Re: Regulation, state, economy

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Okay then, I will post my original letter to Paul (22 August 2003):   Hi Paul, How's things ? I was reading some more discussion about primitive accumulation on OPE list, and I have a question. When I read Marx's Capital in German, I never found any place in which he uses the term "primitive accumulation", rather, he uses the term "ursprungliche Akkumulation", that is to say, the initial or original accumulation. Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specific words "primitive accumulation" himself, rather than original accumulation ? As far as I am am concerned, in these type of discussions, several different issues are continually theoretically confused and conflated, maybe because of some metaphorical motive, I don't know, but anyway, little sense comes out of it. The issues concerning "ursprungliche Akkumulation" are: (1) The origins of capital as such (2) The historical evolution of the forms of capital, prior to, up to, and within the capitalist mode of production (3) The origins of the capitalist mode of production itself (4) The initial accumulation of capital, within the capitalist mode of production itself, as an ongoing process Mainly what is conflated in the discussion I think is the origins of capital as such, and the gradual subordination of the entire production process of a society or economic community under the laws of capital (which of course requires the separation of labour power from the means of production, and the privatisation and trade in means of production, leaving aside superstructural requirements). This leads to schoolboy errors, such as that Marx's value theory applies only to the capitalist mode of production, and so on. In each of these 4 "moments" I mention, capital may originate from unequal exchange, legitimate merchant trade, capitalist or non-capitalist production, usury, plunder, piracy, conquest, theft, enslavement, credit and indebtedness or other forms of expropriation, etc. but all moments assume the existence of trade and money. In his chapter on original accumulation (part 8, chapter 26), the problem that Marx is actually dealing with is the initial conditions of the capitalist MODE OF PRODUCTION, and not of capital as such. He says, I already have shown in my earlier discussion of the pure economic forms, and abstracting from unequal exchange, how "money is changed into capital" and "how capital generates surplus-value" which forms more capital. But he says, in discussing the forms of capital and surplus-value with reference to production, I have assumed that there already exists a mass of capital, and there already exists exploitable labour-power (he had referred to usury capital and merchant capital as sources of investment capital, and so on). Likewise, in discussing simple and expanded reproduction, he says, I have shown how capitalist production can itself reproduce the conditions for its own existence and perpetuation on an ever broader scale; in other words, how, in the production of surplus-value, the capitalistic social relations of production themselves are simultaneously reproduced. That is WHY "the whole movement seems to turn into a vicious circle" and to explain the origins of the CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION as an historically separate mode of production, we can only get out of the vicious circle, by supposing an original accumulation, or what Adam Smith calls "previous accumulation", which is not the result of the CMP, but an external starting point. What you have to explain, is how the growth of trade can transform the production process into a capitalist production process, and Marx says, that is something I have not done so far, because I assumed the existence of exploitable labour-power, and I assumed a stock of money which could be invested in means of production and labour-power. I have examined the social relations and property relations which allow this to happen, but I have not explained where those social relations originate from (a requirement of the materialist conception of history). Marx's basic concern is to dissociate the concept of Smithian "previous accumulation" from the concept of "saving up money", such as occurs here and there on an ongoing basis, and delineate the origins of the CMP firmly in EXPROPRIATION of one sort or another (of which the current conquest of Iraq provides a striking example). And it is this, which sets the theme for the remaining chapters of Volume 1. And by that very fact, the capitalistic social relations of production are intrinsically class relations, involving the domination of the possessing classes over the other classes in the population, and the extension of this domination; moreover they intrinsically involve crime, not just in the sense of the violation of private property (expropriation of capital by other capital, or by the propertyless), but the forcible privatisation of public or foreign property (resources of any kind) through expropriation in some or other form. My personal view (I have not yet written this up in a book), is that this insight forms the correct starting point for a theoretical consideration of the development of modern imperialism (capitalist imperialism) which is based consistently on Marx's theory of value. The whole problem with Lenin's presentation of imperialism is that it is descriptive, but hardly anybody can develop it theoretically in a way which is consistent with Marx. That is to say, Lenin does not systematically relate the new forms of capital he identifies, to value theory or to the laws of motion of capitalist development which Marx specifies. Similarly, Rosa Luxemburg, being a woman, seeks to infer the dynamics of capitalist imperialism from the theory of expanded reproduction, but in so doing, she runs together several different problems concerning the accumulation of capital, creating inconsistencies which Bukharin among others criticises quite ably. Ernest Mandel points the way out of the dillema, but he doesn't actually do it, again his explanation of imperialism is largely descriptive and somewhat eclectic. In his case, he does grasp the theoretical problem of original accumulation very well, but he does not proceed via a systematic value-theoretical critique of Ricardo's theory of foreign trade. His most important insight is, that capitalism presupposes imperialism, and reproduces imperialism on an expanding scale (this is later highlighted by Bill Warren, who however makes important mistakes in his presentation as well, failing to come to grips with value theory and the forms of capital). In the case of Kozo Uno and his school, an attempt is made to overcome these problems by distinguishing the theory of a purely capitalist society (the pure forms or abstractions that show that capitalism can exist as an economic community exclusively regulated by the dynamics of capital) from "stages" in the historical development of capitalism, and a consideration of specific capitalist countries. But, actually, the Uno school is unable to link the pure theory to the stages theory and then to specific societies in a systematic and integral way. That is, Uno is able to specify a method of abstraction, but not of concretisation, and departs from Marx's epistemic method, despite brilliant insights (see Jindrich Zeleny, The Logic of Marx, for some interesting discussion of Marx's method). As a result, the Uno school also becomes eclectic and descriptive, when it seeks to explain specific historical epochs or specific societies. I consider that, insofar as there is a philological "proof" of the correctness of a theoretical approach, rather than its ability to explain reality, my point of view on the interpretation of the "true" Marxian theory of imperialism is demonstrated by what Marx actually says in Chapter 33, on the modern theory of colonisation. Colonisation must in fact be grasped in the first instance as a modus of the primitive accumulation of capital, which allows for an extension of the economic base of the capitalist mode of production. By discussing the paradoxes of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Marx actually briefly sketches the conditions of the problem and how they might be solved. In the opening chapter of his book Late Capitalism, Ernest Mandel raised the intelligent question of: why have Marxists not been able to systematically relate the laws of motion of capitalist development to the real history of the capitalist mode of production ? His answer is, because the Marxists tried to infer the dynamics of capitalist development from the theory of economic reproduction on an expanding scale, which is basically a true assesment, because Marx's theory of reproduction is only really intended to demonstrate how capital can dominate the whole of the production process of an economic community and recreate its initial conditions, such that all economic relations are internal to the capitalist mode of production. It does not break out of the "vicious circle" which Marx refers to, and insofar it does so, it does so eclectically. The conclusion I personally came to, years ago, is that the reason why there has been no discussion of modern imperialism consistent with Marx's discussion of the laws of motion of the capitalism, is because the theoretical significance of the problem of primitive accumulation has never been framed correctly. When Marx writes, in his preface to Capital, "The country that is more developed industially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future", he is referring in an important way to the process of original accumulation, but almost everybody misses that point conceptually. But that is why Marx says that "if, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him, "De te fabula narratur !". He is referring to capitalist expansion of the capitalist MODE OF PRODUCTION, not the expansion of world trade, through expropriation processes.  Marx continues, that "Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonism that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results." The modus operandi by which this process occurs, i.e. the process by which foreign economic communities are subordinated to the laws of motion of capital, is precisely the so-called "primitive accumulation". And this suggests, that the process of so-called primitive accumulation must be correctly theorised, rather than be treated in an ad-hoc, eclectic, descriptive or historical way only. I think it is an important task, to develop this theory correctly, because on that basis can we understand more correctly the future of capitalism and the class struggles on a world scale, in order to intervene in them. The concept of "globalisation" is primarily ideological in my opinion - far from grasping the totality of modern capitalism, it hides a fragmented, eclectic, one-sided view of things. The importance of theory is not affirmed, but denied, because there is an inability to theorise things correctly. Moreover, the inability to theorise this problematic correctly, has been a direct cause of massive crimes against humanity in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Just have a look at how Preobrazhensky forms a theory of "primitive socialist accumulation" when Stalin then takes over and modifies, for the purpose of a programme of forced "socialist" (sic.) industrialisation, and how, subsequently, the Tony Cliff forms a fake, eclectic theory of "state capitalism" which has nothing to do anymore with Marx's theory beyond its commitment to workingclass self-emancipation. I am not saying of course, that you can attribute what happens in history to a false theory, this is idealism, but what you can say that a false theory in the hands of a very powerful polity has enormous implications. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the "theories" of the US government about the maintenance of world order and the expansion of capitalism. You can say, that these theories articulate, in an eclectic, mediated and haphazard way, the requirements of the haute bourgeoisie, but at the same time, they can have an important, independent effect. Regards Jurriaan