Primitive Accumulation

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Primitive Accumulation

• Capital, Volume I, Part VIII
• Chapters 26 - 33

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Structure of Section

• Chapter 26 - Overview Secret of Prim. Accum.
• Chapters 27-28 - Formation of Working Class
• Chapters 29-31 - Formation of Capitalist Class
• Chapter 32 - Logical End to section
• Chapter 33 - Wakefield on Colonies

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Chapter 26 Secret of Primitive Accumulation

• Origins of Capitalist Society
• Myth individual achievement vs failure
• Marx class formation via force
• Expropriation formation of working class
• Concentration of wealth formation of capitalist
  class

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Chapter 26 Commentary

• Myth of Political Economy
• Anyone can become a capitalist
• Those who are lazy remain workers
• Dickens ridicules in Hard Times
• Marx was NOT an historical-materialist
• His own denial in Russian debate
• Capitalism can NOT eliminate the antagonisms and
  ever renewed alternatives

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The Rise of the Working Class

• Creation was forced, not spontaneous
• Chapter 27 Forced from land, tools
• Chapter 28 Forced into waged labor

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Chap27 Expropriation (1st step)

• Destruction of Autonomy
• Expropriation of land, tools
• Marx examples from England, Scotland
• Since colonialism, on-going process
• Resistance need for force result of fierce
  resistance
• Resistance reversal of enclosures, land reform

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Chap27 Commentary

• Transition from Feudalism
• Tales of Resistance
• The World Turned Upside Down
• Enclosures of Water
• Enclosures in the United States
• Enclosure of the Female Body
• Struggle for Cultural Diversity

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Music of Resistance

• The Highland Clearances (?????)
• The World Turned Upside Down (1649)
• The Great Eel Robbery (????)
• The Farmer is the Man (1890s)
• Rain on the Scarecrow (1985)

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Chapter 28 Bloody Legislation (2nd step)

• Bloody Laws to impose work
• Resistance barbarity of laws result of degree of
  refusal
• Anti-vagrancy laws, anti-migration laws (border
  controls)
• Anti-direct appropriation laws
• Spread with primitive accumulation (to US,
  colonies)
• Reappear in response to uncontrolled mobility

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Chap28 Commentary

• Refusal of Factory
• Street as an Alternative to Factory
• The Nature of the State
• organ of class power
• terrain of struggle
• Working Class Struggles Combinations
• Vagrancy Laws During Reconstruction
• The Wage, its absence imposition of work

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Music of Resistance

• Roll Down the Line (1890s)
• Factory (1978)

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The Rise of the Capitalist Class

• Self-formation
• Struggles to replace previous ruling class
• Struggles to create working class

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Overview of Material

• Chap29 Rise of Agrarian Capitalists
• Chap30 Creation of Home Market
• Chap31 Rise of Industrial Capitalists

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Chap29 Rise of Agrarian Capitalists

• Trajectory of formation highly varied
• Variation result of different starting points,
  forces along the way
• Baileff, farmer, metayer, farmer proper
• Key rising control over land labor

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Chap29 Commentary

• Control over land often sought for autonomy
• Resistance of farmers to market in US
• Third World Parallels
• Land Reform Movements
• Zapatista revolt response to NAFTA
• Use of Inflation in Primitive Mature
  Accumulation
• rapid inflation to transfer wealth
• marginal inflation to keep w productivity

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Music of Resistance

• Seven Cent Cotton (1927)
• Corrido de Delano (1966)
• Maggies Farm (1965)

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Chap30 Creation of Home Market

• Expropriation means
• people no longer meet their own needs
• people must BUY what they need
• To be able to buy they must sell themselves
• So, expansion of home market result of creation
  of labor market
• Resistance value of homespun, gardening,
  subordination of market to other values
• e.g., Brazilian herbal market

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Chap30 Commentary

• Imposition of Market
• Valorization Disvalorization
• Agricultural Development productivity

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Chap31 Genesis of Industrial Capitalist

• Annexation of labor through merchant capital
• Concentration of Wealth through FORCE
• colonialism violence plunder (business
  state)
• slavery wage slavery
• Monopolization of trade
• ? control over labor force, e.g., elimination of
  weavers
• Public Debt - then and now
• centralization of money
• use of centralized money?

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Chap31 Commentary

• Myth of Entrepreneurship
• Worker initiative capital constraint
• Capitalist Development Role of State
• From tool of capital to terrain of struggle
• Colonialism Accumulation of Capital
• Raw materials, trade, outlet for capital, vs
• internationalization of labor control
• Slavery Child Labor

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Chap33 Theory of Colonialism

• Reading mainstream economics
• Apology vs managerial guidelines
• Wakefield development economist
• Problem availability of land worker power to
  refuse work
• Solution make land less available, make it
  harder for workers to escape wage slavery

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Chap32 The Historical Tendency

• Logical Culmination of Book
• Sweeping Historical Periodization
• Phase I private property based on labor
• ended by first negation -violent
• Phase II private property in capitalism
• ended by second negation -less violent
• expropriation of expropriators
• Phase III social property in means of production

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Dialectics - I

• Dialectics a kind of movement
• Heraclitus restlessness, becoming
• Plato/Socrates dialogos, one kind of logic
• Hegel cosmology, movement of zeitgeist
• Marx movement of capital - class struggle
• orthodox Marxism sees dialectical materialism
• others see critique of capitalism, possibility of
  non-dialectical future

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Dialectics - II

• Best known element thesis, antithesis, synthesis
• Hegel being, nothing, becoming
• Marx capital, struggle of skilled workers,
  fordism and deskilled labor force (incorporates
  skills in engineering class and machinery)
• Other elements (many, many)
• e.g., negation of negation positive change
• e.g., reflexive mediation
• e.g., syllogistic mediation

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