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Louis Proyect wrote
I can't get over how Brennerites carefully sidestep what Marx wrote. In
the case of primitive accumulation, Marx wrote in chapter 31 of V. 1 of
Capital, “The Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist”:
"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the
beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of
Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins,
signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These
idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation."
"THESE IDYLLIC PROCEEDINGS ARE THE CHIEF MOMENTA OF PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION."
Get it? Probably not...
From "Robert Brenner and Primitive Accumulation":
https://louisproyect.org/2007/06/01/robert-brenner-and-primitive-accumulation/
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This discussion is sort of taking the form of a Mozart comic opera,
where confusion arises over something said or done and everyone gets out
of shape until, at least for Mozart, misunderstanding which had
threatened to come to blows is reconciled in the last act, and everyone
is cozy again. Calls for cool. Please remain calm and in your seats.
You have quoted this passage from chapter 31 of Capital before, "the
commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era
of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief
momenta of primitive accumulation."
We're talking past each other as I see it, mainly because there is
confusion between two different concepts, primitive accumulation and
origins of capitalism. Or you conflate them.
I quote Dimmock pp. 205-7:
The core of the Marxist debate stems from Marx's statements in the first
volume of Capital:
"In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are
epoch-making that act as levers for the capitalist class in the course
of its formation; but this is true above all for those moments when
great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of
subsistence, and hurled onto the labor market as free, unprotected and
rightless proletarians. The expropriation of the agricultural producer,
of the peasant, from the soil is the basis of the whole process. The
expropriation assumes different aspects in different countries, and runs
through its various stages in different orders of succession, and at
different historical epochs. Only in England, which we therefore take as
our example has it the classic form. (Marx, Capital volume 1, Penguin
ed. p. 876.)
"Heller and Davidson both attempt to limit the impact of the last
sentence. Rather than take on board the first couple of sentences as
representing the 'classic form' of expropriation of capitalism in
England - the sudden and forcible removal of the peasantry which Marx
states took place at the end of the fifteenth century and beginning the
the sixteenth century, and that ONLY IN ENGLAND [his emphasis] has it
the classic form, they say England takes ONLY the classic form. Without
revealing to us what they think this classic form is, and whether being
'classic' has any significance, they prefer to focus on Marx's point
that expropriation takes place at different times in different places,
although not AFTER England but before. In the footnote to the above
quote Marx pointed out that 'capitalist production developed earliest in
Italy' but was not sustained. So Heller and Davidson take this as their
cue that capitalism did not originate in England. In fact Heller states
that '[c]apitalism - from the start a single system - actually began in
Italy, spread to Germany and then to Holland and France. England was the
last stop in this progress.' His evidence for this begins with the quote
from Marx taken from the introduction of his chapter on 'The genesis of
the industrial capitalist' in the first volume of Capital, although
rather than Italy, the process in this respect begins with Spain and
Portugal:
"'The different moments of primitive accumulation can be assigned in
particular to Spain, Portugal , Holland, France and England, in more or
less chronological order. These different moments are systematically
combined together at the end of the seventeenth century in England; the
combination embraces the colonies, the modern tax system and the system
of protection.' (Marx, Capital volume 1, Penguin ed., p. 915.)
"What Marx is referring to here is 'primitive accumulation' as the wider
dispossession and slavery of people in the Americas, Africa and India,
the discovery of gold and silver in America by the Spanish at the end of
the fifteenth century, and the consequent commercial-mercantilist wars
between European nations over the fruits of new colonies 'which has the
globe as its battlefield,' and which was still going on while Marx was
writing about the 'opium wars' against China. While Marx describes
Holland as the 'model capitalist nation of the seventeenth century' the
colonial administration of which 'is one of the the most extraordinary
relations of treachery, bribery, massacre and meanness,' (Marx, Capital
volume 1, Penguin, p. 916) there is in no sense that this colonial
dispossession and commercial warfare reflects the development of a
capitalist mode of production in Spain, Portugal and France as the
result of the expropriation of the peasants in those countries. The
conquest of countries, the development of new colonies, and global trade
wars within particular European countries cannot be equated with the
sustained development of a capitalist mode of production. What Marx is
saying here is that England emerged as the dominant
commercial-mercantilist power from the end of the seventeenth century,
something that is generally recognized.But this would surely not have
been possible without the development of agrarian capitalism in the
previous two centuries as a result of the expropriation of the English
peasantry. For lords and farmers, agrarian capitalism paid dividends.
With the rationalizing of estates and important innovations in
convertible husbandry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
systematic innovations in both agrarian and rapidly developing and
epoch-making industrial sectors of the economy in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, and increasing demand from a population removed
from its subsistence base, its ongoing development was largely
self-sustaining in symbiosis with industrial development."
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