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Why is it that Marx implies American settlers had proletarian backgrounds in Ch.33 of Capital, but Sakai asserts they were far from it? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Marx:

Today's wage-labourer is tomorrow's independent peasant or artisan, working for himself. He vanishes from the labour market - but not into the workhouse.

Sakai:

A study of roughly 10,000 settlers who left Bristol from 1654-85 shows that less than 15% were proletarian

many English farmers and artisans couldn't face the prospect of being forced down into the position of wage-labor.

Is it the difference of time periods? I just noticed now that the time period Sakai is talking would be a pretty early period of colonization, wouldn't it? So it may be that by Marx's time of writing (late 1860s-early 70s?) it was proletarians headed to America and had been in recent historical memory?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Sakai's quote reads like he is saying that <15% of 10k settlers who were leaving Europe were proleterian in Europe before they left for America. I think you understood that but wanted to reiterate just in case.

Marx's quote doesn't imply that most settlers were proletarian before they left their home countries. He is just saying that the overadundance of capital in the America due to the forced disposession of indigenous land and the short supply of labour in relation created a phenomenon where where former-wage labourers could become independent peasants and artisans. So even those settlers who had proletarian background could become petite bourgeois. This is still true today in the case of the Zionist freaks who move to illegal Palestianian settlements.

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