This archive contains 33 texts, with 167,609 words or 1,077,243 characters.
Section 3, Chapter 32 : The Historical Conditions of Accumulation: Militarism as a Province of Accumulation
MILITARISM fulfills a quite definite function in the history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first stages of European capitalism, in the period of the so-called ‘primitive accumulation’, as a means of conquering the New World and the spice-producing countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject the modern colonies, to destroy the social organizations of primitive societies so that their means of production may be appropriated, forcibly to introduce commodity trade in countries where the social structure had been unfavorable to it, and to turn the natives into a proletariat by compelling them to work for wages in the colonies. It is responsible for the creation and expansion of spheres of interest for European capital in non-European regions, for extorting railway concessions in backward countries, and for enforcing the claims of European capital as international lender. Finally, militari... (From : Marxists.org.)
Section 3, Chapter 31 : The Historical Conditions of Accumulation: Protective Tariffs and Accumulation
IMPERIALISM is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment. Still the largest part of the world in terms of geography, this remaining field for the expansion of capital is yet insignificant as against the high level of development already attained by the productive forces of capital; witness the immense masses of capital accumulated in the old countries which seek an outlet for their surplus product and strive to capitalize their surplus value, and the rapid change-over to capitalism of the pre-capitalist civilizations. On the international stage, then, capital must take appropriate measures. With the high development of the capitalist countries and their increasingly severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence, both in aggression against the non-capitalist world and in ever more serious conflicts among the competing capitali... (From : Marxists.org.)
Section 3, Chapter 30 : The Historical Conditions of Accumulation: International Loans
THE imperialist phase of capitalist accumulation which implies universal competition comprises the industrialization and capitalist emancipation of the hinterland where capital formerly realized its surplus value. Characteristic of this phase are: lending abroad, railroad constructions, revolutions, and wars. The last decade, from 1900 to 1910, shows in particular the world-wide movement of capital, especially in Asia and neighboring Europe: in Russia, Turkey, Persia, India, Japan, China, and also in North Africa. Just as the substitution of commodity economy for a natural economy and that of capitalist production for a simple commodity production was achieved by wars, social crises and the destruction of entire social systems, so at present the achievement of capitalist autonomy in the hinterland and backward colonies is attained amid wars and revolutions. Revolution is an essential for the process of capitalist emancipation. The backward communities must shed t... (From : Marxists.org.)
Section 3, Chapter 29 : The Historical Conditions of Accumulation: The Struggle Against Peasant Economy
An important final phase in the campaign against natural economy is to separate industry from agriculture, to eradicate rural industries altogether from peasant economy. Handicraft in its historical beginnings was a subsidiary occupation, a mere appendage to agriculture in civilized and settled societies. In medieval Europe it became gradually independent of the corvée farm and agriculture, it developed into specialized occupations, i.e. production of commodities by urban guilds. In industrial districts, production had progressed from home craft by way of primitive manufacture to the capitalist factory of the staple industries, but in the rural areas, under peasant economy, home crafts persisted as an intrinsic part of agriculture. Every hour that could be spared from cultivating the soil was devoted to handicrafts which, as an auxiliary domestic industry, played an important part in providing for personal needs. It is a recurrent phe... (From : Marxists.org.)
Section 3, Chapter 28 : The Historical Conditions of Accumulation: The Introduction of Commodity Economy
The second condition of importance for acquiring means of production and realizing the surplus value is the commodity exchange and commodity economy should be introduced in societies based on natural economy as soon as their independence has been abrogated, or rather in the course of this disruptive process. Capital requires to buy the products of, and sell its commodities to, all non-capitalist strata and societies. Here at last we seem to find the beginnings of that ‘peace’ and ‘equality’, the do ut des, mutual interest, ‘peaceful competition’ and the ‘influences of civilization’. For capital can indeed deprive alien social associations of their means of production by force, it can compel the workers to submit to capitalist exploitation, but it cannot force them to buy its commodities or to realize its surplus value. In districts where natural economy formerly prevailed, the introduction of means of transport – railw... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: The End of Russian ‘Legalist’ Marxism
THE Russian ‘legalist’ Marxists, and Tugan Baranovski above all, can claim the credit, in their struggle against the doubters of capitalist accumulation, of having enriched economic theory by an application of Marx’s analysis of the social reproductive process and it schematic representation in the second volume of Capital. But in view of the fact that this same Tugan Baranovski quite wrongly regarded said diagram as the solution to the problem instead of its formulation, his conclusions were bound to reverse the basic order of Marx’s doctrine. Tugan Baranovski’s approach, according to which capitalist production can create unlimited markets and is independent of consumption, leads him straight on to the thesis... (From : Marxists.org.)
The Problem of Reproduction: Marx’s Attempt to Resolve the Difficulty
COMPLETE abstraction from the circulation of money, though making the process of accumulation so smooth and simple in the diagram of enlarged reproduction, has great disadvantages of its own, we see. There was much to be said for this method in the analysis of simple reproduction, where consumption is the be-all and end-all of production. Money there had an ephemeral part, mediating the distribution of the social product among the various groups of consumers – the agent for the renewal of capital. In the process of accumulation, however, the money form has an essential function: it no longer serves as a mere agent in the circulation of commodities – here it has come to be a feature of capital itself, an element in the circulatio... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Ricardo vs. Sismondi
MACCULLOCH’s reply to Sismondi’s theoretical objections evidently did not settle the matter to Ricardo’s own satisfaction. Unlike that shrewd ‘Scottish arch-humbug’, as Marx calls him, Ricardo really wanted to discover the truth and throughout retained the genuine modesty of a great mind. That Sismondi’s polemics against him and his pupil had made a deep impression is proved by Ricardo’s revised approach to the question of the effects of the machine, that being the point on which Sismondi, to his eternal credit, had confronted the classical school of harmony with the sinister aspects of capitalism. Ricardo’s followers had enlarged upon the doctrine that the machine can always create as many or... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Macculloch vs. Sismondi
SISMONDI’S emphatic warnings against the ruthless ascendancy of capital in Europe called forth severe opposition on three sides: in England the school of Ricardo, in France J.B. Say, the commonplace vulgarizer of Adam Smith, and the St. Simonians. While Owen in England, profoundly aware of the dark aspects of the industrial system and of the crises in particular, saw eye to eye with Sismondi in many respects, the school of that other great European, St. Simon, who had stressed the world-embracing conception of large industrial expansion, the unlimited unfolding of the productive forces of human labor, felt perturbed by Sismondi’s alarms. Here, however, we are interested in the controversy between Sismondi and the Ricardians whic... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Malthus
At the same time as Sismondi, Malthus also waged war against some of the teachings of Ricardo. Sismondi, in the second edition of his work as well as in his polemics, repeatedly referred to Malthus as an authority on his side. Thus he formulated the common aims of his campaign against Ricardo in the Revue Encyclopédique: ‘Mr. Malthus, on the other hand, has maintained in England, as I have tried to do on the Continent, that consumption is not the necessary consequence of production, that the needs and desires of man, though they are truly without limits, are only satisfied by consumption in so far as means of exchange go with them. We have affirmed that it is not enough to create these means of exchange, to make them circulate ... (From : Marxists.org.)