Primitive Accumulation and Capitalist Accumulation: Economic Categories and Social Constitution (original) (raw)
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Capitalist accumulation and its historical foundation and logical premise: on primitive accumulation
Critique, 2023
Primitive accumulation is the historical foundation and logical premise of the capitalist social relations. Accumulation by exploitation presupposes the existence and expanded reproduction of the doubly free labourer as a propertyless surplus value producer. Contrary to the conventional view of primitive accumulation as a period of transition to capitalism, its concept is constitutive of capital as a real economic abstraction. It is the foundation of the economic categories of value, commodity, money, accumulation by exploitation and crisis. For the critique of political economy the conceptuality of capital entails the separation of living labour from its means. As such, primitive accumulation brings to the fore the secret history of the capitalist social relations, which is the everyday struggle for access to basic material things, by which the free labourer reproduces herself as society's surplus value producer.
Primitive Accumulation: The Aleatory Foundation of Capitalism
Rethinking Marxism, 2002
It is a matter of common knowledge that Karl Marx presents the difference between his analysis and all previous (bourgeois) understandings of political economy as a historical versus an ahistorical conception of capitalism. What is considerably less certain is how Marx, or those who came after him, understood this disparity: that is, what are its theoretical grounds and what were or could be its effects in the realm of philosophy, historical understanding, and political practice? There have been many interpretations of this difference; in this day and age this difference is often represented as either an incorrect prophecy (capitalism will collapse) or a contribution to a vague and inconsequential awareness of history (something, some economy existed before capitalism). If it is possible today to propose another thought of the distinction between Marx and political economy, or to attempt to reanimate the question, problem, and lines of investigation from behind this accepted bit of academic common sense, I would suggest that for Marx this difference, the difference history makes, has entirely different grounds, and different effects, than mere prophecy, transforming what is understood by society, the economy, materiality, power, and subjectivity (Althusser and Balibar 1975, 158).
Marx's theory of primitive accumulation: A suggested reinterpretation
2000
According to traditional interpretations, Marx's concept of primitive accumulation indicates the historical process that gave birth to the preconditions of a capitalist mode of production. Alternatively, the same idea has been interpreted as a continuous phenomenon within the capitalist mode of production. In this paper I present a reinterpretation of Marx's theory of primitive accumulation consistently with the textual evidence and some central tenets of his theory of capitalism. I argue that Marx's theory of primitive accumulation may be seen to embed both a historical and a continuity argument, but in forms that depart from traditional interpretations. In the conclusion, I also suggest that this reinterpretation may help to shed light on current neoliberal policies, by revealing the common social character of what prima facie appears to be quite distinct socio-economic processes. Further research in this direction is however required.
The History and Afterlife of Marx's 'Primitive Accumulation'
Historical Materialism, 2024
This paper develops 'primitive accumulation' prior to and then in Karl Marx's oeuvre. By exploring the concept in Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart the paper highlights early influences on Marx's evolving constructions. Marx's construction in the Grundrisse begins with a logical determination much like Smith's and moves, by drawing on Steuart, towards a socio-historical determination of a transitional violence. In Capital, 'primitive accumulation' still retains its transitional structure and delimited history, but it also points to the oppressive afterlife of the processes of primitive accumulation. The political key to 'primitive accumulation' in Capital flows from determining primitive accumulation as temporally bounded, but having an afterlife in the oppressive social reproduction of capitalist societies. Against deriving political stakes through extended readings of 'primitive accumulation' , this paper shows that an 'originating' view is textually accurate in a way that centres rather than sidelines the social reproduction of oppressions in capitalist societies.
On Primitive Accumulation: Encore
Is there a hidden historicism, a teleology in Marx's 'Capital'? One could argue that there is; and that would qualify as certainly one reading of Capital -Capital, the book -and not 'capital', the entity. In this paper, we however invoke 'late' Marx (late Marx is neither 'early' Marx nor 'scientific' Marx) to produce a different reading of both Capital, the book and capital, the entity that in turn challenges the idea of 'historical inevitability'. The idea of historical inevitability -be it in terms of the birth of capitalism (marked in turn by the concept of 'primitive accumulation' for example) -be it in terms of the demise of capitalism (marked in turn by the concept of the 'falling rate of profit' and the 'auto-crisis' of capitalism for example) has haunted much of classical or orthodox Marxism -a kind of Marxism deeply problematized by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, in much of their work. In our encounter with the question of historical inevitability our focus is on the concept of primitive accumulation and its two and rather differing renditions in Marx -first, in Capital and then in 'The Russian Road/Question' -first in 'scientific' Marx and then in 'late' Marx. We show, in this paper, how late Marx revised the concept of primitive accumulation and challenged the idea of historical inevitability -a challenge characteristic of the work of Resnick and Wolff as well. We also show how in the process, Marx forces us to rethink the idea of the economy and economic development. We build on Resnick
Primitive accumulation is not just the historical starting point of capitalism, but, qua coercive proletarianization, central to its essence. It constitutes a specifi c mode of social labor and it is this mode of labor that forms the concept of capital. Primitive accumulation is therefore not just a historical past from which capitalist social relations emerged, but also, and importantly, constitutive of these relations, once established. Marx's critique of political economy expounds economic categories as social categories founded on the logic of separation. The methodological implications of this reading of the signifi cance of primitive accumulation in capitalism are profound and its political implications formidable.
Applying Marx’s Critique of Political Economy to his Critique of Capitalism
Conference Paper, 2024
In this paper, I argue that Marx's critique of capitalism is vulnerable to his critique of 'bourgeois' political economy: not least, because it presumes a naturalistic conception of productiveness-centred on labour-taken from political economy. In contrast, Marx's critique of the latter presumes a historically variable social conception of productiveness, which condemns political economy for naturalizing the productiveness of capital Marx could have avoided this inconsistency by acknowledging the historically specific social reality of capital's productiveness and grounding his critique of it in a historically specific social(ist) alternative. Instead, he resorts to a naturalistic conception of labour's productive powers, which falsifies capital's self-valorizing ones. As such, Marx's mature economic writings contain two incompatible theories of value. On the one hand, a labour theory of value (LTV) grounded in labour's material and transhistorical productiveness, which forms the basis for his critique of capitalism and, on the other, a capital theory of value (CTV) grounded in capital's historically specific social productiveness, which forms the basis for his critique of political economy. I shall begin with the latter, less well-known of the two. Marx's (social and historical) critique of political economy In the Grundrisse, Marx critiques political economy for presenting production '… as encased in eternal natural laws independent of history, at which opportunity bourgeois relations are then quietly smuggled in as the inviolable natural laws on which society in the abstract is founded' (Marx 1973: 87). Above all, he critiques his economic predecessors for equating capital with produced means of production-to the point of treating early-human hunting-tools as capital (Marx 1976: 291). In opposition to which, he