As soon as capitalist production becomes sustainable, therefore, usury no longer has the effect of simply pauperising the producers and forcing them into slavery. Instead, it simply provides the basis for the primary accumulation of capital.
“Usury centralises property, especially in the form of money, only where the means of production are scattered, that is, where the worker produces more or less independently as a small peasant, a member of a craft guild (small trader), etc.” (p 530)
It does not change this mode of production, but is only parasitic upon it. But, once capitalist production becomes sustainable, usury can no longer operate in that way.
“This kind of usury rests on this particular basis, on this mode of production, which it does not change, to which it attaches itself as a parasite and which it impoverishes. It sucks it dry, enervates it and compels reproduction to be undertaken under constantly more atrocious conditions. Thus the popular hatred of usury, especially under the conditions prevailing in antiquity, where this form of production—in which the conditions of production are the property of the producer—was at the same time the basis of the political relationships, of the independence of the citizen. This comes to an end as soon as the worker no longer possesses any conditions of production. And with it the power of the usurer likewise comes to an end.” (p 531)
Usury was despised, because political and individual freedom was always a function of property ownership. In Antiquity, the Freemen were distinguished from slaves. In the Middle Ages the Yeomen and free-holding peasants were distinguished from serfs and vassals, and, in the towns the independent artisans and members of guilds enjoyed political and individual freedoms based upon their ownership of their means of production. Usury was hated not just because it deprived the producers of their means of production, but also because, in doing so, it deprived them of their political and individual freedom.
“... insofar as slavery predominates or [insofar as] the surplus labour is consumed by the feudal lord and his retainers and they fall prey to the usurer, the mode of production also remains the same, only it becomes more oppressive. The debt-ridden slave-holder or feudal lord squeezes more out because he himself is being squeezed dry. Or, finally, he makes way for the usurer, who becomes a landowner, etc., like the eques, etc., in Ancient Rome. In place of the old exploiter, whose exploitation was to some extent a means of political power, there appears a coarse, money-hunting parvenu. But the mode of production itself remains unchanged.” (p 531)
There is a valuable lesson, here, for the “anti-capitalists”. Each mode of production persists because it reproduces itself, and its conditions of existence. In Antiquity, the slave owner reproduces their slaves, in the same way that a stock breeder reproduces their stock. Their slaves produce a surplus product, so that the slaves themselves are reproduced from their own output – either directly or via the exchange/sale of that output for other products – whilst providing the slave owner with their own means of reproduction. Under feudalism, the land is passed down via primogeniture, into the hands of the next generation, and the peasants hand over their surplus product as rent, from which the landed aristocracy reproduces themselves.
Usury undermines and breaks apart these kinds of reproduction, because it strips wealth from the slave owner and landlord. But, its disruptive and destructive role in doing so is not progressive. It does not, by this disruption, bring about any progressive or revolutionary transformation of the mode of production. Quite the opposite.
“The usurer in all pro-capitalist modes of production has a revolutionary impact only in the political sense, in that he destroys and wrecks the forms of property whose constant reproduction in the same form constitutes the stable basis of the political structure. [The usurer] has a centralising [effect] as well, but only on the basis of the old mode of production, thus leading to the disintegration of society—apart from the slaves, serfs, etc., and their new masters—into a mob. Usury can continue to exist for a long time in Asiatic forms of society without bringing about real disintegration, but merely giving rise to economic decay and political corruption.” (p 531)
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