Primitive Accumulation | Karl Marx | Keyword

[@padiddlez2472]

Your content is singlehandedly getting me through year 1 of my phd 🙏🏼🙏🏼

[@darillus1]

your content is singlehandedly wanting me to go full Diogenes

[@richardedward123]

If I would have had resources like this when I was getting my PhD 22 years ago, wow. By far the best explanations of PA I've heard. Thank you.

[@philosophicsblog]

An initial reaction is how welcoming Smith and his disciples are to accept this Romantic notion - one that Graeber calls out - but are quick to dismiss Rousseau's like notions of nature.

[@numbersix8919]

The beginning of Right vs Left. But this is before Romanticism, which was a reaction against industrialization. Smith was working from earlier traditions such as Christianity and noblesse oblige.

[@philosophicsblog]

@@numbersix8919 Agreed. I am using the term idiomatically. Perhaps I should have written 'quaint' or some such.

[@redstatesaint]

I always read "primitive" as an indictment of the modernity espoused by the rule of capital. For Marx, primitive accumulation is an intrinsic aspect of the capitalist mode of production, and the only reason he uses this is to analytically differentiate between capitalist practices: accumulation thru production where value is generated thru exploitation within the capitalist mode of production, and accumulation thru war/conquest where subjects and objects without capitalism are included, violently, into the logic of modernity and capitalism. Thus primitive accumulation has, in my interpretation, more to do with the constant shifts in the terrain capital rules over - the Carribbean, cellular life, personal data - and how it must constantly look for novel territories in order to convert and then insert capital into capitalist production to avoid a crisis resulting from the falling rate of profit (this is essentially the crux of the countervailing tendencies Marx mentions against the FROP).

[@andrewlipnick8131]

I'm a fan of David Harvey's term "accumulation through dispossession" mostly because it doesn't imply that it is a process that has ended - primitive seems to imply that it happened in the past

[@giocaliguia8370]

I also like how poetic Harvey’s term. Although we need to be careful in using Harvey’s term in periods prior to neoliberal context.

[@numbersix8919]

Yes, the capitalists don't think twice about re-introducing slavery wherever and whenever it becomes possible. As we see.

[@andrewlipnick8131]

@@giocaliguia8370 why can't we use it prior to neoliberalism? Dispossession accurately describes taking land and resources through force, the enclosure movement, etc.

[@addammadd]

I think you’re conflating two different ideas. The myth of primitive accumulation is a fallacious argument towards inherited wealth as a result of merit. Harvey’s is a commentary on the ongoing process of accumulated wealth.

[@andrewlipnick8131]

​@@addammadd oh I just looked up the term and you're right, I haven't read or listened to Harvey in a bit so I must have misremembered how he used the term

[@bachira4eva_016]

beautifully explained

[@numbersix8919]

England (the first capitalist economy) financed the transition from feudalism to capitalism through the Enclosure Acts passed by Parliament. These laws dispossessed the majority of people ("commoners") of their jointly shared farming fields and woodlands ("commons"), resulting in surplus profits for landlords and a surplus of unemployed and starving peasants to slave for wages in the first factories. It was a gigantic and ruinous theft perpetrated against the entire population, but technically it was indeed the primitive (primary) accumulation of wealth used to make the transition to early industrial capitalism in England. Marx wanted to emphasize that primitive accumulation is through theft/slavery.

[@mohammedabbas7776]

Thank you!

[@klaratehcoolcat]

I would suspect that the more faithful interpretation of Marx's intent is a response to this whitewashing by the phrase. Even removing the "primitive" element, as in "prior", "accumulate" is about as passive of a verb as it gets. However it does have practical use by referring to the increasing change over time ...sort of like a force of gravity where the more there already is, the stronger the pull. For example, to instead use the phrase "acquisition" would return agency and blame to those colonizing wealth and property, but ignore the true nature of the self-begetting power to colonize further wealth. There's definitely a lot to chew on about the semantic choices, especially between Smith and Marx

[@joaomoura4213]

Where are your books?

[@redblackgreen9]

I know it's a slip of the tongue, but for anyone unfamiliar with Capital, surplus value arises from labor not labor-power. The capitalist purchases labor-power (the capacity to work) at its value, the cost of its replacement. Say the worker needs, per day, commodities that require 5 hours of socially necessary (abstract) labor time to produce in order to reproduce their labor-power (i.e. be able to work a full day). If the working day is 8 hours, then 3 of those are 'surplus labor', hence surplus value, the substance of value being abstract labor. It's the distinction between labor-power as a commodity and labor as the source of value that makes the existence of surplus value comprehensible.

[@numbersix8919]

Thanks, I always read this explanation whenever I see it. It's a slippery concept for me. For example, how how do so-called social wages fit into this? They are paid for from surplus value as well, reducing the capitalist's profit. Is that right?

[@redblackgreen9]

@@numbersix8919 Kind of. The state levies taxes, on profits (which derive from surplus-value) and income (wages, capital gains), and uses this to fund the conditions for continued profit-making (the protection of private property, infrastructure, education, healthcare, welfare etc). A big real world complication is that it will also fund itself through sovereign debt - issuing bonds. Finance capital is a huge topic but basically this process is premised on the economic success of capital on its territory - I.e. that there's sufficient creation of surplus-value going on.

[@numbersix8919]

@redblackgreen9 Thanks. So, social wages are increased when additional services and goods are deemed necessary to maintain/reproduce labor power. Thus, the socially necessary labor can be said to have increased, and profits decreased along with productivity. Is that allowable?

[@alexsidney4796]

Isn't slavery an example of primitive accumulation, where 'primitive' may be unevenly distributed through time?

[@kyomademon453]

Modern day jobs are still slavery, most of us dont have the means to be self sufficient, changing the name doesnt change the thing itself

[@Libertaro-i2u]

Depends on when you consider "primitive times", slavery wouldn't have probably been a thing until the rise of the coercive state.

[@Libertaro-i2u]

Depends on when you consider "primitive times", slavery wouldn't have probably been a thing until the rise of the coercive state.

[@سهادمحمد-ه9ز]

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