Original accumulation

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Original accumulation is a term that Karl Marx uses based on classical economics - especially that of Adam Smith - in his work Das Kapital . It is an accumulation that preceded capitalist accumulation, which presupposes the existence of two groups of goods owners (on the one hand owners of money, production and foodstuffs, who utilize them by buying foreign labor ; on the other hand, wage-dependent workers who sell their labor to the former) . It is nothing other than the historical process of divorce between the producer and the means of production . The process was originally 'because he prehistory of capital fancy and its corresponding mode of production. "It was based not primarily on the economy and industry of individuals contrary to the assumption of classical political economy, by the same right and own work her Piling up property. Rather, the process is based on a violent expropriation of the work equipment from the actual producers by political and economic means .

In terms of reception history, the approach to the approach is different. In Marxist discussions, the question of whether the original accumulation was a historical phase or a continuous process was often discussed, as well as disputes regarding the development of Russia and methodological and theoretical issues were discussed. For example, Joseph Schumpeter criticized the fact that Marx's approach could not explain how certain groups were able to carry out processes of expropriation. Marx also misunderstood the role of above-average energy and intelligence in the foundation of economic success.

In addition to Marx's approach to the historical development of capitalism, the theories of Max Weber and Werner Sombart in particular had a formative influence on corresponding considerations.

Original accumulation in Marx

Reception of Smith's previous accumulation in the "Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts"

Adam Smith (1723-1790)

As Marx in the capital held, there is a connection between his concept of primitive accumulation and the previous accumulation at Smith . In the economic-philosophical manuscripts of 1844, Marx quoted representatives of classical political economy over several pages, including statements by Smith on the relationship between capital accumulation and the division of labor . Smith's assumption was that "the accumulation of a capital is a necessary precursor to the division of labor," and that the division of labor only advances according to the proportion "in which the capitals have gradually accumulated." Likewise, the number of workers increases Relation to the increased division of labor. An increase in the division of labor and capital takes place according to Smith, since the capitalist wants to produce "the greatest possible quantity of work" and therefore strives to "introduce the most appropriate division of labor among his workers and to provide them with the best possible machines". Not only does the quantity of industry increase by means of the growth of capital, as a result of this growth the same quantity of industry produces a much larger quantity of work.

Critique of Classical Political Economy

Marx prefers the term “original accumulation” with the word “so-called” because he wants to contrast his conception of the role and form of original accumulation in the emergence of capitalism with the representation of classical political economy (classical national economy ). Marx compares the view of classical political economy about the course of the original accumulation with the fall into sin in the Bible :

“In a long time passed, there was on the one hand a hard-working, intelligent and above all thrifty elite and on the other there was lazy rags who cheered everything and more. The legend of the theological fall tells us, however, how man was condemned to eat bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of the economic sin reveals to us why there are people who by no means need it. It doesn't matter. So it happened that the first accumulated wealth and the latter finally had nothing to sell but their own skin. "

There has always been an “ idyll ” in political economy , in which law and work were the only means of enrichment. Marx, on the other hand, emphasizes violence, "conquest, subjugation, robbery and murder, in short, violence " are the driving force of the original accumulation. He accuses the “bourgeois historians” of depicting the dissolution of the feudal mode of production under the liberation of the worker , without depicting the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of exploitation ; the class character , the “servitude of the worker”, only underwent a change in form. As Marx noted in his work “ Wages, Prices and Profit ” , “what economists call“ previous or original accumulation ”” should, in his view, be understood as “original expropriation ”.

In the Grundrisse of the Critique of Political Economy Marx urges himself the “simple remark” that “an accumulation on the part of the capitalist that preceded work and did not result from it [...] must have taken place, which enables him to put the worker to work and [...] as living labor capacity. ”According to Marx, this act of capital, which is independent of work, is now transferred from the history of its creation to the present. “The eternal right of capital to the fruits of other people's labor is then finally derived, or rather its mode of acquisition is developed from the simple and" just "laws of the exchange of equivalents .” Marx criticizes this idea.

The original accumulation in the text "Wages, Prices and Profit"

In a lecture given at meetings of the General Council of the International Workers' Association in June 1865, which was later published by Marx's daughter Eleanor under the title “Wages, Prices and Profit” , Marx incidentally raises the question of where the strange phenomenon comes from, “that we find in the market a group of buyers who own land, machinery, raw materials, and foodstuffs, all of which, apart from soil in its raw state, are products of labor, and on the other hand a group of sellers who have nothing to sell have besides their labor, their working arms and brains. That one group is constantly buying to make a profit and enrich itself, while the other is constantly selling to earn a living? ”To trace the origin of this phenomenon would be an examination of what economists have termed original accumulation. According to Marx, this "so-called original accumulation is nothing else [...] than a series of historical processes that result in the dissolution of the original unity between the worker and his means of work." In conclusion, Marx states:

“As soon as the separation between the man of labor and the means of labor has been made, this state will be maintained and reproduced on an ever increasing scale until a new and thorough change in the mode of production overturns it again and restores the original unity in a new historical form. "

The investigation of a series of “historical processes that result in a dissolution of the original unity between the worker and his work equipment” was, as Marx noted, outside the thematic framework; he attempted to present it in “Capital” .

"Floor plans"

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
“If free work and the exchange of this free work for money [...] is a prerequisite for wage labor
and one of the historical conditions of capital,
then the separation of free work from the objective conditions of its realization
- from the means of work and the work material - is another prerequisite . "

A few years before the speech, which was later published under the title “Wages, Prices and Profit” , Marx sat down in a manuscript in 1858 entitled “Forms that Precede Capitalist Production (On the Process of the Formation of the Capital Relationship or The original accumulation precedes) ” , which was published in 1939 under the title “ Grundrisse der Critique of Political Economy ” , also deals with the question of the separation of the direct producer from his means of production. This is first of all the detachment "of the worker from the earth, [...] therefore the dissolution of small free property as well as of communal [...] property."

“In both forms, individuals do not behave as workers, but as owners - and members of a community who work at the same time. The purpose of this work is not to create value - although they may do surplus work in order to exchange foreign, ie, surplus products -; but their purpose is to preserve the individual owner and his family, as well as the community as a whole. The positing of the individual as a worker, in this nudity, is itself a historical product. "

According to Marx, these forms necessarily correspond to a limited development of the productive forces, which dissolve when they "have become too narrow for the development of the progressive pack of people." According to Marx, the relationship between labor and capital now presupposes a historical process, "the dissolves the various forms in which the worker is the owner or the owner works. ”The historical prerequisites for“ the worker as free worker ”to be found in opposition to the“ objective conditions of production [...] as property of others, as capital ”would be according to Marx:

  1. The dissolution of the relationship to land as a natural condition of production; "Dissolution of the bondage relationships that tie the worker to the land and the master of the land"; Dissolution of the property relations, which constitute the worker as "free working small landowner or tenant", "free peasant" etc.
  2. The dissolution of the relationship in which the producer owns his instruments of production; "Dissolution of the guild relationships, which [...] presuppose ownership of the work instrument and the work itself, as a certain craftsmanship, as property".
  3. The first two points include the possession of means of consumption before production, which is also dissolved; Landowner z. B. appear directly equipped with the necessary consumption fund; The journeyman, for example, feeds on his master craftsman during his training , the journeyman in turn belongs to the consumption fund owned by the master craftsman, etc.
  4. The dissolution of the relationship in which the worker himself is part of the conditions of production (e.g. slavery or serfdom ); not the worker, only his labor capacity is needed, this can be replaced by machines and the like.

The process of dissolution, which has transformed a mass of individuals into free wage laborers, “on the other hand, does not assume that the previous sources of income and, in some cases, property conditions of these individuals have disappeared, but, conversely, that only their use has changed, the way of their existence has changed. "

“The same process with which the masses as free workers opposed the objective working conditions, has also opposed these conditions as capital to the free workers. The historical process was the separation of previously connected elements - its result is therefore not that one of the elements disappears, but that each of them appears in a negative relation to the other - the free worker (as far as possible) on the one hand, capital ( if possible) on the other. "

According to Marx, the creation of capital required “property that exists in the form of money.” Capital formation was not based on property or the guild, but “but from merchant and usury”, which presupposes free labor as a condition of its existence.

“The historical process is not the result of capital, but a prerequisite for the same. Through him, the capitalist as an intermediary (historically) shifts between landed property or between property in general and labor. Neither history knows anything about the cozy imaginations according to which the capitalist and the worker conclude associations, nor is there a trace of it in the development of the concept of capital. "

"The so-called original accumulation" in "capital"

"When money, according to Augier ," is born with natural blood stains on one cheek, "
then capital is from head to toe, from every pore, dripping with blood and dirt."

In the 24th chapter of the first volume of his main economic work, " Capital " (1867), Marx elaborates his concept of original accumulation in seven sections. The decisive moments of the original accumulation, which took place since the 16th century, are the expropriation of the rural people from land and the dissolution of feudal and guild relationships, the disciplining of the proletariat in the production relationship of wage labor, colonialism as an external driving force and the system of banks, stock exchanges, government bonds and taxes. Likewise, those concrete social movements are considered which were necessary or which led to the separation of the actual producers from the means of production being reproduced more extensively. For example, through the necessary formation of an internal market for capital, which presupposed the dissolution of peasant production, or agricultural revolutions , which made it possible to achieve the same productivity with fewer workers. The emergence of the classes of proletarians and capitalists is tied into this development. The last section of the chapter deals with the historical tendencies of capitalist accumulation which, according to Marx, lead to its abolition.

Heading: Epoch-making methods of original accumulation. Sub-items: expropriation of feudal, ecclesiastical and peasant property; Disciplining the proletariat in relation to wage labor, laws against workers' coalition; Colonialism: exploitation of the colonies and trade profits, gold and silver of America; System of public debt, taxation, banking and the stock market, protectionism

The following is a presentation of the argumentation in "Capital" , the following section headings have the titles of the corresponding sections in "Capital" .

1. "The Secret of Original Accumulation"

In this section, Marx first briefly outlines the concept of primitive accumulation in classical political economy and its theory (see previous article). Marx identifies the beginning of the "capitalist era" with the 16th century - although the first beginnings of capitalist production occurred sporadically in cities on the Mediterranean as early as the 14th and 15th centuries - in areas where there was an absence of serfdom and a "fading" of the sovereign cities of the Middle Ages as the center of social development. For Marx, the basis of original accumulation is to be understood as all “upheavals” “which serve as levers for the emerging capitalist class; But above all the moments when large crowds of people are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence and thrown onto the labor market as outlawed proletarians . The expropriation of the workers from the land forms the basis of the whole process ”. According to Marx, the history of these expropriation processes is " inscribed in the annals of mankind with marks of blood and fire". He states that his following remarks focus on the concrete temporal and local development of England , which has a "classical form", and in a broader sense that of the Western European countries, but can by no means be understood as a theory of the general development of the human race .

"Their history takes on different colors in different countries and goes through the different phases in different order and in different historical periods."

The meaning of the original accumulation is to have helped capitalist production on its feet: “As soon as capitalist production stands on its own two feet, it not only receives that division [between producer and means of production, note], but reproduces it on one constantly growing ladder. "

2. "Expropriation of the land folk from land"

Farmland next to pastureland, Très Riches Heures , 15th century

The second section provides a historical description of the expropriation of the peasants , the process of land appropriation by tenants , the expulsion of the rural people and the emergence of an “outlawed proletariat ” in the cities.

According to Marx, in all European countries “ feudal production was characterized by the division of the land among as many subscribers as possible”, and under the feudal relationship these performed their activity more or less freely and independently. Towards the end of the 15th century, the feudal system was dissolved more and more and a large number of now free workers “ hurled onto the labor market ”. According to Marx, the impetus for the appropriation of the common land by the feudal nobility was the flourishing of the Flemish wool manufacture and the associated rise in wool prices. This made it profitable for the landlords to convert farmland into grazing land for sheep. In this context, Marx also describes the destruction and decay of farmhouses and entire villages. The means of production that were set free became capital, and the former peasants became free workers.

In 1542 the Crown sold Hailes Abbey to a real estate agent. Around 1729 the complex was converted into two farms. The picture shows a photograph taken around 1890/1900 of Whitby Abbey , which was destroyed in 1540 , surrounded by grazing cows. ( Former United Kingdom Monasteries )

The "expropriation process of the popular masses in the 16th century through the Reformation and, in its wake, the colossal theft of church property" received a further impetus . Church property at that time was sold below its value to tenants and townspeople or was given away to beneficiaries of the royal family.

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89, Wilhelm III. the peculiar and capitalist plus makers have been brought to power. The appropriation of state goods, the giving away of land or the direct robbery thereof have progressed further at this time without any legal restrictions. This accelerated the transformation of the land into private property and an article of commerce. By the English Parliament laws were for containment of the common land ( "Bills for inclosures of Commons," see. Enclosure adopted). Thus, in the 18th century, the leases grew into the so-called capital leases, or merchant leases. At the same time, even more rural people were set free, developing into proletariat for industry.

The last significant moment in the “expropriation of the land folk from land” was made by Marx in the “Clearing of Estates” (“Lichten der Güter”; cf. e.g. Highland Clearances ). The aim or consequence was "that the arable workers themselves no longer find the necessary space for their own housing on the land they cultivated."

The expropriation of the land people from land is summarized as follows:

“The robbery of church property , the fraudulent sale of the state domains, the theft of community property, the usurpatory and ruthless terrorism transformation of feudal and clan property into modern private property - there were just as many idyllic methods of original accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalist agriculture, incorporated land into capital and created the necessary supply of outlawed proletariat for urban industry. "

3. “Blood legislation against the expropriated since the end of the 15th century. Laws to Reduce Wages "

Beggars on the wayside (representation from 1568)

The third sub-chapter deals with the legal regulations relating to poverty , wages and workers' organization in England, with which the English population has been confronted since the late 15th century. The expropriated people “could not possibly be absorbed by the emerging manufactory as quickly as they were born.” “Chased” from their lands, “thrown out” of their path of life and their previous production conditions, many of them became beggars , robbers , or vagabonds . With the emergence of a large class of poor and unemployed people, poverty has been criminalized in order to counter the increasing numbers of beggars, robbers and vagabonds. The class of these expropriated persons as a whole had to be forced into the new production relationship of wage labor . This can be pursued in different stages over “400 years” as “blood legislation against vagabondage”, “legislation on wage labor” and against “workers coalitions” based on England, France and the Netherlands .

"In Elisabeth's time [...] usually not a year passed without 300 or 400 [tramps] [...] falling to the gallows." (Symbol picture)
Former workhouse in Cheshire , built in 1780

Marx describes the development of English legislation under the various kings and queens. This included, for example, separating disabled beggars with a permit from vagabonds and punishing them with whipping, flagellation , branding, ear cutting and forced labor , up to and including execution for multiple violations (see, for example, the Vagabonds Act 1597 or the Poor Laws ). It was only in the early 18th century under Queen Anne that these laws were partially relaxed. Marx points to similar legislation in France and the Netherlands. "So the rural people, who had been forcibly expropriated from land, chased away and made into great vagabonds, were whipped, branded and tortured into a discipline necessary for the system of wage labor by grotesque terrorist laws." Marx describes legal as an essential element of the original accumulation Regulations and application of state authority to keep wages down and extend the working day.

“In the course of capitalist production, a working class develops which, based on education, tradition and habit, recognizes the demands of that mode of production as natural laws. […] It was different during the historical genesis of capitalist production. The emerging bourgeoisie needs and uses the power of the state to "regulate" wages; H. to force within the plus-making of promising boundaries in order to lengthen the working day and to keep the worker himself in a normal degree of dependency. This is an essential moment of the so-called original accumulation. "

With examples from different occupational groups and the description of different workers' statutes, Marx tries to prove that the legislation mostly acted in the interests of the employers and caused the workers to be exploited. Until well into the 19th century there were bans against workers' associations in order to preserve the freedom of entrepreneurs.

4. "Genesis of the capitalist tenants"

After the genesis of the doubly free wage laborer was sketched, Marx describes in the fourth section the emergence of the tenant, which was a slow process that lasted for centuries and cannot be explained solely by the expropriation of the rural people, since this primarily benefited the landowners . As early as the 14th century, the bailiff was replaced by the leaseholder in England . With the beginning of the agricultural revolution in the last third of the 15th century, the tenants became enriched while the rural people became impoverished. The rising prices in the 16th century benefited the tenants in two ways, on the one hand through the constant rents due to long lease agreements with the landowners, on the other hand wage costs fell, since money also lost value with the falling value of precious metals. A class of "capital tenants" had emerged.

5. “Effects of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creation of the internal market for industrial capital "

Now a decisive factor is fixed in the dialectic of the development of the mode of production : “The expropriation and driving away of a part of the rural people not only releases their means of subsistence and their labor material for industrial capital, it creates [capital, note] inside market. ”The expropriation provided urban industry with proletarians who were outside the guild. The subsistence economy , the self-sufficiency of the rural population, was destroyed, whereby the emergence of the market was accelerated, in which the previously self-produced food now had to be purchased with the help of wages. "[Only] the destruction of the rural house trade can give the internal market of a country the expansion and stability that the capitalist mode of production requires." The agricultural raw material, which had previously been used by independent domestic production, has since formed part of the constant Capital of the “manufacturers”. Marx describes this process using the examples of flax spinning and weaving :

"Weavers at the loom", Vincent van Gogh , 1884
“Spindles and looms and raw material are transformed from means of independent existence for spinners and weavers into means to command them and suck out unpaid work [ extra work and surplus value , note]. [...] So goes hand in hand with the expropriation of former self-employed peasants and their separation from their means of production, the destruction of rural secondary industries, the process of divorce between manufacture and agriculture ”.

At the same time, Marx emphasizes that the major restructuring of production did not take place during the manufacturing period, as urban handicrafts and domestic-rural ancillary industries were still included in the processing of the raw material. The destruction of the peasantry had progressed since the end of the 15th century, but the peasantry had always found itself again in a smaller size and under worsened conditions. Only big industry was able to give capitalist agriculture a permanent basis, thereby completing the separation of agriculture from domestic and rural industry.

6. "Genesis of the industrial capitalist"

Merchant (representation from 1568)

In the sixth section Marx separates the industrial capitalists in their emergence from the capitalist tenants. Decisive for the emergence of industrial capitalism would have been the "usury capital" and the "merchant capital", that is, the trading capital, which together formed money capital. In the Middle Ages, the feudal constitution in the country and the guild constitution in the cities prevented this from developing into industrial capital and thus directly taking over production. With the dissolution of the feudal allegiance and the expropriation of the peasants, merchants and entrepreneurs were able to set up manufacturing operations in the countryside beyond the control of the old urban system.

Slave Trade in Atlanta , Georgia , 1864

From this new mode of production and form of capital, an appropriation of the entire globe developed increasingly and represents “the main moments of the original accumulation”. There were a number of factors that helped the capitalist mode of production to prevail. In connection with the development of a “ world market ”, Marx calls it “the discovery of gold and silver countries in America, the extermination , enslavement and burial of the indigenous population in the mines, the conquest and plunder of East India, the transformation of Africa into an enclosure for commercial hunt for black skins […] ”. The formation of a colonial system and the associated generation of capital in the colonized countries, in turn, had a negative effect on the standard of living of the local proletariat.

According to Marx, state power was an important factor. As the concentrated and organized power of society, it promoted the process of transformation from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production: “Colonial system, national debts , tax force, protection , trade wars , etc., these offspring of the actual manufacturing period, swelled enormously during the childhood of big industry. "

With regard to the colonial system, the brutality associated with the exploitation of the colonies, such as the slave trade or the hunt for the “ Indians ”, is particularly pointed out. Marx also addresses the role of the colony as a supplier of raw materials and the creation of sales markets for European manufactured goods. The colonial system was crucial for the increase in commercial capital. According to Marx, before modern industry emerged, industry was determined by trade:

Exchange Royal Exchange in 1860
Bank of England
“Nowadays, industrial supremacy comes with trade supremacy . In the actual manufacturing period, on the other hand, it is trade supremacy that gives industrial domination. Hence the predominant role that the colonial system played at that time. It was "the strange god" who placed himself on the altar next to the old idols of Europe and one fine day threw them all over the place with one push and Bautz. It proclaimed the plus-making as the ultimate and only purpose of humanity ”.

With the expansion of the European states, the national debt and credit system emerged , which Marx describes as one of the “most energetic levers” of original accumulation, since it turned unproductive money into capital. The "game" of the stock market and the "modern bankocracy" had their origins in this. The modern tax system supplemented the system of government bonds by securing interest payments with tax money. Together with the protective tariff system , it developed, according to Marx, an expropriating effect on farmers, artisans and free producers. The modern public debt and tax system would have played a prominent role in converting social wealth into capital. On the last pages of this subsection, Marx discusses child labor in England, the slave trade that would have made Liverpool rich, among other things, and the development of the slave economy in the United States into a "commercial system of exploitation" to underline that these phenomena are developing the capitalist mode of production and modern industry.

“[It took such effort] to release the" eternal laws of nature "of the capitalist mode of production, to carry out the process of divorce between workers and working conditions, on one pole to transform the social means of production and subsistence into capital, on the opposite pole the mass of the people into wage workers , into free "working arms", this artifact of modern history. "

7. "Historical tendencies of capitalist accumulation"

In the concluding section of Chapter 24 of “Capital” , Marx summarizes the line of development of capitalist accumulation or mode of production and connects it with the dialectical “ law of the negation of negation ”. Marx explains the related process on the basis of property relations and the character of work.

“Private property, as opposed to social, collective property, exists only where the equipment and the external conditions of work belong to private people. […] This mode of production assumes the fragmentation of the soil and the other means of production. Like the concentration of the latter, it also excludes cooperation, division of labor within the same production processes, social domination and regulation of nature, and free development of social productive forces. It is only compatible with narrow, natural barriers to production and society. […] At a certain level it gives birth to the material means of its own destruction. [...] Their destruction, the transformation of the individual and fragmented means of production into socially concentrated, hence the dwarf property of many into the mass property of a few, hence the expropriation of the great masses of land and food and tools of work, this terrible and difficult expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prehistory of capital. It encompasses a number of violent methods, of which we only reviewed the epoch-making ones as methods of the original accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers is carried out with the most ruthless vandalism and driven by the most infamous, filthy, and petty hateful passions. The self-developed private property, which is based, so to speak, on the coalescence of the individual, independent working individual with his working conditions, is being displaced by capitalist private property, which is based on the exploitation of foreign but formally free labor. "

The self-earned property of the independent labor individual is replaced by capitalist private property, which is based on the exploitation of foreign labor. The concentration of the means of production, the increasing concentration of capital in the hands of a few entrepreneurs, and the socialization of labor , characterize capitalist production. With the progressive division of labor and the development of the productive forces, the growing exploitation and misery, the concentration of the means of production and the socialization of labor reach a point where they have become incompatible with their capitalist shell. “The negation of capitalist production is produced by itself, with the necessity of a natural process. It is the negation of the negation ”. On the basis of the achievements of the capitalist age, the cooperation of free workers and common ownership of land and means of production, individual property will be restored.

Marx ends with the statement that the conversion of private property into communal property will proceed much faster, since, in contrast to the original accumulation, where the popular masses are expropriated by a few usurpers, it is an "expropriation of a few usurpers by the popular masses".

Diagram: The original accumulation, the separation between direct producers and means of production, represents the first negation of individual property. Capitalist production creates its negation, the negation of negation, with the necessity of a natural process. This is the production of individual property on the basis of the achievements of capitalist production
Historical tendencies of capitalist accumulation, diagram after Elmar Altvater

Later references by Marx and Engels to the chapter on the original accumulation in "Capital"

Marx and Engels referred to the chapter “The so-called original accumulation” in “Capital” in later writings. Engels presented the 7th section of the chapter again in the text “ Mr. Eugen Dühring's upheaval in science ” .

In a letter from Karl Marx to the editors of the Otetschestwennye Sapiski (1877), which was directed against an editor and had the development of Russia as its topic, Marx discussed the chapter and also briefly summarized it:

“The chapter on original accumulation only wants to describe the way in which the capitalist economic order emerged from the womb of the feudal economic order in Western Europe. It thus represents the historical movement which, by separating the producers from their means of production, transformed the former into wage laborers [...] and the owners of the latter into capitalists. [...] At the end of the chapter the historical tendency of production is reduced to the following: that it "generates its own negation with the necessity of a natural process", that it itself has created the elements of a new economic order by simultaneously meeting the productive forces of social labor and gives the greatest impetus to the all-round development of every individual producer, that capitalist property, which in fact already rests on a kind of collective production, can only be transformed into social property. At this point I do not provide any evidence for this, for the good reason that this claim itself is nothing more than the summary summary of long developments that were given earlier in the chapters on capitalist production. "

The section of text in Marx's letter to Vera Sassulitsch from 1881 also plays a role, which also addresses the development of Russia.

In a foreword to the American edition of the " Situation of the Working Class in England " written in 1887 , Engels summarized the chapter as follows during a critical discussion with Henry George :

“For Henry George, the expropriation of the masses of land is the great general cause of the division of the people into rich and poor. Historically, however, that is not entirely correct. In Asiatic and classical antiquity, the dominant form of class oppression was slavery; H. not both the expropriation of land from the masses, but rather the appropriation of their people by third parties. ... In the Middle Ages, the basis of feudal pressure was by no means the expropriation of the masses of the people, but rather their appropriation to the land. The peasant kept his home, but was chained to it as a serf or serf and had the landlord in labor or tribute in products. Only at the dawn of the new era, towards the end of the 15th century, was the expropriation of the peasants carried out on a large scale, this time under historical conditions which gradually transferred the peasants who had become dispossessed into the modern class of wage workers, into people who were nothing own besides their labor power and can only live from the sale of this labor power to others. But if the expropriation of land gave birth to this class, then the development of the capitalist mode of production, modern large-scale industry and modern large-scale farming belonged to it, perpetuating it, increasing it and placing it in a special class with special interests and a special historical one Transform task. All of this is presented in detail by Marx. ("Capital", Volume I, Section VII: "The so-called original accumulation.") "

reception

Both positive and negative criticism of the concept of original accumulation in Marx can be established. The first receptions and debates about the 24th chapter of "Capital" took place during the lifetime of Marx and Engels, see also the article section → Later references by Marx and Engels to the chapter on the original accumulation in "Capital" . One can distinguish two main strands of positive interpretations. Interpretations that assume a "historical phase of an original accumulation" and interpretations that assume an "inherently continuous original accumulation" in capitalist production exemplify these approaches here. Lenin and Luxemburg. Another focal point in the history of reception is the question of whether and how in Russia, and later the Soviet Union, the process of original accumulation took place or should take place.

Early reception

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854-1926)

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854–1926) wrote a newspaper article about Marx in 1881, which he approved in a letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge , but criticized it as inadequate in theoretical terms, for example. In this article, Bax commented on the 24th chapter in "Capital" and stated in this context:

"In an elaborate and exhaustive dissertation, every sentence of which is supported by documentary evidence, in most cases first-hand Karl Marx proceeds to demolish the abstinence theory as far as the genesis of capital is concerned. He shows it to have originated not in virtuous frugality, but in serfage; not in abstinence, but in spoliation. From the middle ages downwards history shows a progressive divorcement of the people from the soil. "

Gustav Groß (1856–1935), an early Marx biographer whom Engels accused of “theory confusion” in relation to Marx's work, also dealt with the original accumulation. While he limited himself to briefly outlining the approach in his entry for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie in 1884, a year later he criticized the section in a separate paper on Marx, because "as accurate and brilliant as the historical description of the accumulation" is, According to Groß, this section may theoretically form one of the weakest parts of “capital” . Marx shies away from the admission “that the real origin of capital must have been 'acquired, earned, self-earned property'. That he could not completely ignore this truth, however, proves, among other things, his admission that some guild masters have also worked their way up to capitalists. "

Method, theoretical classification and meaning

According to a foreword by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED in the Marx-Engels Works on the Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy , the “epoch” of original accumulation “is defined as a special transition period in historical development” for the first time. In connection with the study of the development of pre-capitalist forms of property, Marx works out a process whose “essence consists on the one hand in the formation of the class of wage workers who have no means of production, and on the other hand in the transformation of the means of production into capital, liberated from traditional feudal ones and guild barriers. "

Elmar Altvater (* 1938)

According to Elmar Altvater (* 1938), the chapter on so-called original accumulation has raised many questions, not “because of its content, which is clear, unambiguous and bitterly angry, but because of its place in the entire work of the first volume of Capital .” Capital is named after Altvater from "simple categories, from the" cell forms of the mode of production "their dynamics, the laws of motion, the forms of social conflicts developed and illustrated with a wealth of historical examples." In the 24th chapter get now "the historical emergence of the capitalist mode of production, the ' so-called original accumulation ', a systematic place in the categorical unfolding of the concepts constituting the theory. ”In Chapter 4 the“ logical presuppositions ”of capitalist production were presented,“ the' doubly free 'wage workers and the emergence of a class of owners of means of production ” . In the 21st and 22nd chapters it was shown "how the capitalist production process reproduces its own presuppositions - the class division - over and over again." In the 24th chapter, therefore, it is now "about the historical-empirical presuppositions of the capitalist mode of production, which in the fourth . Chapter have only been subordinated. "

In reading Das Kapital , Étienne Balibar (* 1942) dealt with the question of the change in modes of production in the chapter on "Elements for a Theory of Transition" . According to Balibar, the bourgeois theory of original accumulation is nothing more than a myth , a retrospective construction that historically reflects the relationships of the capitalist structure and uses it to substantiate past phenomena. These phenomena would have taken place in completely different structures and contexts and therefore require a separate analysis, the study of the origin of capital. Knowledge about the development laws of capitalism would be useless according to Balibar. “Thus the real history of the origins of capitalism is not just different from the myth of origins; by the same token it is different in its conditions and principles of explanation from what has appeared to us to be the history of capital. ” The original accumulation takes place during the feudal mode of production, but according to Balibar without any necessary laws derived from the structure of this. The history of the origins of capital therefore appears as a pure prehistory of precisely this. According to Balibar, Marx's analysis of the original accumulation proceeds on the basis of the development, the elements necessary for capitalist production, wage labor and capital, which have relatively independent origins:

"[The study of primitive accumulation] takes as its guiding thread precisely the elements which were distinguished by the analysis of the capitalist structure: these elements are grouped together here under the heading of the" radical separation of the laborer from the means of production. " The analysis is therefore retrospective, not insofar as it projects backwards the capitalist structure itself, presupposing precisely what had to be explained, but insofar as it depends on knowledge of the result of the movement. On this condition it escapes empiricism , the listing of the events which merely precede the development of capitalism: it escapes vulgar description by starting from the connections essential to a structure, but this structure is the "current" [capitalist] structure. [...] The analysis of primitive accumulation is therefore, strictly speaking, merely the genealogy of the elements which constitute the structure of the capitalist mode of production [...]. For this reason, the analysis of primitive accumulation is a fragmentary analysis: the genealogy is not traced on the basis of a global result, but distributively element by element. "

According to Balibar, the analysis of the original accumulation could therefore not coincide with the history of the previous modes of production characterized by their structure. The methods of original accumulation must, however, be linked to the specific characteristics of a dominant mode of production, in this case feudalism, such as the "extra-economic (legal, political and military) power" , which also derives its specific nature from the feudal Production won. After Balibar the feudal mode of production would not be capitalist about gone, but would capitalist production as it took Marx, "from the feudal forth gone", the "resolution of this has the elements of those released."

"The formation of the capitalist mode of production is completely indifferent to the origin and genesis of the elements which it needs, 'finds' and 'combines'. [...] Instead of re-uniting the structure and the history of its formation, the genealogy separates the result from its pre-history. It is not the old structure which itself has transformed itself, on the contrary, it has really 'died out' as such. "

Balibar also dealt with the different ways of depicting change in Marx. In the first six sections of the 24th chapter, after Balibar, the change from feudal production to capitalist will be considered, and in the seventh that from capitalism to socialism or lower communism . However, these transformations are presented in completely different ways, not only in literary terms, they also represent two completely different theoretical situations: in the analysis of the original accumulation, the necessary elements of capitalist production would already be identified, but no knowledge of the historical field would exist in which the elements developed, while analyzing the dissolution of capitalism one only finds knowledge of the historical field.

Historical phase or continuous process?

Lenin (1870–1924) advocated the concept of a "historical phase of original accumulation" in an early work from 1899, The development of capitalism in Russia , and therefore regards original accumulation primarily as a historical prerequisite for a capitalist mode of production and focused therefore on the process of separation of producer and means of production in the change of modes of production. Theoretically, he summarized this point of view in a short biography of Marx:

"The so-called original accumulation must be distinguished from the accumulation of capital on the basis of capitalism: the forcible separation of the worker from the means of production, the driving away of the peasants from their land, the robbery of communal lands, the system of colonies, the national debt, the protective tariff, etc. The "original accumulation" produces the "free" proletarian on one pole, the money owner, the capitalist, on the opposite pole. "

Rosa Luxemburgs (1871–1919) The accumulation of capital of 1913 represents a second pattern of interpretation. Luxemburg, too, understands original accumulation to be a concrete temporal and spatial movement that leads to capitalism, but its theoretical framework suggests a different interpretation. In Luxemburg's case, Marx's expanding reproductive systems are only a representation of the mathematical states for accumulation in the case of only two classes. In reality, as she notes, capitalist production requires a third group (farmers, small independent producers, etc.) of goods buyers. This makes the establishment of exchange relationships between capitalist and non-capitalist productions necessary to generate surplus value . However, these exchange relationships come into conflict with the social relationships of non-capitalist productions. In order to overcome the resistance to capital that emanates from this clash, capital must use military and political force. Here Luxemburg introduces a crucial thesis: the extra-economic prerequisite for capitalist production - which could be described as original accumulation - is an inherent and continuous element of modern societies, its radius of action extends to the whole world. As soon as the whole world is capitalist, capitalist accumulation will have reached its historical end. The class struggle emerges like a deus ex machina before the collapse of objective conditions.

“Capitalism is the first form of economy with propaganda power, a form that has the tendency to spread across the globe and displace all other forms of economy that no one else tolerates. At the same time, however, it is the first to be unable to exist alone without other forms of economic activity than its milieu and its breeding ground, which means that at the same time as the tendency to become a world form, it is shattered by the inner inability to be a world form of production. It is a living historical contradiction in itself, its accumulation movement is the expression, the ongoing solution and at the same time the potentiation of the contradiction. At a certain level of development, this contradiction cannot be resolved otherwise than by applying the foundations of socialism - that economic form which is at the same time a world form and in itself a harmonious system, because it does not affect accumulation, but the satisfaction of The vital needs of working humanity itself will be directed through the development of all productive forces of the earth. "

Louis Althusser (1918–1990) describes in his "Foreword to Capital, Volume 1" , the original accumulation as the second of Marx's greatest discoveries next to the surplus value , it is the discovery of the "incredible" means that were used so that an original accumulation took place that "gave birth" to capitalism in Western societies and also conditioned the existence of a mass of free workers ("workers free from the means to work") and technological discoveries. According to Althusser, these means were the "most brutal", "the thefts and massacres which cleared capitalism's royal road into human history." According to Althusser, this chapter of "capital" contains a "great wealth" that has not yet been "exploited" sufficiently, in particular the thesis that "capitalism has always used and, in the 'margins' of its metropolitan existence - ie in the colonial and ex-colonial countries - is still using well into the twentieth century, the most brutally violent means."

Oskar Negt (* 1934) and Alexander Kluge (* 1932) also underline the permanence of the original accumulation process. In addition to a historically traced expropriation of the peasants in Germany, a constantly enforced adaptation of human characteristics to internalize and adapt work capacity in the light of the constantly changing requirements of the production process is discussed.

Original (socialist) accumulation in the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China

Before 1917, communist theorists believed that the communist revolutions would take place in the developed industrialized countries. Then the October Revolution occurred in Russia, that is, in an industrially backward agricultural society. After the victory of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks asked themselves one question above all: How to industrialize the country? Because both communism and the country's military strength, they believed, required more industry. After war communism had driven economic overexploitation of Soviet society and the New Economic Policy had consolidated the country economically, but did not enable the desired rapid industrialization, the Bolshevik theorist Yevgeny Preobrazhensky urged in 1926 in his book "Die Neue Ökonomik" to an "original socialist accumulation", that is, the expansion of state-organized industry at the expense of largely privately organized agriculture. Agriculture should be forced to supply industrial cities with inexpensive food and industry with cheap raw materials. The demand was then implemented under Stalinism, but in a way that went beyond the level of violence that Preobrazhensky (who himself became a victim of Stalinism) had demanded. Under Stalin's rule, agriculture was expropriated, forcibly collectivized and exploited and subjected to the industrialization of society and the planned economy. The peasants who did not comply were persecuted as kulaks and exploited in camps . Among other things, due to this so-called "original socialist accumulation" and its millions of victims, the Soviet Union managed to become an industrial nation within a very short time.

Leo Kofler (1907–1995) interpreted Stalinism as the original accumulation made up for, on which the rule of the “cadre bureaucracy” was based.

Tony Cliff (1917–2000) took a critical view of the Soviet Union as state capitalism and associated it with original accumulation. For example, he argues analogously to Marx with regard to the eviction of the English peasantry from the land when he notes with regard to the development of Russia that collectivization “made agricultural production available for the needs of industrial development” and continues that it “the peasants [freed] from their means of production and [transformed] some of them into a reservoir of labor for industry. The rest became partly peasants, partly workers and partly serfs on the kolkhozes . "According to Cliff, the original accumulation in Russia was faster and more brutal than in England," Stalin accomplished in a few hundred days what England had taken several hundred years to do. The extent to which he did it and the successes he achieved overshadow the deeds of the Duchess of Sutherland [Note: Marx mentions them in Chapter 24 of Capital , in connection with the light of goods] . "

According to Wolfgang Abendroth (1906–1985), the original accumulation had to be a “central task of the USSR” due to the need for rapid catch-up industrialization , and associated “its population had to forego a considerable increase in consumption for a long time.” He justified this with the “ Defeat of the German workers in October 1923 "and the relative" stabilization of world capitalism according to the Dawes Plan 1924 ", which would have ended the" revolutionary situation in Europe "for a" long period of time "and therefore with" greater investment aid from industrialized countries " , which would have liberated the Soviet Union from its isolation, was not to be expected. In the People's Republic of China , according to Abendroth, there were better conditions for a socialist original accumulation, “since the majority of the peasant population existed under even more primitive living conditions than the peasants of Tsarist Russia before the victory of the Communists and the industrial proletariat was still relatively weak and poorly paid . "The" standard of living of the underprivileged classes "was therefore" not even temporarily reduced "according to Abendroth.

Original accumulation towards the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century

The human geographer David Harvey (* 1935) describes in his work The New Imperialism a new form of imperialism that emerged in the 1970s as capitalist accumulation in the context of neoliberalism , which emerged from the failure of Fordist accumulation through expanded reproduction . Harvey refers to the permanence of the process that Marx conceived of as primitive accumulation, and therefore instead refers to it as "accumulation through dispossession". According to Harvey, all aspects of original accumulation addressed by Marx would have remained in the historical geography of capitalism. But new forms have also formed:

“The importance of intellectual property rights in the negotiations of the WTO (the so-called TRIPS Agreement) is an indication of methods by which the populations patenting and licensing genetic material, modified seeds and all sorts of other products can now be used against whole populations, their Practices had played a crucial role in the development of these materials. Biopiracy is rampant and the robbery of the world's supply of genetic resources for the benefit of a few large pharmaceutical companies is in full swing. Further results of the extensive commodification of nature in all its forms are the escalating overexploitation of the generally owned environment (land, air and water) and the widespread destruction of habitats, which excludes everything except capital-intensive agricultural production methods. When cultural expressions, history and intellectual creativity become commodities, it brings with it mass expropriation [...]. The transformation into companies and the privatization of hitherto public institutions [...] are signs of a new wave of »containment of common goods«. As in the past, the power of the state is often used to implement such processes against the will of the general public. "

The “Bielefelder Gruppe” around Maria Mies (* 1931) and Claudia von Werlhof (* 1943) also analyzed the continuation of the original accumulation on a global level. In doing so, they consider, for example, the expropriation of small producers, the evictions of farmers from their land, the patenting of production processes, the separation of women from their bodies through reproductive technologies, the privatization of public property and the increasing precariousness of working conditions (“ housewifeization of work”).

Critique of Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) criticized in his work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, among other things, Marx's concept of original accumulation in large parts, on the one hand defending the idea of ​​classical political economy against Marx, on the other hand he criticized Marx's approach Concept cannot explain the creation of capital:

“[The question of the original accumulation], that is, [the] question of how the capitalists came to be capitalists at all or how they acquired this supply of goods which, according to Marxian teaching, was necessary to keep them at the beginning of the Empowering exploitation. Marx is less elaborate on this question. With contempt he rejects the bourgeois children's primer that certain people became capitalists sooner than others thanks to their higher intelligence and labor and savings energy and that they still do so every day. Now he was well advised to make fun of the story of the good children. Because getting the laughs on your side is without a doubt an excellent way to get rid of an inconvenient truth, as every politician knows to his advantage. No one who looks at historical and contemporary facts with any impartiality can avoid the observation that this children's story, although it does not tell the whole truth by far, nevertheless contains a good deal of truth. In nine out of ten cases, supernormal intelligence and energy are the explanation for industrial success and, in particular, for justifying industrial positions. [...]
The laughter, however, had its effect and helped pave the way for Marx's own theory of primitive accumulation. But this other theory is not as precise as we would like it to be. That violence, robbery, and oppression of the masses facilitate their exploitation and that the results of the plundering in turn facilitate the oppression - all of this was of course correct and fit perfectly with the ideas that are prevalent among intellectuals of all shades, even more than today in the days of Marx. Obviously, however, it does not solve the problem of providing an explanation for how certain people acquired the power of robbery and oppression. "

Eurocentrism

André Gunder Frank (1929–2005) criticized the idea of ​​the emergence of capitalist production in Marx, but also in Sombart , Weber or Wallerstein , as Eurocentric , as they only, or above all, from the actions and the perspective of Western European societies tried to explain. Another point of criticism is the assumption, widespread since Marx, that the genesis of capitalist production began around 1500 (especially in 1492 with the discovery of America and 1498 with the discovery of a sea route to the East Indies):

"Of late, that is since Marx, the 'fascination' with 1500 as the date of a new departure that makes a supposed break with the past is mostly a function of the allegation that it ushered in a new, previously unknown or at least never before dominant, 'capitalist mode of production'. That was of course the position from Marx and Sombart to Weber and Tawney, and all it is still shared by their many contemporary followers. This is still the position of "world-system" theorists [...]. Even Amin 's and Blaut's vehement critiques of Eurocentrism stop short of abandoning 1500 as the dawn of a new age of European born and borne capitalism. All of the above Marxists, Weberians, Polanyists, worldsystematizers, not to mention most 'economic' and other historians, balk at pursuing the evidence and the argument to examine the sacred cow of 'capitalism' and its allegedly peculiarly exceptional or exceptionally peculiar ' mode of production '. "

General presentation of the economic and social history of England

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ often so-called original accumulation , rarely previous or previous accumulation , original expropriation ; English : primitive or original accumulation
    The term “originally” was often rendered by English-speaking translators of Marx as “primitive” (German: simple, primitive, primitive, low standing), while “original” in the literal sense of the word in English was more “original” " Or " primeval " means.
  2. ^ A b Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 742
  3. ↑ See Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book Two, Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock, 1776, pp. 193f .; quoted from: Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, MEW supplementary volume, 1: 495
  4. ↑ a b See Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book Two, Of the Nature, Accumulation, and Employment of Stock, 1776, pp. 194f .; quoted from: Marx, Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte, MEW supplementary volume, 1: 496
  5. ^ Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 741
  6. ↑ See Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 742
  7. ↑ See Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 742f.
  8. ^ A b c Marx, Wages, Price and Profit, MEW 16: 131
  9. ↑ See Marx, Grundrisse, MEW 42: 411f.
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  12. ^ A b Marx, Grundrisse, MEW 42: 383
  13. ^ Marx, Grundrisse, MEW 42: 384
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  20. ↑ See Marx, Grundrisse, MEW 42: 412
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  26. ↑ Cf. Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 745f.
  27. ↑ Cf. Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 746
    This fundamental change in production was accompanied by centuries of attempts to counteract this politically, through laws that affected land. According to Marx, however, these attempts were not expedient, since nothing fundamental was changed by them in the “process of separating the producer and the means of production”.     Compare : Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 747f.
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  30. ↑ See Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 751-53
  31. ↑ Marx uses an example to describe the smashing of old clan structures in Scotland , how the indigenous population was evicted from entire "clan-owned" tracts of land in order to turn the land into pastureland or into hunting grounds for the "noble passion", like them had to lease their reallocated land from the expropriators to be later evicted after their reallocated land turned out to be profitable for fishing. See Marx, Das Kapital, MEW 23: 756-59
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  93. ^ Frank, ReOrient, Preface.

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This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 4, 2007 .