For Marx, the primitive accumulation was not just the removal of the English serfs from the land as their natural laboratories, but also slavery and colonialism.
The old Graeco-Roman thing was revived by the newly rising bourgeois ruling class. Rule Britannia, heir of Rome. It was accumlation in the antiquated manner, barbarous.
The war on Iraq seems a primitive accumulation of this type. "[Force] is itself an economic power."
CB
^^^^^
chief momenta of the primitive accumulation
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c.
The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
Karl Marx Capital Volume One
Part VIII: Primative Accumulation
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL CAPITALIST