Primitive Accumulation of Capital - Primitive Accumulation and Privatization

Primitive Accumulation and Privatization

According to Marx, the whole purpose of primitive accumulation is to privatize the means of production, so that the exploiting owners can make money from the surplus labour of those who, lacking other means, must work for them.

Marx says that primitive accumulation means the expropriation of the direct producers, and more specifically "the dissolution of private property based on the labor of its owner... Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor." (chapter 32, emphasis added).

Chapter Thirty-Two: Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation

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