Abstract

The distinction between ‘inquiry’ (Forschung) and ‘presentation’ (Darstellung) is important for the understanding of Capital. Its ‘mode of presentation’ (Darstellungweise) does not follow the narrative history of capitalist development but begins with the finished forms – money, commodities, exchange value, etc. – in which capitalist social relations reproduce themselves. It is not until the analysis of primitive accumulation in Part VIII that the historical presuppositions of the analysis of chapter 1 are presented. Marx’s critique of political economy is thus in reverse order to the actual, historical sequence in which the social relations underlying these categories developed. The paper argues that although these underlying relations seemingly disappear in capitalist social forms, they are constitutive of it.

Introduction

Over the last decade there has been an increase in the trafficking of women and children. New markets have emerged in human organs and babies. The proprietors of labour power are confronted not only with new forms of exploitation (see Caffentzis, 2003). They are also transformed into a dissectible resource to be operated on and sold. These developments have let some commentators to argue that we are witnessing the re-emergence of conditions of primitive accumulation (see, amongst others, Dalla Costa, 1995, 2003, de Angelis, 2001). These works show clearly that Marx’s insight according to which ‘a great deal of capital, which appears today in the United States without certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalist blood of children’ (Marx, 1983, p. 707), remains a powerful judgement of contemporary conditions.

The paper argues that primitive accumulation describes not just the period of transition
that led to the emergence of capitalism. Its systematic content is in fact constitutive of
capitalist social relations. It is the premise and presupposition of capitalistically organised
social relations. Capitalist social relations rest on the divorce of the mass of the population from the means of production. This divorce was the result of primitive accumulation and is the historical presupposition and constitutive basis of capitalist social relations. At issue is thus the transformation of capitalism’s historical presupposition in dispossession into the constitutive premise of its existence. The conclusion looks at the consequences for socialist practice.

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