Primitive Accumulation and the Labor Theory of Value, Part 2
Fredric Jameson, the great marxist cultural critic, in Representing ‘Capital’, took up Adorno’s suggestion that the best way to read Capital is backward, which is to say, starting from the chapter on “primitive accumulation” that ends Volume 1. This seemed to me a good idea, because Marx’s approach to economic analysis (really, all social analysis) is historical, and he and Engels were the inventors of “historical materialism” as an epistemological tool.
So,before discussing primitive accumulation, I thought I should begin my somewhat quixotic attempt to explain marxism in a hundred words or less with a digression, one that turned out to be the mother of all the digressions that followed, and in need of paring. One needed a little basic philosophy (which is all I have) to grasp historical materialism. So I jousted, in my first posting (May 1) with basic phenomenology (subject/object). I think I won that one. Then, in my second post (May 7), I rode into the lists against “Necessity.” This one failed, because it turned into a premature discussion on the commodity and value. I deleted it. Bloodied, but not beaten, I took on (June 13) “historical materialism (which included natural necessity and historical necessity).
Somewhat humbled, I was now prepared to take up the task of presenting Capital backward: primitive accumulation first, and then the economics of the first part of Capital, specifically the labor theory of value. Then, after my mission was accomplished, I could return Rosinante to her stable and leave it to more youthful Don Quijotes to joust with the windmills of late capitalism that, it turns out, are corporate, monopolistic, and imperial--real financial monsters!
Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite that way. I’m still riding Rosinante. In my last posting (way back on August 15), I felt compelled to digress in order to say some things about patriarchal civilization, which has been built on the ruins of the much more ancient, egalitarian/matrilineal social orders that had existed for millennia and produced the basic tools of humanity--first of all language and thinking--that made patriarchal civilization possible. Patriarchal myths were, and are still intended to subvert older, deeper egalitarian values. Hierarchical patriarchal values of property and domination are ideological foundation of every succeeding hierarchy’s legitimacy. My digression’s intention was to clear a bit of space in our minds (without too much narrative clutter) for an unprejudiced examination of marxism. We are in awe and fear of our jailers, and can sooner envision the end of the world, than the end of capitalism.
Socialism "failed" not because (Dies irae!) it runs counter to the eternal greed and violence of human nature, but because of its premature and abandoned initial birth among wolves.
Since the digression into ancient society, it’s been a struggle for me in trying to organize, without major digressions and with concision, the huge topic of primitive accumulation. I’m still working on it. There will be 3 more posts: medieval society in Western Europe (focused on England); the process of primitive accumulation in England (1600-1800); and, finally--going “backwards”--a return to the first chapters of Capital, where Marx applies an historical materialist critique to classical political economy’s labor theory of value, based on his inclusion of use value in the commodity equation. This inclusion of use value displaces the point of view of classical political economy’s analysis from capital’s to labor’s, which brings the material world into Adam Smith’s and David Ricardo’s hermetic calculations, and reveals capitalism’s contradictions. Some of these I’ll sketch out as non-technically as possible, and then try to relate them to the human and ecological crises we face today. My next post, I promise, will be on primitive accumulation...or rather some preliminary stuff on feudalism...
