📓 literature/a_companion_to_marx_s_capital.md by @ryan ☆

A Companion to Marx’s Capital

source : harvey_companion_2018

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”

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

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