From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2008 - 15:32:07 EDT
Marx famously said that, historically speaking, capital arrives into the world violently, "dripping with blood and gore from every pore" (the reference is not to menstruation, but warfare). Why? As Rosa Luxemburg explained in her book "The Accumulation of Capital", because the property relations which its existence presupposes do not emerge just naturally out of commodity trade - the possession by some of a source of capital accumulation is predicated on the dispossession of others, which necessarily involves a power conflict between different interests. Hence, the quest for market expansion is inextricably bound up with the overthrow of previous social structures and property rights, through a continuous series of wars which enrich some and impoverish others. But Marx himself did not arrive at such an insight through a "philosophy of dialectics" - he gained that insight through studying historical facts. ------------- Quite! _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
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