflict between agricultural and political peasant economy on the one hand, and the demands and requirements of the acc.u.mulation of capital on the other. In all respects, the republics were quite unable to cope with these new problems. The constant danger from the Kaffirs, no doubt regarded favourably by the British, the unwieldy, primitive administration, the gradual corruption of the _volksraad_ in which the great capitalists got their way by bribery, lack of a police force to keep the undisciplined crowds of adventurers in some semblance of order, the absence of labour legislation for regulating and securing the exploitation of the Negroes in the mines, lack of water supplies and transport to provide for the colony of 100,000 immigrants that had suddenly sprung up, high protective tariffs which increased the cost of labour for the capitalists, and high freights for coal--all these factors combined towards the sudden and stunning bankruptcy of the peasant republics.

They tried, obstinately and unimaginatively, to defend themselves against the sudden eruption of capitalism which engulfed them, with an incredibly crude measure, such as only a stubborn and hide-bound peasant brain could have devised: they denied all civic rights to the _uitlanders_ who outnumbered them by far and who stood for capital, power, and the trend of the time. In those critical times it was an ill-omened trick. The mismanagement of the peasant republics caused a considerable reduction of dividends, on no account to be put up with.

Mining capital had come to the end of its tether. The British South Africa Company built railroads, put down the Kaffirs, organised revolts of the _uitlanders_ and finally provoked the Boer War. The bell had tolled for peasant economy. In the United States, the economic revolution had begun with a war, in South Africa war put the period to this chapter. Yet in both instances, the outcome was the same: capital triumphed over the small peasant economy which had in its turn come into being on the ruins of natural economy, represented by the natives'

primitive organisations. The domination of capital was a foregone conclusion, and it was just as hopeless for the Boer Republics to resist as it had been for the American farmer. Capital officially took over the reins in the new South African Union which replaced the small peasant republics by a great modern state, as envisaged by Cecil Rhodes'

imperialist programme. The new conflict between capital and labour had superseded the old one between British and Dutch. One million white exploiters of both nations sealed their touching fraternal alliance within the Union with the civil and political disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of five million coloured workers. Not only the Negroes of the Boer Republics came away empty-handed, but the natives of the Cape Colony, whom the British government had at one time granted political equality, were also deprived of some of their rights. And this n.o.ble work, culminating under the imperialist policy of the Conservatives in open oppression, was actually to be finished by the Liberal Party itself, amid frenzied applause from the 'liberal cretins of Europe' who with sentimental pride took as proof of the still continuing creative vigour and greatness of English liberalism the fact that Britain had granted complete self-government and freedom to a handful of whites in South Africa.

The ruin of independent craftsmans.h.i.+p by capitalist compet.i.tion, no less painful for being soft-pedalled, deserves by rights a chapter to itself.

The most sinister part of such a chapter would be out-work under capitalism;--but we need not dwell on these phenomena here.

The general result of the struggle between capitalism and simple commodity production is this: after subst.i.tuting commodity economy for natural economy, capital takes the place of simple commodity economy.

Non-capitalist organisations provide a fertile soil for capitalism; more strictly: capital feeds on the ruins of such organisations, and although this non-capitalist _milieu_ is indispensable for acc.u.mulation, the latter proceeds at the cost of this medium nevertheless, by eating it up. Historically, the acc.u.mulation of capital is a kind of metabolism between capitalist economy and those pre-capitalist methods of production without which it cannot go on and which, in this light, it corrodes and a.s.similates. Thus capital cannot acc.u.mulate without the aid of non-capitalist organisations, nor, on the other hand, can it tolerate their continued existence side by side with itself. Only the continuous and progressive disintegration of non-capitalist organisations makes acc.u.mulation of capital possible.

The premises which are postulated in Marx's diagram of acc.u.mulation accordingly represent no more than the historical tendency of the movement of acc.u.mulation and its logical conclusion. The acc.u.mulative process endeavours everywhere to subst.i.tute simple commodity economy for natural economy. Its ultimate aim, that is to say, is to establish the exclusive and universal domination of capitalist production in all countries and for all branches of industry.

Yet this argument does not lead anywhere. As soon as this final result is achieved--in theory, of course, because it can never actually happen--acc.u.mulation must come to a stop. The realisation and capitalisation of surplus value become impossible to accomplish. Just as soon as reality begins to correspond to Marx's diagram of enlarged reproduction, the end of acc.u.mulation is in sight, it has reached its limits, and capitalist production is _in extremis_. For capital, the standstill of acc.u.mulation means that the development of the productive forces is arrested, and the collapse of capitalism follows inevitably, as an objective historical necessity. This is the reason for the contradictory behaviour of capitalism in the final stage of its historical career: imperialism.

Marx's diagram of enlarged reproduction thus does not conform to the conditions of an acc.u.mulation in actual progress. Progressive acc.u.mulation cannot be reduced to static interrelations and interdependence between the two great departments of social production (the departments of producer and consumer goods), as the diagram would have it. Acc.u.mulation is more than an internal relations.h.i.+p between the branches of capitalist economy; it is primarily a relations.h.i.+p between capital and a non-capitalist environment, where the two great departments of production sometimes perform the acc.u.mulative process on their own, independently of each other, but even then at every step the movements overlap and intersect. From this we get most complicated relations, divergencies in the speed and direction of acc.u.mulation for the two departments, different relations with non-capitalist modes of production as regards both material elements and elements of value, which we cannot possibly lay down in rigid formulae. Marx's diagram of acc.u.mulation is only the theoretical reflection of the precise moment when the domination of capital has reached its limits, and thus it is no less a fiction than his diagram of simple reproduction, which gives the theoretical formulation for the point of departure of capitalist acc.u.mulation. The precise definition of capitalist acc.u.mulation and its laws lies somewhere in between these two fictions.

FOOTNOTES:

[376] Until recently, in China the domestic industries were widely practised even by the bourgeoisie and in such large and ancient towns as Ningpo with its 300,000 inhabitants. 'Only a generation ago, the family's shoes, hats, s.h.i.+rts, etc., were made by the women themselves.

At that time, it was practically unheard-of for a young woman to buy from a merchant what she could have made with the labour of her own hands' (Dr. Nyok-Ching Tsur, 'Forms of Industry in the Town of Ningpo'

(_Die gewerblichen Betriebsformen der Stadt Ningpo_), Tuebingen, 1909, p. 51).

[377] Admittedly, this relation is reversed in the last stages of the history of peasant economy when capitalist production has made its full impact. Once the small peasants are ruined, the entire work of farming frequently devolves on the women, old people and children, while the men are made to work for their living for capitalist entrepreneurs in the domestic industries or as wage-slaves in the factories. A typical instance is the small peasant in Wuerttemberg.

[378] W. A. Peffer, _The Farmer's Side. His Troubles and Their Remedy_ (New York, 1891), Part ii, 'How We Got Here', chap. i, 'Changed Conditions of the Farmer', pp. 56-7. Cf. also A. M. Simmons, _The American Farmer_ (2nd edition, Chicago, 1906), pp. 74 ff.

[379] Report of the U.S.A. Commissioner of Agriculture for the year 1867 (Was.h.i.+ngton, 1868). Quoted by Lafargue: _Getreidebau und Getreidehandel in den Vereinigten Staaten_ in _Die Neue Zeit_ (1885), p. 344. This essay on grain cultivation and the grain trade in the U.S.A. was first published in a Russian periodical in 1883.

[380] 'The three Revenue Acts of June 30, 1864, practically formed one measure, and that probably the greatest measure of taxation which the world has seen.... The Internal Revenue Act was arranged, as Mr. David A. Wells has said, on the principle of the Irishman at Donnybrook Fair: "whenever you see a head, hit it, whenever you see a commodity, tax it"'

(F. W. Taussig, _The Tariff History of the United States_ (New York-London, 1888), pp. 163-4).

[381] Ibid., pp. 166-7.

[382] 'The necessity of the situation, the critical state of the country, the urgent need of revenue, may have justified this haste, which, it is safe to say, is unexampled in the history of civilised countries' (Taussig, op. cit., p. 168).

[383] Peffer, op. cit., pp. 58 ff.

[384] Ibid., p. 6.

[385] 'Agricultural Compet.i.tion in North America' (_Die landwirtschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas_) Leipzig, 1887, p. 431.

[386] Lafargue, op. cit., p. 345.

[387] The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labour (Was.h.i.+ngton, 1899) tables the advantages of machinery methods over hand methods so far achieved as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------- _Labour time per unit_ --------------------------- _Type of work_ _Machine_ _Hand_ -------------+------------- _hrs._ _min._ _hrs._ _min._ ------------------------------------+------+------+------+------ Planting small corn -- 327 10 55 Harvesting and thres.h.i.+ng small corn 1 -- 46 40 Planting corn -- 375 6 15 Cutting corn 3 45 5 -- Sh.e.l.ling corn -- 36 66 40 Planting cotton 1 3 8 48 Cultivating cotton 12 5 60 -- Mowing gra.s.s (scythe _v._ mower) 1 06 7 20 Harvesting and baling hay 11 34 35 30 anting potatoes 1 25 15 -- anting tomatoes 1 4 10 -- Cultivating and harvesting tomatoes 134 52 324 20 ----------------------------------------------------------------

[388] Wheat exports from the Union to Europe:

_Year_ _Million bushels_ _Year_ _Million bushels_

1868-9 179 1885-6 577 1874-5 718 1890-1 551 1879-80 1532 1899-1900 1019

(Juraschek's _Uebersichten der Weltwirtschaft_, vol. vii, part i, p.

32).

Simultaneously, the price per bushel wheat _loco_ farm (in cents) declined as follows:

1870-9 105 1896 73 1880-9 83 1897 81 1895 51 1898 58

Since 1899, when it had reached the low level of 58 cents per bushel, the price is moving up again:

1900 62 1903 78 1901 62 1904 92 1902 63

(Ibid., p. 18).

According to the 'Monthly Returns on External Trade' (_Monatliche Nachweise uber den Auswartigen Handel_), the price (in marks) per 1,000 _kg._, was in June 1912:

Berlin 22782 London 17096 New York 17808 Odessa 17394 Mannheim 24793 Paris 24369

[389] Peffer, op. cit., part i, 'Where We Are', chap, ii, 'Progress of Agriculture', pp. 30-1.

[390] Ibid., p. 4.

[391] Sering, op. cit., p. 433.

[392] Peffer, op. cit., pp. 34 f.

[393] Quoted by Nikolayon, op. cit., p. 224.

[394] 49,199 people immigrated to Canada in 1902. In 1912, the number of immigrants was more than 400,000--138,000 of them British, and 134,000 American. According to a report from Montreal, the influx of American farmers continued into the spring of the present year [1912].