The Accumulation of Capital

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.)

Historical Exposition of the Problem: Rodbertus’ Criticism of the Classical School
Rodbertus digs deeper than v. Kirchmann. He looks for the roots of evil in the very foundations of social organization and declares bitter war on the predominant Free Trade school – not against a system of unrestricted commodity circulation or the freedom of trade which he fully accepts, but against the Manchester doctrine of laissez-faire within the internal social relations of economy. At that time, after the period of storm and stress of classical economics, a system of unscrupulous apologetics was already in full sway which found its most perfect expression in the ‘doctrine of harmony’ of M. Frédéric Bastiat, the famous vulgarian and idol of all Philistines, and quite soon the various Schultzes were to fl... (From : Marxists.org.)

Historical Exposition of the Problem: Vorontsov and His ‘surplus’
THE representatives of Russian ‘populism’ were convinced that capitalism had no future in Russia, and this conviction brought them to the problem of capitalist reproduction. V.V. laid down his theories on this point in a series of articles in the review Patriotic Memoirs and in other periodicals which were collected and published in 1882 under the title The Destiny of Capitalism in Russia. He further dealt with the problem in The Commodity Surplus in the Supply of the Market,Militarism and Capitalism,Our Trends, and finally in Outlines of Economic Theory. It is not easy to determine Vorontsov’s attitude towards capitalist development in Russia. He sided neither with the purely slavophil theory which deduced the perversity ... (From : Marxists.org.)

Historical Exposition of the Problem: The End of Russian ‘Legalist’ Marxism
THE Russian ‘legalist’ Marxists, and Tugan Baranovski above all, can claim the credit, in their struggle against the doubters of capitalist accumulation, of having enriched economic theory by an application of Marx’s analysis of the social reproductive process and it schematic representation in the second volume of Capital. But in view of the fact that this same Tugan Baranovski quite wrongly regarded said diagram as the solution to the problem instead of its formulation, his conclusions were bound to reverse the basic order of Marx’s doctrine. Tugan Baranovski’s approach, according to which capitalist production can create unlimited markets and is independent of consumption, leads him straight on to the thesis... (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.)

Historical Exposition of the Problem: Tugan Baranovski and His ‘Lack of Proportion’
We have left this theorist to the end, although he already developed his views in Russian in 1894, i.e. before Struve and Bulgakov, partly because he only gave his theories their mature form in German at a later date, and also because the conclusions he draws from the premises of the Marxist critics are the most far-reaching in their implications. Like Bulgakov, Tugan Baranovski starts from Marx’s analysis of social reproduction which gave him the clue to this bewildering maze of problems. But while Bulgakov, the enthusiastic disciple of Marx, only sought to follow him faithfully and simply attributed his own conclusions to the master, Tugan Baranovski, on the other hand, lays down the law to Marx who, in his opinion, did not know how... (From : Marxists.org.)