> As others have rightly pointed out, the ancient denouncers were
> generally
> from the classes doing the accumulating.
My point was that the conception of modes of production as simply context conditioned rational means of surplus extraction and accumulation isn't Marx's. In particular, accumulation for the sake of accumulation is, according to Marx, both an irrational "passion" in Hegel's sense and a passion dominant only in capitalism. In its "barbaric form," it exists in other modes, e.g. in ancient society, but not as the dominant passion.
The conception of all "ideas" as epiphenomenal and/or as ideological camouflage for an invariant class interest in surplus extraction and accumulation also isn't Marx's. He treats Aristotle, Sophocles, etc. as sources of insight which he appropriates. Why, for instance, would he call Aristotle "the greatest thinker of antiquity" and treat a passage from him invoking Daedelus to connect technology to a true conception of "wealth" as insightful if he judged his ideas to be wholly "ideological" in either of these senses?
>> Similarly, the "passions" characteristic of "primitive accumulation"
>> differ from those of mature industrial capitalism. Primitive
>> accumulation, which Marx associates with the coming into dominance of
>> "new passions," " was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under
>> the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the
>> pettiest, the most meanly odious."
>
> But were these "new passions" related to surplus extraction and
> accumulation
> in general, or the means by which these were achieved and by which
> social
> classes? The latter, IMO.
As I've said, it seems to me that accumulation for the sake of accumulation is treated by Marx as a "passion" whose dominance is specific to capitalism. How do you make your view of these "new passions" as "means" consistent with the description of them, in the passage you quote, as the "stimulus" of primitive accumulation and with the elaboration of them in the other passages I quoted?
There is a sense in which these irrational "passions" are means, but that sense is derived from Hegel.
To begin with, for Hegel (as for Marx), "passions" are not "means" in what I take to be your sense.
"The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole springs of action - the efficient agents in this scene of activity." (Hegel, Philosophy of History, p.20)
Rather, they are "the means and instruments of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing - which they realize unconsciously."
(p.25)
Ted