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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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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Second, who is boarding a packed, disease-ridden sailing ship for a perilous months-long journey besides those with few other options?

The diggers and the levellers; both key figures in america, look em up. Religious fundamentalists who wanted freedom for white men and genocide for everyone else. They split from there lords over the contradiction of 'you shall not kill' in christians conciding with the class conciousness emerging in the serf class as they slowly began to read.

That was one of the first questions that they asked 'if it says here you cant kill but you killed to gain the land we serfs work then you are not holy' basically.