Primitive Accumulation of Capital - Marx's Case History

Marx's Case History

Karl Marx's discussion of primitive accumulation in part eight of Das Kapital, Vol. 1 has become a cornerstone of the Marxian critique of 'bourgeois' political economy (in German: ursprüngliche Akkumulation, literally "original accumulation" or "primeval accumulation"). Its purpose is to help explain how the capitalist mode of production came into being. According to Marx, before there could be money with which to make more, i.e. capital, an original accumulation must take place. This might take the form of resource extraction, conquest and plunder, and/or enslavement.

As Marx writes:

"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black-skins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation."

In a case history of England, Marx looks at how the serfs became free peasant proprietors and small farmers, who were, over time, forcibly expropriated and driven off the land, forming a property-less proletariat.

He also shows how more and more legislation is enacted by the state to control and regiment this new class of wage workers. In the meantime, the remaining farmers became capitalists, operating more and more on a commercial basis.