Ask Lemmygrad

803 readers

14 users here now

A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

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]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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

I'm pretty skeptical of this. First, what does proletarian even mean when capitalism is still in the takeoff stage? Second, who is boarding a packed, disease-ridden sailing ship for a perilous months-long journey besides those with few other options?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

It appears that Sakai's answer is that land hunger was so severe that, yes, petty bourgeois individuals would be willing to endure it to have something like the standard of living they had been used to.

the sons and daughters of the middle class, with experience at agriculture and craft skills, were the ones who thought they had a practical chance in Amerika... What lured Europeans to leave their homes and cross the Atlantic was the chance to share in conquering Indian land.

Here is a quote he takes from ""Social Origins of Some Early Americans". In SMITH, ed., 17th Century America. N.Y., 1972."

Land hunger was rife among all classes. Wealthy clothiers, drapers, and merchants who had done well and wished to set themselves up in land were avidly watching the market, ready to pay almost any price for what was offered. Even prosperous yeomen often could not get the land they desired for their younger sons...It is commonplace to say that land was the greatest inducement the New World had to offer; but it is difficult to overestimate its psychological importance to people in whose minds land had always been identified with security, success and the good things of life.

load more comments (2 replies)