Editing Simple commodity production (section)

==Early settler colonies==

There has never existed a society which literally consisted ''only'' of simple commodity producers, and [[Friedrich Engels]] never claimed that either. No serious Marxian scholar has ever claimed that such a society really existed, although there were plenty agricultural regions where the vast majority of the economically active population consisted of independent farmers. However, at the dawn of the bourgeois epoch of history, many of the initial colonial settlements in foreign lands consisted largely of self-employed producers, who farmed their own land or worked as artisans, tradesmen and craftsmen (for example, settler colonies in [[North America]], [[Argentina]], [[South Africa]], [[Australia]] and [[New Zealand]] - this aspect is disregarded totally by Christopher J. Arthur). In these settler colonies, initially there existed no class of landowners who owned most of the land. Marx was well aware of this, and he remarked wrily that in the colonies "the capitalist regime constantly comes up against the obstacle presented by the producer, who, as owner of his own conditions of labour, employs that labour to enrich himself instead of the capitalist".<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital Vol. 1'', Penguin edition 1976, p. 931. See: Arthur Diquattro, "The labour theory of value and simple commodity production". ''Science & Society'', Vol. 71, No. 4, October 2007, pp 455-483.</ref>). Discussing theories of colonization in ''Capital, Vol. 1'', Marx tells an anecdote about the troubles of an English entrepreneur who decided to emigrate, as an illustration of the labour problem:

{{Blockquote|"[[Thomas Peel|A Mr Peel]], [[Edward Gibbon Wakefield]] complains, took with him from England to the [[Swan River (Western Australia)|Swan River]] district of [[Western Australia]] means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. This Mr Peel even had the foresight to bring besides, 3,000 persons of the working class, men, women and children. Once he arrived at his destination, Mr Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river. Unhappy Mr Peel, who provided for everything except the export of English relations of production to Swan River!".<ref>Marx, ''Capital, Vol. 1''. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, pp. 932-933. The number of servants which Mr Peel took with him is overstated. There were only 400 settlers on his ship, although there were several ships with settlers sailing to Swan river. Marx’s source was [[Edward Gibbon Wakefield]], ''England and America''. London: Richard Bentley, Vol. 2,  1833, pp. 33–36. See further Alexandra Hasluck, ''Thomas Peel of Swan River''. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 63, 65, 70, 76, and 87 (available from Internet Archive). A more recent analysis is by Gaye Nayton, ''The Archaeology of Market Capitalism: A Western Australian Perspective''. New York: Springer, 2011, chapter 2.</ref> }}

The workers ran off, to go into business for themselves, or find better jobs and wages in [[Perth]] and elsewhere in Australia.<ref>[[Edward Gibbon Wakefield]]'s own method of "systematic colonization", was specifically designed to overcome the problems experienced in previous attempts at establishing settler colonies. A "sufficient price" would be put on colonial land, so that workers first had to earn and save money with wage-labour, before they could eventually buy their own land. See e.g. [[Donald Winch]], ''Classical Political Economy and Colonies''. London: London School of Economics and Political Science, 1965, p. 99-104.</ref> An American historian comments that:

{{Blockquote|"By the mid-1600s... [a]bout three-quarters of the colonists [in America] were farmers. (…) Most farmers owned their land. To encourage immigration, colonists often received free or almost free land. Land was readily available at low prices (…) Most immigrants and native-born colonists enjoyed ample opportunity to acquire property. Upon completing terms of [[indenture]], on average four years in duration, servants often received plots of land on which to begin their lives as freemen."<ref>Alvin Rabushka, web article "The colonial roots of American taxation, 1607-1700". Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1 August 2002.[https://www.hoover.org/research/colonial-roots-american-taxation-1607-1700#n3]</ref>}}

The proportion of early American colonists who worked as artisans is estimated to have been between 10% and 18%.<ref>"Colonial America's Pre-Industrial Age of Wood and Water". Bellefonte: Penn State University, n.d.[https://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/articles/colonial_wood_water.htm]</ref> So the vast majority of the workforce at that time (up to about 93%) consisted not of waged employees, but of independent farmers and artisans engaging in simple commodity production.<ref>Presumably there were also a few shopkeepers, barkeepers, physicians, barbers etc.</ref> Imported African slaves "worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the southern coast, from the [[Chesapeake Bay]] colonies of [[Maryland]] and [[Virginia]] south to [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]."<ref>[https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery "Slavery in America" module, history.com, 25 April 2024]</ref> Before 1660, few Virginia planters owned slaves. By 1675 the use of slaves was common, and by 1700 slaves largely replaced indentured servants. "With plentiful land and slave labor available to grow a lucrative crop, southern planters prospered, and family-based tobacco plantations became the economic and social norm".<ref>The Jefferson Monticello webpage on "African Slavery in Colonial British North America" [https://www.monticello.org/slavery/online-exhibitions-related-to-slavery/paradox-of-liberty/african-slavery-in-colonial-british-north-america/]</ref> In hindsight, Marx concluded that:

{{Blockquote|"In fact the veiled slavery of the wage-labourers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New World as its pedestal. (…) If money, according to [a critique in 1842 of public finance by monsieur Marie] Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt."<ref>Karl Marx, ''Capital, Vol. 1''. Harmondsworth: Penguin edition, 1976, pp. 925-926. Marie Augier wrote: "In public records, the presence of currency is so often accompanied by terrible consequences that one might say it came into the world with congenital bloodstains on one of its faces. In politics, the size of a state's debt, whether monarchical or representative, ultimately indicates not only its situation and strength, but also the degree to which its freedom is compromised." - Marie Augier, ''Du crédit public et de son histoire depuis les temps anciens jusqu'à nos jours par m. Marie Augier'' (Paris, 1842, p. 265) [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_4H4rLe4gmsAC].</ref> }}

From the time of the earliest English colonial settlements of the 1600s until America began to issue its own currency in 1783, three different types of money were used in colonial commodity trade: (1) coins ([[Spanish dollar]]s, [[Early American currency|shillings]]), (2) [https://www.worthpoint.com/dictionary/p/coins-currency/united-states-/colonial-currency paper notes] (fiat money denominated in British pounds, shillings and pence; land notes; bank notes; tobacco notes) and (3) [https://coins.nd.edu/colcoin/colcoinintros/Commodity.intro.html commodity money] (portable goods and services offered in exchange, including tobacco, corn, [[wampum]], buttons, etc.).<ref>See: Joshua J. Mark, "Colonial American Currency", ''World History Encyclopedia'', 20 April 2021.[https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1729/colonial-american-currency/]</ref>