Talk:Primitive accumulation of capital

This Article Needs Reorganization
The opening paragraphs on an article on "primitive accumulation" before the table of contents should not switch to a discussion of the definition of "capital" and leaves the reader with out a basic definition of article's subject. In my opinion, some of the material in the section "The basic meaning of primitive accumulation", (which, by the way is a ridiculous section heading) should be incorporated into the opening paragraphs. I will try to do a quick fix, but I doubt I am qualified to do it properly. 92.40.110.20 (talk) 20:46, 27 August 2008 (UTC) R.E.D.

primitive accumulation of capital.

In Das Kapital I ch. 24 (German etext), Marx says the term ursprüngliche Akkumulation is not by himself but by Adam Smith (as previous accumulation). In fact Marx speaks of "the so-called primitive accumulation". So primitive accumulation might be coined by Marx's translators, or by Engels who revised the translation?

The article is wrong in defining primitive accumulation as a Marxist concept. Marx gave it such a name, but the concept was addressed by most classical political economists.--Sum (talk) 22:28, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Author's reply
In the French translation of Das Kapital, which he edited, Marx accepted the expression "primitive accumulation". The German ursprünglich can meen primordial, original, antecedental etc. Possibly Marx had in mind that the most primitive way of increasing your own wealth is to take wealth directly from someone else. Acquiring wealth through trade is less primitive. The point of his story is that historically the two go hand in hand, i.e. the expansion of market trade goes together with expropriation and the development of new property forms. User:Jurriaan 17 August 2007 0:42 (UTC)

style
The very first paragraph should have a brief definition of primitive accumulation in it. Then you can build your provacative mystery plot line, for those who really want to immerse themselves in your story.

I edited some of the section titles to reflect their content, so the reader can have a gauge of the structure of your presentation.

Especially the last section, "Whither development theory?" (or something to that effect) wanders off-topic, leading to the semi-obliteration of the subject matter of this wiki. This wiki on primitive accumulation hasn't really developed too much of a presentation on the ways that primitive accumulation has been, is, or can be applied to development analysis; so it makes little sense to jump into one or two academic disciplines' (philosophy & anthropology, I'm guessing) particularistic final word on the matter. I understand that if you were teaching a class on philosophical teleology, such a might be your grand finale. But since this wiki focuses on primitive accumulation, which can very easily be approached from a non-teleological perspective--and Marx did move away from his early Hegel studies over the course of his work life, I think that last section should be removed. It might go better under a wiki entry on "development philosophy", or "teleology", or even in a section on "Opponenets of Marxism" under the "Marxism" wiki entry. It would probably be more appropriate under the "Hegel" wiki. I think it's inappropriate here.

Author's reply
The question of primitive accumulation is directly related to development economics, one theme of which is how you can create a market and a cash economy where there is none (perhaps through extending credit?). Eugene Preobrazhensky mooted the idea of primitive socialist accumulation, and accumulation of wealth in the USSR and China also involved massive expropriation. The point of the section was to alert the reader to difficult moral questions about human progress raised by primitive accumulation. User:Jurriaan 17 August 2007 0:482 (UTC)

Ongoing primitive accumulation
I changed the title from "Ongoing global expropriation" to "Ongoing primitive accumulation" based on the material provided by these sources:

"Globalization" and the "Permanent" Process of Primitive Accumulation: The Example of the MAI, the Multinational Agreement on Investment (Claudia von Werlhof) @ http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol6/number3/pdf/jwsr-v6n3-werlof.pdf

Fictitious Capital For Beginners: Imperialism, 'Anti-Imperialism', and the Continuing Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg (Loren Goldner) @ http://www.metamute.org/en/Fictitious-Capital-For-Beginners

As well as a potential rebuttal source:

The Second Age of the Third World: from primitive accumulation to global public goods? (David Moore) @ http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Moore%20background%20on%20PrimitiveAccumulation.pdf

Darth Sidious 07:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

rather biased and inaccurate
This article reads like an original-research essay, arguing against the consensus in various fields rather than neutrally documenting it, as Wikipedia articles ought. For example, the section "Ongoing primitive accumulation", without a single citation, argues against the common interpretation of Marx, and instead promotes a new reading of him in line with the views of whoever wrote that section. --Delirium (talk) 10:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Different interpretations
In the original article I wrote I tried to distinguish clearly between Marx's own view and various later interpretations. There is no "common interpretation" of Marx, because historically Marx has been interpreted through various "authorities" such as Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ernest Mandel, Alex Callinicos, David Harvey etc. Unfortunately because the article has been re-edited by people who have no specific expertise in the subject, the article is now pretty much a nonsense. I'll try for a rewrite some other time. User: Jurriaan 19 May 2012 12:36 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:25, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

This article needs serious rewriting
Reading this article makes one have the feeling like some hardcore marxist gave his heart leave to an outburst of "anti - burgoise" emotions. It's full of inaccurate and tendentious historical views about the beginnings of capitalism. I don't have anything against mentioning Marx' opinion, but when did Marx get a required training for giving such full - scale historical interpretations? And when did wikipedia start to advance old 19th century communist revolutionary philosophy of history views?

1.) This article needs to give honest account of interpretations of both the one side that introduced the term "previous accumulation" (Adam Smith) as well as interpretation of Marx and marxists. In this state, article promotes only marxist (or should I say, views of amateur philosopher Harvey, aotually a trained geographer) views about history and "criminal" acts of burgoise against poor workers. It totally neglects other views.

2.) This is basically a philosophical interpretation of the history of economy, particularly, history of England and "enclosure for sheeps". Historians have researched this period and have written about so called "previous accumulation" and enclosures, it's causes and effects. Article should report views of contemporary historians about this period, and current state of research. For example:

In this state, article seriously violates neutral point of view. Philosopher12 (talk) 16:21, 15 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Ph12, you may be unaware that the title is a Marxist subject and has little/no meaning outside of that except as a dog whistle for certain types. Given that and no more substantive complaint, delineation of a particular Marxist bias, e.g. Trotskyite, I will remove the tagging after a review as operation within the bounds of some body of knowledge is precisely what a (a good one anyway) encyclopedia is about. So first noting that "previous accumulation" is quite different from "original" or "primitive". Lycurgus (talk) 23:55, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Philosopher12 is right; the article has been written from a marxist, WP:INUNIVERSE perspective, leading readers to believe that this stuff is actually true, rather than reflecting what reliable, mainstream, independent sources say. This is a common problem among marxist articles on wikipedia. bobrayner (talk) 09:27, 11 January 2015 (UTC)


 * In fact BR, you evince the only problem I can see here. You are conflating fiction with real world events, currents. "In universe" applies to works of fiction not major real world political movements. For any actual real world phenomenon, body of knowledge/thought, an interior perspective is the right, usual, and common sense way of exposition appropriate to a reference work. Lycurgus (talk) 01:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)
 * No. Our neutrality policy requires us to present the mainstream view. Presenting obsolete Marxist ideas as though they were fact obviously fails this policy. It is never right or usual to present fringe ideas from an inside view. bobrayner (talk) 22:44, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Illogical sentence about Adam Smith's use of the term "previous accumulation"?
<> The second clause seems to contradict the first. Yes, it's conceivable that Smith produced a shorter work (in quotation marks) with the same title as his book (in italics) and only referred to previous accumulation in the latter, but I don't buy it. Yeltommo (talk) 11:03, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Re-Removing the POV Tag.
Per the Template:POV page:


 * When to remove


 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. You may remove this template whenever any one of the following is true:


 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved.
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given.
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

The discussion about the neutrality / factual accuracy of this article has been dormant for around 5 years. This alone would be grounds to remove the template.

I note further that there doesn't appear to be a satisfactory explanation for why the tag has been used (although I concede the discussion 5 years ago wasn't taken to a conclusion). The previous discussion seems to have mostly focused on Marx's credibility as a historian or economist. I struggle to see how this is a relevant consideration when discussing the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation. Neutrality is not raised as an issue on article's describing other economic theories, or indeed either other articles on Marxist economic theories.

I concede neutrality could very well be an issue for this article. However only to the extent that the article is not neutral in explaining the Marxist theory of primitive accumulation. I note that that has been the discussion of a previous neutrality flag, but that issue seems to have been resolved, and in any case, is long dormant.

Accordingly I have removed the Template.

Thegoodtakehaver (talk) 00:57, 2 April 2020 (UTC)