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.)
The Problem of Reproduction: The Circulation of Money
In our study of the reproductive process we have not so far considered the circulation of money. Here we do not refer to money as a measuring rod, an embodiment of value, because all relations of social labor have been expressed, assumed and measured in terms of money. What we have to do now is to test our diagram of simple reproduction under the aspect of money as a means of exchange. Quesnay already saw that we shall only understand the social reproductive process if we assume, side by side with the means of production and consumer goods, a certain quantity of money. Two questions now arise: by whom should the money be owned, and how much of it should there be? The answer to the first question, no doubt, is that the workers receive their ... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Bulgakov and His Completion of Marx’s Analysis
The second critic of ‘populist’ skepticism, S. Bulgakov, is no respecter of Struve’s ‘third persons’ and at once denies that they form the sheet-anchor for capitalist accumulation. ‘The majority of economists before Marx’ he declares, ‘solved the problem by saying that some sort of ‘third person’ is needed, as a deus ex machina, to cut the Gordian knot, i.e. to consume the surplus value. This part is played by luxury-loving landowners (as with Malthus), or by indulgent capitalists, or yet by-militarism and the like. There can be no demand for the surplus value without some such extraordinary mediators; a deadlock will be reached on the markets and the result will be over-production... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Say vs. Sismondi
SISMONDI’S essay against Ricardo in the Revue Encyclopédique of May 1824, was the final challenge for J.B. Say, at that time the acknowledged ‘prince of economic science’ (prince de la science économique), the so-called representative, heir and popularizer of the school of Adam Smith on the Continent. Say, who had already advanced some arguments against Sismondi in his letters to Malthus, countered the following July with an essay on The Balance Between Consumption and Production in the Revue Encyclopédique, to which Sismondi in turn published a short reply. The chronology of Sismondi’s polemical engagements was thus inverse to the sequence of the opposing theories, for it had been Say who first ... (From : Marxists.org.)
The Problem of Reproduction: Marx’s Scheme of Simple Reproduction
Let us now consider the formula c + v + s as the expression of the social product as a whole. Is it only a theoretical abstraction, or does it convey any real meaning when applied to social life – has the formula any objective existence in relation to society as a whole? It was left to Marx to establish the fundamental importance of c, the constant capital, in economic theory. Yet Adam Smith before him, working exclusively with the categories of fixed and circulating capital, in effect transformed this fixed capital into constant capital, though he was not aware of having achieved this result. This constant capital comprises not only those means of production which wear out in the course of years, but also those which are completely a... (From : Marxists.org.)
Historical Exposition of the Problem: Struve’s ‘Third Persons’ and ‘Three World Empires’
We now turn to the criticism of the above opinions as given by the Russian Marxists. In 1894, Peter v. Struve who had already given a detailed appraisal of Nikolayon’s book in an essay On Capitalist Development in Russia, published a book in Russian, criticizing the theories of ‘populism’ from various aspects. In respect of our present problem, however, he mainly confines himself to proving, against both Vorontsov and Nikolayon, that capitalism does not cause a contraction of the home market but, on the contrary, an expansion. There can be no doubt that Nikolayon has made a blunder – the same that Sismondi had made. They each describe only a single aspect of the destructive process, performed by capitalism on the tra... (From : Marxists.org.)