Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 165)

غرض

عنوان

Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production (ص 165)

المحتوى

These elements allow us to construct the concept of
sharecropping as a distinct form of production unit with
Specific sets of relations of production.
Commentators, such as Fatimah Halim, are I believe mistaken
when they consider that the appropriation of the economic
surplus 18 based on a form of "forced labour". Halim has
argued that:
"Lacking access to the means of production, labour
is forced to sell its power ina system of low
renumeration. The price of labour within the
sharecropping system has no determinate level. It
is the outcome of relations of servitude existing
within the village." (22)
This passage reveals a gross misunderstanding of Marx's
notion of free and unfree labour. For Marx, labour (in the
capitalist mode of production) is free in a dual sense.
First, the labourer is "freed" from ownership of the means of
Production, i.e. s/he is legally alienated from the means of
production. Second, the only force making the labourer
return to her/his workplace each day is the economic need to
feed and clothe her/himself and her/his family. Economic
freedom is, if you will, the proletarian state of existential
dread. In general, the proletarian enters the factory because
s/he has no means of economic existence other than the sale
of her/his labour power. Unfree labour, on the other hand,
is labour which is forced by "extra-economic" compulsion to
work. This is labour which is forced to work on threat of
violence, normally military and most commonly, sanctified by
law and social convention. Two notable examples of unfree
151

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Realist Methodology and the Articulation of Modes of Production

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المنشئ

Alex Pollock

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