[ show plain text ]
bhandari@Princeton.EDU (Rakesh Bhandari) said, on 04/04/00 at 09:40 AM:
>Jerry, I have argued that it makes no sense to understand the early form
>of capital accumulation in terms of the form of a fully developed
>captialism. The early form could not have been the pure form that Marx
>analyzes. The more capitalism develops, the more it approximates the
>model Marx uses in his theoretical writings. It makes no sense to
>classify this or that early form as non capitalist in terms of a pure
>model of a fully developed capitalism. This is formalism to the point of
>anachronism.
I believe I agree with Rakesh on this. The primitive, or original,
accumulation is a very different social context, the context of approx.
1400-1800. Also, as capital accumulates it comes to increasingly dominate
that world and thus is closer to: "in order to examine the object of our
investigation in its integrity, free from all disturbing subsidiary
circumstances, we must treat the whole world as one nation, and assume
that capitalist production is everywhere established and has possessed
itself of every branch of industry" (Vol. 1, p.545, fn 1).
Paul Z.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 30 2000 - 19:59:42 EDT