[lbo-talk] Firesale of the Empire

michael perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Thu Dec 17 15:35:59 PST 2009


accumulation-by-dispossession position or primitive accumulation appears in the last part of Capital because it is extraneous to the everyday functioning of capitalism; it is more like clearing a field before it will be used for year-in-year out cultivation (exploitation). The clearing is a one-off event rather than a process, such as normal capitalist exploitation.

Alan Rudy wrote:
> Um, having listened to Harvey's lectures on Capital - and seen him give
> presentations in a number of places over the last decade - my interpretation
> of the accumulation-by-dispossession position was that it was by no means
> intended to suggest a reduction in the emphasis on the labor theory of
> value. As I read it, and have taught it, as a term accumulation by
> dispossession is intended to address very specific elements of
> neoliberalism, elements that are tied to shifts in political power relations
> which privatize public property/space/resources/institutions, which
> facilitate the redistribution of wealth upwards by liberalizing financial
> markets and instruments, which induce and manage political, economic and
> ecological crises so as to facilitate privatization and financialization and
> which reorient state policies to both foster these other moments in
> neoliberalization and directly serve the interests of capital and the top 1%
> of the salariat.
>
> It is assumed that these processes build on, intensify and exacerbate the
> extraction of surplis value while simultaneously making sure that that
> extraction is remunerated, regulated and redistributed in trajectories
> closer to the 1870s than the 1970s.
>
> Am/was I wrong? It feels to me that some here are taking very specific
> discourses focused on the politics of neoliberalization and extending them
> farther than Harvey would if asked.
>
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I thought maybe my comment was too oblique, but you got it exactly.
>> Though "minimizes" is probably generous; I would say "disappears
>> completely" is closer. Critiques like Taibbi's seem to assume that
>> value just appears, is not produced by labor. We're all
>> citizen-taxpayers, and none of us are workers. This wouldn't be that
>> remarkable if it were just Taibbi and progressive types thinking this,
>> but that it also infects Marxists like Harvey is kind of alarming.
>>
>>
>>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>

--

Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list