Capital, Volume I - Part Eight: So-Called Primitive Accumulation

Part Eight: So-Called Primitive Accumulation

In order to understand the desire for and techniques utilized by the bourgeoisie to accumulate capital before the rise of capitalism itself, one must look to the notion of primitive accumulation as the main impetus for this drastic change in history. Primitive accumulation refers to the essential lucrative method employed by the capitalist class that brought about the transition in to the capitalist mode of production following the end of the feudal system. Karl Marx states that the means of production and a bare level of subsistence must be stripped from the common producer to allow for this to take place. The means of production refers to the tools or processes used to create a product or provide a service.

The central process for and secret behind primitive accumulation involved the expropriation of agricultural lands and any form of wealth from the population of commoners by the capitalists, which typically was characterized by brutal and violent struggles between the two opposing classes. Since the peasantry was not subjected to the laws of feudalism any longer, they were ultimately freed from their lords and the land to assimilate into this new mode of production as a wage laborer. Every freed proletariat as a result had only their labor power to sell to the bourgeoisie to meet their needs to simply survive.

Unfortunately, the integration process into this new mode of production came at a cost to the proletariat since the strenuous demands of finding alternative work proved to be too much of a burden for most. As a result, the working class often initially resorted to thievery and begging to meet their needs under this new form of human existence. To make matters worse, harsh legislation seen in England and France as Marx points out declared these individuals to be vagabonds and rogues subject to the laws of the state. Furthermore, the working class also suffered due to legislative measures taken in England to keep working wages astonishingly low while the cost of living rose.

The origin of the capitalists in England spawned out of the "great landed proprietors" who reaped the benefits of the surplus value made from the expropriated land they had acquired at practically no cost. The progressive fall of the value of precious metals and money brought more profit to the capitalist farmers as the wage laborers beneath them were forced to accept lower wages. It comes as no surprise that the class of capitalist farmers in England became enormously wealthy given the circumstances of the time.

The British Agricultural Revolution (17th–19th centuries) not only caused many changes in the way people worked but in social structure as well. When industrialization provided the cheapest and most efficient tools for agricultural production, it caused a reduced need for the peasant farm workers, which displaced most of the working class from the countryside. Faced with the choice of selling their labor for a wage or becoming a capitalist, there emerged a class of entrepreneurs who through the exploitation of wage laborers became the capitalist class. As the system grew, there became a need for cheaper and more readily available materials. Thus colonization was born. By expanding into new territories and enslaving indigenous cultures, primitive accumulation became a source of quick and easy capital. Famine even became a tool for capitalists in 1769–1770 when England raised the price of rice in India so that only the rich could afford it. National debt soon became a tool of control for capitalists who turned unproductive money into capital through lending and exchange. Encouraged to participate in the creation of debt, each worker participates in the creation of "joint-stock companies, the stock-exchange, and modern bankocracy." The international credit system conceals the source of its generation; the exploitation of slave and wage laborers.

The shift in the ownership of the means of production from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie left the common producer with only his labor power to sell. This means they are free proprietors of the conditions of their labor. During this process of transference, private property was replaced by capitalist private property through the highest form of exploitation, and the shift from the days of free labor to wage labor had taken place. Capitalist private property was formed from the capital mode of appropriation, which dwindled away the once existent private property founded on the personal labor of workers.

Marx states that as capitalism grows the number of wage laborers grows exponentially. Therefore, ultimately there will be a revolution in which the capitalists are expropriated from their means of wealth by the majority. In other words, the seeds of destruction are already implanted within capitalism. Marx stresses that the demise of capitalism does not necessarily mean the return of feudalism and private property, but rather "it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by labor itself". That is to say that the transformation will be reverted back to the time where private property is seen as social property.

Marx claims that two types of private property exist in a political economy. The first form is the labor of the producer himself and the other form rests in a capitalists exploitation of others. In the industrialized capitalist world of Western Europe, this is easily attained through the usage of laws and private property. However, capitalists constantly find obstacles in the colonies where workers work for their own enrichment rather than that of the capitalist. Capitalists overcome this obstacle by the use of force and by the political backing of the "mother land". If domination over the workers free will cannot be achieved, Marx then asks, "how did capital and wage-labour come into existence?" This comes about through the division of workers into owners of capital and owners of labor. This system causes workers to essentially expropriate themselves in order to accumulate capital. This self-expropriation served as primitive accumulation for the capitalists, and therefore, was the catalyst for capitalism in the colonies.