22 Nov Capitalism, development, and modernities
Posted at 06:44h
in
'Race',
Marx
by maoquai
*notesfrom a bus ride*
The thought that ‘capitalism works’ because it creates jobs where there weren’t any ( n argument that I’ve heard from even my most espoused liberal friends) is a massive failure to understand that this ‘stepping stone’ toward greater productivity is, in fact part and parcel of the reframing of values toward those of a particular kind of ‘modernization’ process which quite denies the space to imagine a different set of values – ones which are embedded in localized knowledges and mores. It takes, as its premise, an uncritical acceptance of capitalism = good, even if the person espouses to not think so. It is a reflectioin, really, of the power of the common senseness of capitalism – that it is a given to represent, in its early and rudimentary phases, something maybe less than desirable, but ultimately better than what already is. It is a presupposition that ‘modernity’ or ‘development’ are natural life courses toward prosperity – but prosperity of what? Certainly not a prosperity of the soul if what is necessary for this evolution is an utter lack of consciousness of the exploitation – the consciousness which must eventually emerge to bring about the post – capitalist phase of development. This is, as Chakrabartty begins to point out, where Marx got it wrong. Marx assumes that all of civilization must some how reach out of barbarity through the development of abstracted labour – that cornerstone of capitalism, where the worker is completely alienated from his or her work.
This abstraction becomes, in this supposed ‘natural progression,’ evaluable through currency. So… If taking capitalism as the STARTiNG point, then it is only natural to assume that ‘every one gets a little something, and isn’t that better than nothing?’ Unequivocally, no. Especially in light of the fact that there is no ‘starry-eyed idealism’ (Chakrabarty, p. 43) driving foreign economic investment, rather, it is the vicious exploitative nature of capitalist expansion, alone, that pushes for, for instance, sweatshops in Indonesia, EPZs in China, Maquiladoras in Mexico. There is no benevolence meant there, and there is none felt. Don’t let’s be fooled by our own misguided attachment to neoliberal ideals.
Which brings me to, as always, Haiti. I have read over and over that Haitian people are ‘lazy’ (indeed, that anyone of any skin color not white, that anyone not of a middle or upper economic SES are, that mothers are… And on and on), but perhaps, and I’m only guessing, I have no empirical data to even begin to support my thesis, that there is a resistance to exploitation that is far more admirable than going along on the ‘forced march” (as one wonderful teacher used to call it – the automatic falling into line of ‘doing all the right things’, as good neoliberal subjects). But can we make that presumption without simply giving an inappropriate read from afar, no better than those who would insist that it is simply laziness…? So I daren’t posit that.
So the question arises, then, what of the growth of the health and development industry? Has it too, once the starry-eyed idealism, been crushed under the weight of its own need to be right? To produce its own legacy?
ryan burns
Posted at 10:20h, 24 NovemberWas this Chakrabarty piece Provincializing Europe? Or another one?
maoquai
Posted at 03:25h, 27 NovemberIt was Provincializing Europe. Sorry for the long delay getting back to you – i wanted to cross reference my notes. It looks like i wrote this while i was re-reading the introduction and chapter 1. Chapter 2 gets much more entangled, i think, in some of the thoughts i was trying to get out of my head in a haze on the bus.