We are told many myths about capitalism: that it’s rational, that it rewards honest labor, that it’s the system most suited to our human nature, and that, as a result, its historical emergence was a largely peaceful affair. Nothing could be further from the case, and it was to debunk such myths that Karl Marx turned to the category of so-called primitive or original accumulation to describe the brutal processes of dispossession, colonialism, and slavery that set the stage for launching capitalism as a global system. Marx’s account of this pivotal moment in history was also pivotal for his own understanding of capitalism, leading him to reevaluate capitalism’s global unevenness and ultimately to reject the idea that it develops in linear stages. But what is primitive accumulation? Why is it considered essential to the development of capitalism in particular? And if capitalism’s development is perpetual, what might be the sites of primitive accumulation today?
This course tracks the concept of primitive accumulation as a key pivot from within Marx’s own work, through Rosa Luxemburg’s analysis of primitive accumulation as a global process, and outward to the broader trajectory of Third World Marxism in the work of Walter Rodney among others. We will consider contemporary formulations of historic and ongoing forms of accumulation, from Silvia Federici and David Harvey to Angela Davis and Robin D.G. Kelley and contemporary Indigenous scholar-organizers like the Red Nation. As we read, we will be asking: What is primitive about so-called primitive accumulation? Does the connection it poses between dispossession and proletarianization hold on a global scale? What is the connection between primitive accumulation and uneven development? And what does the concept of primitive accumulation tell us about the war currently raging between capitalism and community?
