> Or at least that's what "primitive accumulation" means in the Marxist
> tradition -- the expropriation of the agricultural population from
> the land, to increasingly transform agriculture for capitalist
> agriculture and to turn the former peasants into proletarians.
Michael Perelman (et al.) may disagree with me here, but I think the above is far too narrow a definition and misrepresents Marx's own usage. That is, not only is ("so-called") primitive accumulation still occurring (e.g. "The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China." Monthly Review, Feb, 2000, by Nancy Holmstrom & Richard Smith http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1132/9_51/59948726/p1/article.jhtml) in areas of the world which have not long been subject to private capital; primitive accumulation IMO, also occurred long before capitalism. It was not necessarily "primitive accumulation of capital" (to use the formulation from Ch.26 of _Capital_.)
That is, Marx does appears to have distinguished simply between capitalist accumulation (e.g. in the mature form of wage labour) and previous/primitive/primary/original accumulation, which could be a much more general the result of hoarding, unequal exchange, illegal activity, etc, as much as the more striking examples of state-sanctioned violence, starvation, etc of pre/non-capitalist peoples.
e.g.
"We have seen that money can in part be accumulated by the sheer exchange of equivalents; however, this is so insignificant a source that it is not worth mention historically - assuming, that is, that we suppose this money to have been earned by the exchange of one's own labor. It is rather money accumulated by usury - especially usury on landed property - and mobile (monetary) wealth accumulated through mercantile profits, that turns into capital in the strictest sense, into industrial capital. [ ... Both usurious and mercantile accumulation] appear not as forms of capital but as prior forms of wealth which are the prerequisites for capital."Marx, 1857-8, "Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations", Pt 2. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch02.htm
Also, in the same passage, Marx also notes that the circular and de-historicised arguments that:
(a) "the workers who must be employed by capital if capital is to exist as such, must first be created and called into life by its accumulation (waiting, as it were, on its "Let there be labor")..."
and/or
"(b) capital could not accumulate without alien labor, except perhaps its own labor. I.e., that capital might itself exist in the form of non-capital and non-money..."
And again, note the distinction between accumulation and capitalism in the following: "Capital is essentially a capitalist; but at the same time production in general is capital, as an element in the existence of the capitalist quite distinct from him. Thus we shall later find that in the term capital much is subsumed that does not apparently belong to the concept. E.g., capital is loaned. It is accumulated, etc...."
Marx was far more concerned with the forms of PA which _did_ become capital, but that does _not_ mean that he thought there was no accumulation, long before capitalism, as a straightfoward, minor economic practice, began (whenever and wherever that was; there is no agreement among scholars). The pre-capitalist existence of _classes_ in itself would have implied some kind of accumulation to Marx. So PA in Marx's conception is any kind of pre- or non-capitalist extraction of wealth, regardless of when and where it occurred. Obviously this could not be put to a capitalist use, if there was not yet any such thing as capitalism. Some PA allowed capitalist accumulation. IMO, in a general Marxian sense though, PA occurred long before capitalism existed and in most historical contexts did not lead to capitalism; these were "evolutionary dead-ends" if you like.
regards,
Grant.