> The invocation of
> the recent shift towards primitive accumulation in the case of China
> indicates that this is an on-going issue and the evidence is strong,
> particularly throughout East and South East Asia, that state policies
> and politics (consider the case of Singapore) have played a critical
> role in defining both the intensity and the paths of new forms of
> capital accumulation.
I'm not sure what Harvey is talking about here. Privatization isn't automatically primitive accumulation. There's nothing primitive about Chinese accumulation, or about East Asia's slickly engineered developmental states. Sure, there are lingering elements of primitive accumulation at the extreme margins of the world-system, but national capitalisms have run the show in the global semi-periphery and true periphery ever since decolonization.
-- DRR