I. Peasants and Proletarians

A. Green Revolution since 1970: wealthy peasants buy out poorer ones, growing gap between haves and have nots
B. Legacy of history: partial proletarianization of most peasants in Cauca Valley
C. Peasants

1. control means of production
2. use cash
3. sell in order to meet qualitatively defined needs
4. recruit labor through kinship, ties of mutual obligation, reciprocity
5. see an organic unity between people and things

D. Capitalist proletarians

1. no control over means of production
2. use capital to invest in production, production itself becomes the goal of labor
3. labor based on contract, exploitation
4. goal of work is to accumulate surplus
5. things dominate people

E. 1970s: transition from peasant to proletarian is partial, incomplete

1. Most people have some land, work it according to non-capitalist principles

a. Divisions of labor by age or sex weren't clearly defined
b. Kinship used to mobilize surplus labor during peak production periods

2. Mutual dependence between peasant and proletarian systems of production

a. Plantation owners don't have to pay enough to cover food and housing
b. Peasants need supplemental income, not enough land

F. Today: neocolonial economic development

 

II. The Devil and Proletarian Peasants

A. Male plantation workers make contracts with devil to increase production

1. Wealth can't be used productively
2. Wealth must be spent immediately
3. Sugarcane won't grow again
4. Frequency of contracts less important to Taussig than widespread belief in their existence

B. Devil pacts symbolize neo-proletarian consciousness of exploitation
C. Groups who don't make pacts with devil

1. Women: concerned with household, fertility
2. Peasants: pacts would destroy their own land's fertility
3. Immigrants from coast: concerned mostly with survival, not economic success

D. Syncretism of devil beliefs

1. Come from Christian division of hell, earth, heaven
2. Folk adaptations of Christian rituals, e.g. house curings from church consecrations
3. Good and evil are intertwined

E. Effectiveness of sorcery depends on people believing in it

1. Plantation owners mostly don't believe in sorcery
2. Sorcery isn't directed against wealthy
3. Negative object of sorcery: the system itself

 

III. Use Value and Exchange Value in Colombia

A. Devil represents: "creative response to an enormously deep-seated conflict between use-value and exchange-value orientations" (21)
B. Marx's discussion of use value and exchange value

1. Use value: an item's value comes from its function, how people use it
2. Exchange value: "the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind"
3. Capitalism: expansion of exchange values
4. Alienation of labor: Value comes not from labor or use, but from item itself

C. Taussig: peasants in Colombia see what Marx was arguing

1. Peasant production: mutual exchanges allow purchase of use values, people, things, labor, and land are linked
2. Capitalist plantation agriculture: peasants see the use values they produce being alienated and commoditized as property of plantation owners
3. The clear vision of marginality: Because Colombian peasants are still partly peasant, they can see the conflict between use and exchange values
4. The devil symbolizes new economy but exists because the old still does
5. Once peasants are fully proletarian, devil will lose its meaning

 

IV. Commodity Fetishism and Breeding Money

A. The clear vision of marginality: Because Colombian peasants are still partly peasant, they can see the conflict between use and exchange values
B. Once peasants are fully proletarian, devil will lose its meaning
C. Devil represents fetishism which occurs in capitalism, part of its bizarre, mystical beliefs and practices that we can't see because they seem normal and natural
D. Beliefs in baptizing money

1. Money is baptized instead of child
2. Money returns to owner, with interest

E. Marx's formulas for capital

1. Use value: C - M - C (Commodity A - Money - Commodity B)
2. Capitalism: M - C - M' (Money - Commodity - More Money)

F. Capitalism is supernatural, baptism of money critiques this

1. People initiate fetishism because of greed and selfishness
2. Child is harmed: denied salvation

 

V. Tio in the Tin Mines

A. Mining in Bolivian history

1. Pre-conquest Incan state

a. Hierarchical polity
b. Tribute
c. Small-scale gold and silver mining
d. Undemanding compulsory labor requirement

2. Four centuries of Spanish colonization

a. Mining expands
b. Forced labor
c. Community life suffers because of absent males

3. 19th century Bolivian independence: Tin barons = wealthy mine owners, Spanish descendants
4. 1952 - state nationalizes mines
5. 1964 - military takeover, rites to the devil were suppressed

B. Tio = "uncle," devil figure in the mines

1. Origins in pre-conquest Andean peasant beliefs in spirit owners of land and mountains
2. Hahuari owned the mountains above contemporary mines
3. Impact of Spanish conquest

a. Campaigns against idolatry
b. Good-evil dualism
c. Ambiguous native spirits become good saints and evil devil figures
d. Devil figures associated with conquerors

2. Tio owns the mines

a. Miners worship Tio to reduce accidents and extract wealth
b. Tio is gluttonous, takes lives

C. Taussig's interpretation of Tio

1. Money and commodity production have dissolved traditional moralities
2. Miners extract mineral wealth for mine owners but are paid a pittance
3. People value things and profit more than people
4. Profound sense of dislocation
5. Exchange value has destroyed use value, reciprocity, redistribution

 

VI. Evaluating Taussig

A. Contributions

1. Devil symbolizes dislocation, helplessness
2. Capitalism doesn't happen overnight and isn't total
3. Spiritual beliefs present consciousness of changing conditions and also help to create consciousness, spur to political action (see conclusion)
4. People on margins have privileged perspective

B. Problems

1. Too stark a contrast between peasant and capitalist: Was there ever an idyllic system of use values?
2. Tribute system wasn't about use value, but about exchange. Is the transition really about the problems of exchange value more generally?

 

VII. Transactional Orders

A. Use value and exchange value exist in most societies before capitalism
B. Transactional orders

1. Short-term cycles governed by cash, individual gain
2. Long-term cycles focused on reproduction, household, food
3. Money and commodities exist in both, difference is uses to which they are put

C. Gender dimensions to transactional orders

1. Men: money is individualistic, used for gambling or drinking
2. Women: money is used for household expenses, children

D. Money can tear people apart AND bind them together
E. Responses to capitalism depend on pre-existing transactional orders and their logics
F. Taussig may oversimplify history as movement from use value to exchange value

 

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