I of course take Marx over Mr. Mandel any day on every question of political economy.
"But before doing so, we might ask, how does this strange phenomenon arise, that we find on the market a set of buyers, possessed of land, machinery, raw material, and the means of subsistence, all of them, save land in its crude state, the products of labour, and on the other hand, a set of sellers who have nothing to sell except their labouring power, their working arms and brains? That the one set buys continually in order to make a profit and enrich themselves, while the other set continually sells in order to earn their livelihood? The inquiry into this question would be an inquiry into what the economists call "previous or original accumulation," but which ought to be called orginial expropriation. We should find that this so-called original accumulation means nothing but a series of historical processes, resulting in a decomposition of the original union existing between the labouring Man and his Instruments of Labour. Such an inquiry, however, lies beyond the pale of my present subject. The separation between the Man of Labour and the Instruments of Labour once established, such a state of things will maintain itself and reproduce itself upon a constantly increasing scale, until a new and fundamental revolution in the mode of production should again overturn it, and restore the original union in a new historical form.
What, then, is the value of labouring power? (Karl Marx Value, Price and Profit.)
"original accumulation means nothing but a series of historical processes, resulting in a decomposition of the original union existing between the labouring Man and his Instruments of Labour."
Apparently, the Trotskyite theoretician Ernest Mandel rendered Marx more profound. In Marx hands the primitive or original accumulation precedes the formation of the capitalist class. But, then again what does Marx know.:-) I guess hitting the lottery is the social process "resulting in a decomposition of the original union existing between the labouring Man and his Instruments of Labour," along with armed robbery of ones neighbor, prostitution and playing the stock market.
In my dogmatic way of thinking hitting the lottery seem to be separating the state government from the money it collects from players and in turn the winners money "reenter" the reproduction process - long underway, and does not on any level lead to the formation of the capitalist class. This probably is the "dogmatic" way of viewing things.
Marx of course chooses to place primitive accumulation in a specific historical period "because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it." And is "the historical process of . . .the capital class in course of formation;"
One can define anything anyway one chooses and the Trotskyite theoretician Ernest Mandel is no Marx by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone know a good lottery number?
Melvin P :-)
>Some possible sources of original accumulation within a society based on the capitalist mode of production (I note explicitly this is not intended as a complete list):
1) setting up a legal or illegal new business venture or entrepreneurial activity from scratch ("business start-ups") with loan capital
2) prostitution or slavery, legal or illegal, formal or informal, and live performances of any sort which earn money
3) legal foreign trade, on the basis of unequal exchange (buy cheap, sell dear) with loaned capital
4) invading another country in order to expropriate people there
5) playing the stock market, the futures market, the money market or the lottery with loaned capital
6) theft, robbery, fraud, scams, hedge funds, smuggling, espionage and other forms of crime leading to the acquisition of intellectual, material or human property by illegal means
7) expropriation of one capitalist by another capitalist, via legally permissible procedures or illegal ones
8) privatisation of publicly-owned assets which were/are paid for, or maintained by, taxpayers or rate-paying residents, or making money from helping that privatisation process along, legally or illegally
9) loaning money legally or illegally in order to loan more money, to lend it out again or invest it, legally or illegally, in order to make money from the discrepancy in the financial return or interest rate
10) legal or illegal mediation between people, on the basis of superior knowledge, obtained legally or illegally
In his book Late Capitalism, which I first read in 1980, Ernest Mandel therefore notes explicitly that primitive accumulation is an "ongoing process" within a society where capitalism is the dominant mode of production. <
