Re: primitive accumulation
On Dec 10, 2006, at 11:26 AM, abu hartal wrote:
To honor its debts the US government will probably have to make
its taxes more regressive (and consequently push wage below value
of labor power) and slash social security and all kinds of benefits
for the most vulnerable. This kind of state led transfer of wealth
is indeed a form of primitive accumulation, no?
No. It’s ugly and unkind, but “primitive” refers to originary acts of
appropriation, like fencing off common land. Regressive taxation of
workers involved in normal capitalist production is a completely
different kettle of fish: it’s routine, not primitive.
And Harvey’s use of a related idea, accumulation by dispossession,
also seems misplaced to me. As James H argued, the transition from
Soviet-style economies to capitalism, did involve a kind of p.a. -
the appropriation of state quasi-socialist property by the well
connected, and its transformation into capitalist property worked by
people paid wages. Things like that have been happening in China. But
the bulk of accumulation in China is now coming from capitalist
enterprises operating in a pretty ordinary way - paying people less
than the value of what they produce.
Harvey gives that classic example of appropriating genetic material
from indigenous groups. Leaving aside the question of ownership - why
do they own a species simply by living near it? - how much of this is
really going on? How important is that sort of thing to the profits
of Merck and Pfizer? I keep seeing this cited, but at best with only
a few examples and never with any sense of context.
Doug