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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 6 months ago by hongdao@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmygrad@lemmygrad.ml

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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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[–] ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 6 months ago

Id say the reason in difference is just perspective, Sakai is writing from the perspective of someone whos family was in a Japanese interminent camp on American soil and lived thru the jim crow era as an ethnic minority, hes going to have a more cynical (and modern) perspective on it.