On Sat, Dec 09, 2006 at 10:42:28PM -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Dec 9, 2006, at 3:35 PM, bitch wrote:
>
> > At 01:14 PM 12/9/2006, James Heartfield wrote:
> >
> >> The concept he critiqued was that of "original accumulation".
> >> Under that term a rag bag of ideas were put together to explain
> >> (or more properly to explain away) the existence of the original
> >> fund of capital, from which all subsequent accumulation starts.
> >> Marx says it is capitalism's dirty secret that the original
> >> accumulation fund is not got by 'abstinence' but by theft,
> >> enslavement and plunder. (Following the hints put forward by
> >> Rousseau, who said that property begins when one man puts a fence
> >> around some land and others recognise it [badly remembered], or
> >> from Prudhon who says 'all property is theft').
> >
> > I'm unclear what you're saying here Jim. Which examples of
> > primitive accumulation from Goldner did you object to? I didn't get
> > the sense that he was talking about extraordinary theft and con
> > tricks, but ordinary ones.
>
> I'm with James on this - Marx's use of p.a. is precise and limited,
> and there's not much in current capitalist practice that's like it.
> No doubt people everywhere are seeing common property privatized, but
> the bulk of capitalist profits come from exploiting labor. Those get
> obscured by financial machinations, but finance is about distributing
> those profits, not creating them out of thin air, or by regularly
> appropriating big gobs of primitively accumulated material. I don't
> like the way David Harvey uses p.a. either.
>
> I asked Loren if he thought all the money that the People's Bank of
> China lends the US was an example of this sort of plunder and he said
> yes. But they're making us loans, not sending us boatloads of stolen
> goods.
>
> Doug
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-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com