A Companion to Marx’s Capital

tags : [[capitalism]] [[marxism]] [[harvey]] [[Marx]]

source : cite:harvey_{companion2018}

I’ve tried to omit notes on Harvey summarizing Marx. That should be left to the [[Capital Vol. 1]] notes.

Chapter 11: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation

• Primitive accumulation is about the origins of wage labor
• Competition always tends to produce centralization
• The power of Marx’s argument is that he, essentially, buried the classical political economists with their own words
• note to self: if there is any use in the term [[neoliberalism]] it’s that it describes an economic period of stopping the declining rate of profit. This tendency is only an acceleration of the tendencies we see in Capital
• the ideological aspects of liberalism; the freedom, individualism, the “market for the benefit of all” stuff is all shown to be hollow in Marx
  • ironically, it’s shown to be hollow because he shows that capitalism wasn’t born out of some fair and equal world, but of enslavement, theft, violence, etc.
• the central question of part 8 is how labor became a commodity (at least in England)
• Harvey recommends “The Invention of Capitalism”

Primitive Accumulation

• The release of the retainers allowed for money power to begin to be exercised
  • Harvey says that in the Grundrisse that Marx says that money dissolved the traditional community in favor of one in which money becomes the community (i.e. a market?)
• The accumulation of money power is curbed by the usage of money in this manner, for two reasons (the following are quotes):
  1. The state depends on and thereby becomes vulnerable to money power
  2. Money power can be created an mobilized in ways that state legislation has difficulty stopping
• The rise of the different capitalists allows them to bend the state to their collective will
• Harvey remarks that capitalism developed on “greenfield sites.” Is this where the term comes from?
• “Greenfield sites” are areas where capitalism was able to develop away from guilds, laws, local merchants, i.e. anyone who could stop you.
  • Could [[colonialism]] have been a large-scale “greenfield site” operation?
• Harvey kind of insinuates that the book should have ended at 32, and that 32 ends with a revolutionary call to action that is deflated by chapter 33
• Hegel theorized that societies are driven to colonialization as a way to return to the pastoral life of peasantry

Commentary

• Modern scholarship, according to Harvey, shows that Marx’s account of primitive accumulation is a bit exaggerated, though not entirely wrong
  • For example, there are instances where peasants weren’t forced off the land so much as they were goaded peacefully
  • Despite this, Marx’s analysis is significant and groundbreaking for its time
• Harvey brings up that [[Rosa Luxemburg]] believes it wrong that there are two separate forms of exploitation: the commodity market and the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production
  • Harvey says that she believes that primitive accumulation wasn’t merely capitalism’s original sin: it is also its ongoing sin. Capitalism would have long ago been extinguished had it not constantly found fresh rounds of primitive accumulation
  • One such way being [[imperialism]]
  • Harvey also suggests (that Luxemburg would probably suggest) that [[China]]’s own opening up and agricultural revolution have been yet another instance of primitive accumulation
  • The invention of personal finance could also be seen as a form of primitive accumulation
    • I don’t know if I agree with this, but credit does open up fresh avenues of capital extraction
• Harvey argues that neoliberalism is a sort of primitive accumulation, though I would probably not agree with him on that

Reflections and Prognoses