Talk:Primitive accumulation of capital
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
primitive accumulation of capital.
In Das Kapital I ch. 24 (German etext), Marx says the term ursprüngliche Akkumulation is not by himself but by Adam Smith (as previous accumulation). In fact Marx speaks of "the so-called primitive accumulation". So primitive accumulation might be coined by Marx's translators, or by Engels who revised the translation?
Contents |
[edit] Author's reply
In the French translation of Das Kapital, which he edited, Marx accepted the expression "primitive accumulation". The German ursprünglich can meen primordial, original, antecedental etc. Possibly Marx had in mind that the most primitive way of increasing your own wealth is to take wealth directly from someone else. Acquiring wealth through trade is less primitive. The point of his story is that historically the two go hand in hand, i.e. the expansion of market trade goes together with expropriation and the development of new property forms. User:Jurriaan 17 August 2007 0:42 (UTC)
[edit] style
The very first paragraph should have a brief definition of primitive accumulation in it. Then you can build your provacative mystery plot line, for those who really want to immerse themselves in your story.
I edited some of the section titles to reflect their content, so the reader can have a gauge of the structure of your presentation.
Especially the last section, "Whither development theory?" (or something to that effect) wanders off-topic, leading to the semi-obliteration of the subject matter of this wiki. This wiki on primitive accumulation hasn't really developed too much of a presentation on the ways that primitive accumulation has been, is, or can be applied to development analysis; so it makes little sense to jump into one or two academic disciplines' (philosophy & anthropology, I'm guessing) particularistic final word on the matter. I understand that if you were teaching a class on philosophical teleology, such a might be your grand finale. But since this wiki focuses on primitive accumulation, which can very easily be approached from a non-teleological perspective--and Marx did move away from his early Hegel studies over the course of his work life, I think that last section should be removed. It might go better under a wiki entry on "development philosophy", or "teleology", or even in a section on "Opponenets of Marxism" under the "Marxism" wiki entry. It would probably be more appropriate under the "Hegel" wiki. I think it's inappropriate here.
[edit] Author's reply
The question of primitive accumulation is directly related to development economics, one theme of which is how you can create a market and a cash economy where there is none (perhaps through extending credit?). Eugene Preobrazhensky mooted the idea of primitive socialist accumulation, and accumulation of wealth in the USSR and China also involved massive expropriation. The point of the section was to alert the reader to difficult moral questions about human progress raised by primitive accumulation. User:Jurriaan 17 August 2007 0:482 (UTC)
[edit] Ongoing primitive accumulation
I changed the title from "Ongoing global expropriation" to "Ongoing primitive accumulation" based on the material provided by these sources:
"Globalization" and the "Permanent" Process of Primitive Accumulation: The Example of the MAI, the Multinational Agreement on Investment (Claudia von Werlhof) @ http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol6/number3/pdf/jwsr-v6n3-werlof.pdf
Fictitious Capital For Beginners: Imperialism, 'Anti-Imperialism', and the Continuing Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg (Loren Goldner) @ http://www.metamute.org/en/Fictitious-Capital-For-Beginners
As well as a potential rebuttal source:
The Second Age of the Third World: from primitive accumulation to global public goods? (David Moore) @ http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Moore%20background%20on%20PrimitiveAccumulation.pdf
Darth Sidious 07:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
