Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by

19 Pages·2006·0.16 MB·English

Progress in Human Geography30, 5 (2006) pp. 608–625
Primitive accumulation, accumulation
by dispossession, accumulation by
‘extra-economic’ means
Jim Glassman*
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia,
1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada
Abstract: David Harvey’s adaptation and redeployment of Marx’s notion of ‘primitive
accumulation’– under the heading of ‘accumulation by dispossession’– has reignited interest in the
concept among geographers. This adaptation of the concept of primitive accumulation to different
contexts than those Marx analyzed raises a variety of theoretical and practical issues. In this paper,
I review recent uses and transformations of the notion of primitive accumulation that focus on its
persistence within the Global North, addressing especially the political implications that attend
different readings of primitive accumulation in the era of neoliberal globalization.
Key words: neoliberal globalization, primitive accumulation, transnational social movements.
I Introduction now deploying it to describe processes that
David Harvey’s adaptation and redeploy- are occurring within capitalist countries of
ment of Marx’s notion of ‘primitive accumu- the Global North.
lation’– under the heading of ‘accumulation This adaptation of the concept of primitive
by dispossession’ (2003) – has reignited accumulation to different contexts than those
interest in the concept among geographers Marx analyzed raises a variety of theoretical
and others (eg, RETORT, 2005; Wolford, and practical issues. Since not only Harvey’s
2005; Buck, 2006; Hart, 2006; Sneddon, work but also earlier writings on primitive
2006). Primitive accumulation – and, the accumulation in contemporary contexts have
process of proletarianization that lies at its by now received significant attention, I do not
core – has long been central to discussions in wish to canvass all these issues here. Instead,
development studies, so, even given the new I focus quite narrowly on the matter of the
wrinkles added by Harvey, this renewed political implications – and especially the spa-
interest might seem surprising. What lends tiality of the political implications – that
novelty to Harvey’s discussion, though, is attend different readings of primitive accu-
that unlike the ongoing use of the concept in mulation. These political implications, in turn,
development studies Harvey and others are imply differing kinds of research agendas for
*Email: [email protected]
© 2006 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0309132506070172
Jim Glassman 609
scholars interested in the geography and poli- debate within Marxism – extending over the
tics of primitive accumulation. course of a century – should be of significance
In the next section of the paper, I briefly for a broad range of scholars, irrespective of
note why the historical debate within Marxism their political and theoretical commitments. I
regarding primitive accumulation ought to be suggest at least two reasons.
of broader interest to geographers and other First, both the older and the renewed dis-
social scientists, including those whose theo- cussions of primitive accumulation directly
retical orientation is not Marxist. In the third address issues of extraordinary salience for
section, I review some of Marx’s basic claims understanding transformations in the contem-
regarding primitive accumulation and note in porary world. For example, removal of agri-
particular what kinds of political implications he cultural producers from the countryside and
drew from this reading. In the fourth section, I consolidation of more privatized control over
construct differing readings of primitive accu- resources – both central to primitive accumu-
mulation as the crux of strategic political differ- lation – remain hugely important processes
ences between twentieth-century Marxist today, effecting literally billions of people.
and neo-Marxist analysts – in particular, differ- Thus, any discussions that purport to make
ences between those Marxists in the Global sense of such processes are worthy of atten-
North who hewed closest to Marx’s political tion, even from those who disagree with the
analysis and neo-Marxists in the Global South theoretical perspectives that frame the discus-
who offered a different reading of proletarian- sion. Marxist analyses provide theoretically
ization and political struggle. I also note some charged interpretations of primitive accumula-
of the political challenges posed for both tion, rather than just descriptive glosses, and in
Marxism and neo-Marxism by the geographies my view this is a strength rather than a weak-
of post-cold war, postcolonial, neoliberal glob- ness. But even those who disagree with the
alization. In the fifth section, I note how prim- theoretical interpretations given to primitive
itive accumulation has been theorized by those accumulation within Marxist debates can cer-
who consider it a continuous phenomenon. In tainly find arguments that contribute to an
the sixth section, I review three applications of understanding of transformations that are
the concept of primitive accumulation in integral to global capitalist development.
recent work by geographers, noting their gen- Second, and more specific to the discus-
eral implications for understanding contempo- sion of primitive accumulation in the Global
rary neoliberal globalization and the political North, much contemporary work in geogra-
struggles it generates. Finally, in concluding, I phy – especially within feminist theory, politi-
note how contemporary activists and public cal ecology, and post-Marxism – has
intellectuals are attempting to chart paths addressed the complexity and heterogeneity
through some of the socio-spatial messiness of capitalist societies, indeed within ‘capital-
that ensues when one takes the broadest impli- ist’economic processes themselves. While it
cations of contemporary and continuous prim- is beyond the scope of this paper to note all of
itive accumulation seriously. these attempts to introduce complexity into
social theory befitting the complexity of capi-
II Preamble: the contemporary talist societies, a review of debates surround-
relevance of a long-standing Marxist ing primitive accumulation shows that such
debate issues have long been important within
Though the reasons that primitive accumula- Marxist theory, whether or not they have
tion is of renewed interest may seem self- always been dealt with adequately. My own
evident to those geographers involved in contention is that non-orthodox, neo-Marxist
revisiting the concept, it is worth noting at positions on primitive accumulation – and, for
the outset why examination of a long-standing that matter, other issues – have in fact presaged
610 Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession
many features of contemporary anti-essen- with this expropriation of self-supporting
tialist discourse, albeit without adhering to the English peasants went ‘the destruction of
same sorts of epistemological and ontological rural domestic industry, the process of separa-
positions. Whether the theoretical differences tion between manufacturing and agriculture’
between non-orthodox, neo-Marxist (1967: 748). Elsewhere, as Marx ironically
approaches and post-prefixed, anti-essential- notes, ‘The discovery of gold and silver in the
ist approaches redound to the favor of the for- Americas, the extirpation, enslavement and
mer or the latter is not of concern to me here, entombment in mines of the aboriginal popu-
but I do believe that proponents of anti-essen- lation, the beginning of the conquest and loot-
tialist readings of economy, class, and the like ing of the East Indies, the turning of Africa
can benefit from revisiting the rich – and too into a warren for the commercial hunting of
often neglected – debates that were con- black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era
ducted within twentieth-century Marxism. It of capitalist production’(1967: 751). Through
is to those debates that I turn first. such varied forms of violent expropriation,
capitalism was born, ‘dripping from head to
III Marx on primitive accumulation foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt’
In certain respects, Marx came to the issue of (1967: 760), but having achieved the consoli-
primitive accumulation late in the day. At the dation of ‘the pigmy property of the many into
end of Capital volume I, after having spent the huge property of the few’(1967: 762).
hundreds of pages analyzing the labor process In discussing primitive accumulation, Marx
through which commodities and surplus value is always both ironic and dialectical, ironic in his
are produced within capitalist society, the deconstruction of bourgeois mythologies
process of ‘expanded reproduction’, he back- about capital being generated through the fru-
tracks to consider the origins of the surplus gality of the elite, dialectical in his unstinting
that made the first process of capitalist accu- view of this violent expropriation as
mulation possible – the ‘so-called primitive necessary for the furthering of human possibil-
accumulation’. As with his earlier analysis of ities. As in his notes on India for the New York
the commodity, Marx analyzes this phenome- Herald(1977b), Marx recognizes and exposes
non as a transformation of social relations. the hypocrisy of capitalist rhetoric about
Primitive accumulation is for Marx, first and human rights and equality, but is equally insis-
foremost, the ‘historical process of divorcing tent that, in spite of this hypocrisy, the
the producer from the means of production’, processes that capitalism sets in motion bring
transforming ‘the social means of subsistence new possibilities that should preclude any
and of production into capital’and ‘the imme- romanticism for the past. The common prop-
diate producers into wage laborers’ (1967: erty regimes, peasant production, and artisanal
714). The means of this divorce are varied, labor that capitalism replaces ‘exclude the con-
and include the ‘forcible usurpation’of com- centration of these means of production’and
mon property through ‘individual acts of vio- so also exclude ‘co-operation, division of labour
lence’and eventually the ‘parliamentary form within each separate process of production,
of robbery’, the Acts for enclosures of the the control over, and the productive application
Commons, through which ‘the landlords grant of the forces of Nature by society, and the free
themselves the people’s land as private prop- development of the social productive powers’.
erty’(1967: 724), this happening in England They thus ‘decree universal mediocrity’(1967:
concomitantly with ‘the theft of the State 762). In contrast to this, as Marx puts it in the
domains’which allowed the development of Grundrisse, capitalism creates the first society
large commercial farms and ‘“set free” the based on scientific control of nature – thus,
agricultural population as proletarians for the end of all ‘nature idolatry’– and the sys-
manufacturing industry’ (1967: 725). Along tematic development of both new productive
Jim Glassman 611
capacities and ‘expansion of needs’ (1973: daily more and more vanishing, owing to the
409–10). In sum, for Marx, primitive accumu- development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom
lation, however loathsome in its violence and of commerce, to the world-market, to unifor-
hypocrisy, is a necessary step in the direction of mity in the mode of production and in the
fuller human development. conditions of life corresponding thereto’
Within Marx’s historically ‘progressive’ (1977: 235).
vision of the process, primitive accumulation Where Marx presents such a ‘historical
has varied dimensions, including the proletar- stage’view of the process of primitive accu-
ianization it generates, the changes in prop- mulation, it appears directly connected to a
erty relations and consolidation of capital it particular political conclusion – namely that
affects, and the transformations in human- the natural agents of revolutionary social
environment relations that are its byproduct. struggle are those representatives of capital-
In spite of mentioning its multidimensional ism’s future, the industrial working classes of
character, however, Marx’s discussion of the most ‘advanced’ countries (1977b: 335;
primitive accumulation focuses largely on pro- Marx and Engels 1977: 228–29, 236). Other
letarianization, since he is pre-eminently con- struggles against capital, and particularly
cerned with the formation of what he takes to those of the groups being expropriated
be the most revolutionary subjects and the through primitive accumulation, are anachro-
central issues over which they struggle. For nistic insofar as they look to capitalism’s pre-
Marx, these subjects are urban-industrial history rather than to the possibilities
workers, and their struggles are most funda- capitalism creates for a particular kind of
mentally those connected to expanded repro- postcapitalist world. This view is not an
duction – for example, factory wages and unconsidered prejudice, nor is it based merely
working conditions, and control over the on Marx’s desire for realization of the afore-
industrial production process. This strategic mentioned material, intellectual, and social
political perspective helps push primitive possibilities created by capitalist develop-
accumulation towards the theoretical back- ment. It is a view with a specific geography.
ground, even as its historical significance is Marx was (in)famously unsympathetic to
being articulated. what he saw as the stereotypical political con-
Reinforcing this framing, primitive accu- sciousness of the European peasantry, and
mulation sometimes appears in Marx’s writing despite the consideration he was willing to
as a process confined to a particular (if indef- give to Russian populism late in his life (1977c),
inite) period – one already largely passed in was also generally skeptical about the practi-
England but still under way in the colonies at cal possibility of spatially scattered independ-
the time Marx wrote. In these passages, it ent producers developing a progressive,
appears as if for Marx primitive accumulation cohesive, class-conscious, political project. As
will eventually be supplanted everywhere by he bitingly said of French peasants, they form
a more normalized process of expanded a group ‘much as potatoes in a sack form a
reproduction, wherein the already achieved sack of potatoes’ (1977a: 317). In contrast,
separation of the producer from the means of urban-industrial workers, for Marx, present
subsistence allows the exercise of violence political possibilities built not only out of their
and open expropriation to recede into the cosmopolitanism and many-sided develop-
background, replaced by ‘the dull compulsion ment of needs but out of their physical prox-
of economic relations’which ‘completes the imity to one another. The clustering of many
subjection of the labourer to the capitalist’ workers in one location, as the end result of
(1967: 737). As Marx and Engels put it in primitive accumulation, facilitates communi-
‘The communist manifesto’, ‘National differ- cation and organization (Marx and Engels,
ences and antagonisms between peoples are 1977: 228).
612 Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession
Marx sometimes – and somewhat surpris- 1999). Collectively, these and other develop-
ingly – presents this development of urban ments through the first half of the twentieth
proletarian political struggle in nationalterms. century seemed to push the focus of radical
As he and Engels put it in ‘The communist social movements away from industrial work-
manifesto’, ‘The proletariat of each country ers in the Global North and towards more
must, of course, first settle matters with its heterogeneous – ie, popular-nationalist –
own bourgeoisie’ (1977: 230). Yet Marx’s social movements in the Global South
vision was also, from the outset, international- (Stavrianos, 1981), and also forced the
ist, in that he expected and promoted collabo- Communist Party to reconsider the impor-
ration of these national working-class tance of struggles in the colonies (de Janvry,
organizations. The form of internationalism, 1981: 11–12).
however, was heavily circumscribed by the In the early post-second world war period,
geography of nineteenth-century industrial a number of neo-Marxist perspectives came
capitalist development: it was an internation- to the fore summarizing the implications of
alism primarily of European workers, those these early twentieth-century practical-
who had already been proletarianized in the political contests over the agents of revolu-
process of primitive accumulation. For those tionary change. Among those frequently
workers in the rest of the world who were not cited in Anglophone social science are Paul
as yet fully proletarianized, the practical poli- Baran’s key text on the political economy of
tics of the European Left consigned them to a growth (1957), Andre Gunder Frank’s radical
holding pattern, or to implicit dependence dependency arguments (1967; 1979), Immanuel
upon nationalist movements. As Marx put it in Wallerstein’s development of a world systems
the notes on India, ‘The Indians will not reap approach (1974; 1979), Samir Amin’s writings
the fruits of the new elements of society scat- on global accumulation (1974; 1976; 1977),
tered among them by the British bourgeoisie, and the development of debates over ‘articu-
till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes lation of modes of production’ (eg, Foster-
shall have been supplanted by the industrial Carter, 1978; Wolpe, 1980). The central,
proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall shared point of many neo-Marxist positions,
have grown strong enough to throw off the often lost in overly formal and schematic
English yoke altogether’(1977b: 335). exchanges, was that since revolution had not
occurred in the global core, while capitalism
IV Neo-Marxists on primitive had not ‘fully’developed in most of the global
accumulation periphery, it was necessary to examine the
Throughout much of the twentieth century, interaction of numerous complex class group-
debates within Marxism and leftist social ings in order to understand both how capital-
movements over primitive accumulation, like ism functioned in the global periphery and
the related debate over whether or not it was how social change might be achieved there.
necessary to have the full development of In such neo-Marxist perspectives, the
capitalism before there could be a socialist owners of the ‘pigmy property’that Marx in
revolution, were transparently debates over some contexts seemed to present as not long
the potential agents of radical social change. for this (capitalist) world came to have a dif-
Without rehearsing these debates, it is worth ferent political bearing than under classical
recalling both the disappointment of the Marxism. Rather than being the dying repre-
European Left at the willing participation of sentatives of the premodern (Marx and
European workers in the first world war and Engels, 1977: 229), they might well form seg-
the Zapatista and Maoist innovation of cham- ments of progressive coalitions – though
pioning peasants as agents of either reform or much time and energy was always spent in
revolutionary change (Tutino, 1986; Meisner, debate over issues such as which groups of
Jim Glassman 613
peasants could be expected to favor progres- Thus, even where capitalist development
sive causes, whether or not various business destroyed one or another of these ‘in one
owners could be expected to support the form, in particular branches, at certain points,
‘patriotic’national cause, and the like (see, eg, it calls them up again elsewhere, because it
Sunkel, 1973; Spence, 1990: 372–76). In needs them for the preparation of raw mate-
many respects, contemporary ‘new social rial up to a certain point’(1967: 748). Rosa
movement’approaches are heir to this tradi- Luxemburg had furthered this idea, offering
tion of regarding subsistence producers and an argument for the permanent necessity of
the owners of small property as potentially primitive accumulation by suggesting that
progressive social actors rather than, as Marx the crisis tendencies of capitalism identified
sometimes characterized them, representa- by Marx made the constant conquest of
tives of the dead weight of the past. Thus, non-capitalist territories for the expropria-
discussions of ‘new social movement’ tion of raw materials and the reinvestment
responses to ongoing primitive accumulation of surplus a requirement for capitalist stabil-
have considerable resonance with a long tra- ity (Luxemburg, 1951; cf. Bradby, 1975).
dition of neo-Marxist theorizing and popular Luxemburg’s arguments were debated and, for
struggle. many orthodox Marxists, largely discredited
Connected with the debates between (Brewer, 1990), but a more modest proposition
Marxists and neo-Marxists over the agents of was put forward by subsequent analysts of
revolutionary change has been a basic empir- imperialism. As Amin put the matter, imperial-
ical, demographic question. Over the past ism and the conquest of non-capitalist territo-
century and a half, the complete and final ries may not be technically necessary for the
expropriation of the immediate producer that maintenance of capitalist accumulation, but
Marx sometimes seems to have anticipated the imperial option has been available and cap-
has never taken place, and political struggles italists in the Global North have seized it – with
against capitalism have – for better or worse – positive effects for the development of capital-
been at least as much the preserve of peas- ism in the core of the global economy and neg-
ants and artisans, especially from the Global ative effects in the periphery (1976; 1977).
South, as of industrial workers from the Marxist and neo-Marxist authors elabo-
Global North. At present, the question can rated these issues in the 1970s by noting that in
be raised as to whether such a prolonged certain contexts capitalists seemed to prefer –
process of primitive accumulation is finally and benefit from – measures that prevented
drawing to a close, ushering in the final stage full proletarianization of the labor force, since
of fully global capitalist development that will this prevented capitalists from having to pay for
enable the sorts of struggles Marx envisioned. the full costs of the social reproduction of labor
Yet, for reasons that will be discussed below, (Wallerstein, 1979: 147–48; 2000: 247, 350).
there is no compelling reason to expect the Indeed, Wallerstein, summarizing one version
complete and final expropriation of small or of the neo-Marxist argument, suggested that
common property any time soon. the total percentage of the labor force that has
One version of the debate over primitive been proletarianized worldwide has always
accumulation in the 1970s that brought out remained fairly small, and that capitalism is
this point focused on the ‘conservation- therefore based as much on the maintenance
dissolution’dialectic. Marx himself recognized of non-proletarianand semi-proletarianlabor as
that ‘the manufacture, properly so called, on the production of proletarian labor (1979:
conquers but partially the domain of national 275–78; 2000: 142–43, 240, 363).
production, and always rests on the handi- Given this incomplete process of proletar-
crafts of the town and the domestic industry ianization, for neo-Marxists any revolution-
of the rural districts as its ultimate basis’. ary subjects that can be constituted do not
614 Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession
necessarily have to await some fuller develop- occur in the most fully capitalist countries of
ment of capitalism, even though they might the Global North. Yet, in many respects, neo-
await some appropriate historical conjunc- Marxist visions of revolutionary change have
ture, while for Marxists the most likely revo- proven as wanting as more orthodox Marxist
lutionary subjects in the Global South are still visions. First, such revolutions as have
in formation as a result of the uneven and still occurred on the periphery have rarely lived up
incomplete development of capitalism. Up to to expectations, even if not all have been fail-
the present, this debate has often taken the ures. Second, nowhere today do such revolu-
form of an insistence by neo-Marxists that tions as occurred in the twentieth century
Marxists are too narrow and doctrinaire in seem at all likely. Third, the national form that
their conception of revolutionary subjects and such revolutionary struggles maintained, in
an insistence by Marxists that neo-Marxists large part a product of the colonial contexts in
are often backward-looking or even reac- which most of them developed, seems
tionary in their choice of revolutionary actors increasingly anachronistic.
and social projects. This debate, moreover, Wallerstein has long emphasized that all
has often centered on whether or not nation- the ‘counter-systemic’ movements of the
alism in the Global South can be seen as hav- twentieth century – social democratic
ing progressive dimensions or is merely the reformism in the capitalist core, actually
last stronghold of domestic bourgeoisies of existing state socialism in the Eastern bloc,
the Global South (see, eg, Emmanuel, 1972; and revolutionary nationalism in the periph-
Bettelheim, 1972; Warren, 1973; Amin, 1977; ery – were inherently limited by their spatial
Brenner, 1977). forms (2000: 358–60). While each, in their
In assessing this debate, there can be little own way, achieved the conquest of state
doubt that the industrial working classes of power within a national-territorial frame-
the Global North have not as yet performed work, capitalist power was and is trans-
the revolutionary tasks that Marx set for national, enacted through forms such as
them. The spatiality of early industrial capital- global commodity chains that cannot be com-
ism, as Marx correctly observed, made indus- pletely controlled by a given state (2000:
trial workers a potent force for progressive 367–73). Both Marxist and neo-Marxist
social change, and such changes occurred – scholars have addressed this problem, and
unevenly – in much of Europe and the both European labor/leftist parties and anti-
‘neoEuropes’throughout the twentieth cen- colonial/third-world nationalist movements
tury. But outside of the Soviet Union (not have attempted to build outward from
itself part of Marx’s vision of the most national bases to broader international forms
‘advanced’capitalist countries) such changes of power – eg, the Internationals and interna-
were reformist (preserving capitalism) rather tional labor organizations, the non-aligned
than revolutionary, and the global spatiality of movement. Yet it is precisely in their interna-
capitalist development enabled these reforms tional projects that these kinds of movements
in ways that contributed to ‘social imperial- have experienced some of their greatest limits.
ism’and ‘hyper-exploitation’of workers and Problems faced by revolutionary projects
peasants in the Global South (Taylor and in the Global South have been underwritten
Flint, 2000: 137–39). by two interconnected phenomena within
In certain respects, the neo-Marxist asser- postcolonial countries – the rise of often suc-
tion of popular-national movements in the cessful and internationalized capitalist classes,
Global South providing the greatest critical and the increasingly uneven internal geogra-
mass of revolutionary actors has proven accu- phy of development within postcolonial coun-
rate: the major revolutions of the twentieth tries. The latter phenomena is associated with
century (eg, Russia, China, Cuba), did not the linking of national metropolitan centers
Jim Glassman 615
into global city networks, networks within continuous element of modern societies and its
which dominant and internationalized classes range of action extends to the entire world’
(capitalists, well-paid urban professionals) are (De Angelis, 1999: section 2).
able to realize many of their interests, includ- This basic conceptual point helps ground
ing the appropriation of surplus from the some of the foregoing observations about the
‘national’ countryside (Friedmann, 1996; continuous, contemporary, and global char-
Taylor, 2004). This manifests the rise of acter of primitive accumulation. However
socio-spatial ‘cores’within the global periph- much the language of historical phases may
ery (Jones, 1998; Glassman, 2003) and have infused Marx’s work, and however prob-
effectively undermines the kinds of popular- lematic some of the specific phase-oriented
national movements which many neo- political conclusions he chose to draw, his
Marxists had seen as a way station to basic ontology of alienation (see Ollman,
socialism. In this context, even if the persist- 1971) links primitive accumulation and
ence of primitive accumulation as a central expanded reproduction and provides a basis
feature of capitalist development in the for understanding primitive accumulation as
Global South still commends trans-class more than merely historical (cf. Bonefield,
struggles involving non-proletarian workers, 2001). Crucially, De Angelis focuses on the
the specific forms that such struggles should role of class struggles in the process of separa-
take and the possibilities they may bequeath tion, and I want to investigate further some of
are by no means entirely clear. the possibilities bequeathed by these class
struggles, both to further clarify how and why
V Theorizing ongoing primitive primitive accumulation can be seen as contin-
accumulation under neoliberal uous, rather than a historical phase, and to
globalization inform the reassessment of what Harvey calls
In a reinterpretation of Marx’s writings, ‘Marx’s reticence’regarding endorsement of
Massimo De Angelis constructs compelling struggles over primitive accumulation
evidence for the claim that while Marx did in (Harvey, 2003: 143–44).
part see primitive accumulation as a historical Primitive accumulation may be useful for
phase of capitalist development he also saw it capitalists and may thus discourage them
as a process that formed a basic ontological from intentionally promoting full proletarian-
conditionfor capitalist production, rather than ization (Wallerstein, 1979: 277–78, 290), but
just a historical precondition (1999: section 3.4; this does not resolve the issue of whether or
cf. De Angelis, 2001). The aspect of De not primitive accumulation is likely to be an
Angelis’s argument that I wish to emphasize enduring feature of capitalist development. I
here is his focus on the basic ontological con- suggest that the contours of class struggle are
nection between primitive accumulation and indeterminate in this regard. Moreover, pre-
expanded reproduction. As he puts the matter, cisely in the indeterminacy of these contours
‘the separationof producers and means of pro- resides one basis for the likelihood – never the
duction is a common character of both accu- inevitable necessity – of primitive accumula-
mulation and primitive accumulation’. and tion remaining a fixture within capitalist
indeed for Marx accumulation proper is noth- development. Workers may struggle, as
ing other than primitive accumulation ‘raised to Wallerstein suggests, to gain employment as
a higher power’(De Angelis, 1999: sections 3.1 wage laborers, as well as to gain access to the
and 3.2). Moreover, this basic ontological con- forms of social expenditure that have often
nection points to the fact that, following accompanied full proletarianization (cf.
Luxemburg, ‘the extra-economic prerequisite O’Conner, 1973). But there is also a long his-
to capitalist production – what we shall call tory of workers resisting their full proletarian-
primitive accumulation – is an inherent and ization – primarily because of the loss of
616 Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession
independence entailed and the undesirability readers to believe that measures to eliminate
of working conditions in the waged jobs avail- “unjust”instances of primitive accumulation
able to workers removed from agriculture, might suffice to bring about a good society’or
petty commodity production, and the like ‘that the ills of society resulted from unjust
(Scott, 1976; 1985; Perelman, 2000). actions that were unrelated to the essence of
Given these complexities, the process of the market’(cited in De Angelis, 1999: section
proletarianization seems much more a contin- 5.1). Harvey, drawing Marx’s reticence
gent outcome of specific class struggles than through a range of contemporary concerns,
a predetermined trajectory of capitalist devel- notes both that struggles over primitive accu-
opment. Forces exist that both accelerate and mulation can often be anti-socialist or lacking
retard proletarianization, and neither kind of in progressive characteristics (2003: 162–63,
force is the exclusive preserve of one or 166, 169), and are moreover extremely hetero-
another social group. In some contexts, capi- geneous and difficult to bring together both
talists can benefit not only from garnering thematically and geographically (2003: 166,
cheap resources but from turning precapitalist 173–74).
workers into wage laborers in the process. In These were certainly concerns for Marx,
such contexts, however, workers themselves and they have considerable justification. Yet
may struggle against this process of proletari- they are also one-sided. Anti-socialist and
anization with greater or lesser effect. In non-progressive politics are scarcely the sole
other contexts capitalists can benefit from preserve of groups struggling over primitive
maintaining a large non-proletarianized labor accumulation, as evidenced by the long his-
force that contributes indirectly to capitalists’ tory of support for imperialism by organized
ability to formally exploit wage labor, a project labor within countries of the Global North
that may confront the attempts of workers to (Glassman, 2004). More pertinent to my
gain greater access to paid, proletarianized present argument, if actually existing capital-
labor (Wolpe, 1980; Perelman, 2000). While ist development simply is many-sided and
no formula can determine in advance complex, mobilizing a whole range of actors
whether or not, empirically speaking, primi- against the varied aspects of alienation that
tive accumulation is likely to be a passing are integral to capitalism, then there is no way
phase or instead a permanent feature of cap- around the activist challenges of building
italist development, the fact that proletarian- alliances among disparate actors – as Harvey
ization-retarding forces emanating from class rightly notes (2003: 176–77) – or the scholarly
struggle will always likely be present, implies challenges of seeing and effectively analyzing
that primitive accumulation is a more endur- the connections between these disparate
ing process than Marx suggested in the faces of capitalist alienation. This, as I will
moments where he discusses it as a historical note below in addressing Harvey’s work more
phase. directly, is precisely why anti-capitalist strug-
While Marx laid crucial foundations for gles have increasingly come to be associated –
analyzing the complex, transnational geogra- rightly or wrongly – with the so-called ‘new
phy of class struggles within capitalism, he social movements’, such as environmental
also chose to place special emphasis on the and livelihood struggles in the Global South
struggles by already proletarianized workers and struggles against environmental and
over the conditions of expanded reproduc- other forms of racism in the Global North.
tion. Various contemporary commentators In elaborating this matter, moreover, it is
note reasons for this, beyond the geographical- important to note the various forms of social
political considerations I have already men- labor that are not paid for totally by capital
tioned. Michael Perelman, for example, but are required by capital – from publicly
argues that Marx ‘would not have wished his funded infrastructure provision, subsidies to
Jim Glassman 617
research and development, and publicly have undergirded and made possible the accu-
funded training and education of workers, to mulation of capital in the money economy,
gendered and often racialized household particularly through the role of this labor in
labor, and policing and other activities con- social reproduction of a labor force that can
nected to maintenance of capitalist property be directly exploited by capital (Dalla Costa
relations. These forms of labor are always and James, 1972; Deere, 1976; Beneria, 1979;
central to capitalism, even in its most Gibson-Graham, 1996; Cravey, 1998; Katz,
‘mature’ forms. Within the autonomist 2001a; 2001b; Dalla Costa, 2005; Mitchell et
Marxist tradition, recognition of the breadth al., 2004). Moreover, the patriarchal control
and depth of these social reproductive activi- of women’s bodies that enables this gender
ties and the ways they are integral to formally division of labor has been directly analyzed as
capitalist accumulation has led to the asser- an instance of primitive accumulation (Mies,
tion that capitalism has reached a stage in 1986; Dalla Costa, 2004).
which all activities are subsumed within what Expanding on this argument, Katharyne
Mario Tronti calls the ‘social factory’(Tronti, Mitchell, Sallie Marston, and Cindi Katz in
1973). That is, all social activities are sub- fact argue against the very notion of a separa-
sumed within processes that lead to the pro- tion between the work of production and
duction and appropriation of surplus value by social reproduction (2004). From this per-
capitalists (cf. Dalla Costa and James, 1972; spective, gendered and racialized forms of
Bell, 1978; Cleaver, 1979; Negri, 1991). household labor that have been conceived as
Seen in this way, the production of value part of the process of social reproduction are
that enters into the circuits of capitalist accu- in fact integral to the overall process of pro-
mulation through the parasitization of for- duction and accumulation. This makes alien-
mally non-capitalist processes is a deeply ation and appropriation of surplus value
embedded feature of capitalism, going central to an even wider range of activities
beyond the imperialist appropriation identified than those typically discussed under the
in earlier Marxist debates. Moreover, there is heading of primitive accumulation.
little reason to suppose that capitalists would I follow the tradition of referring to the
wish to dispose of all formally non-capitalist entire panoply of forms of accumulation by
processes of production and social reproduc- means other than expanded reproduction –
tion (ie, directly commodify everything), the primitive accumulation discussed by
since to do so would require capitalists to pay Marx, new or ongoing forms of accumulation
all the costs of reproducing capitalist social by dispossession, and the gendered and racial-
relations, including the requirements for ized forms of accumulation within social
developing an exploitable labor force. reproduction noted here – as ‘accumulation
Indeed, to complicate this picture further, by extra-economic means’. Adding to the
it is crucial to note that one central aspect of picture the extra-economic accumulation of
primitive accumulation that is scarcely ana- (mainly) women’s unpaid social reproductive
lyzed within many of the resurgent discus- labor – including the varied forms of subjuga-
sions of primitive accumulation is capitalist tion and social struggle that enable this –
appropriation of the value produced through makes the geography of struggle against
the gendered labor of social reproduction global capitalism appear yet more compli-
(Dalla Costa, 2004; 2005; Mitchell et al., cated. The geography of global capitalism
2004). Yet some of the most important con- embraces all scales and spaces, in complex
tributions to late twentieth-century leftist ways, and this inherently makes both under-
debates have been feminist analyses of ways standing and struggling to overcome capitalist
in which household labor (productive and alienation deeply complicated. What should
reproductive) and subsistence production one do about the challenges of this complexity?