On Primitive Accumulation: Encore

Primitive Accumulation Dec, 2013

Primitive Accumulation:

Through a Post-colonial Critique of ‘Capital’

Anjan Chakrabarti

Stephen E. Cullenberg

Anup Dhar


Primitive Accumulation:

Through a Post-colonial Critique of ‘Capital’

Anjan Chakrabarti, Stephen Cullenberg and Anup Dhar

Is there a hidden historicism, a teleology in Marx’s ‘Capital’? One could argue that there is; and

that would qualify as certainly one reading of Capital - Capital, the book - and not 'capital', the

entity. In this paper, we however invoke 'late' Marx (late Marx is neither 'early' Marx nor

'scientific' Marx) to produce a different reading of both Capital, the book and capital, the entity

that in turn challenges the idea of 'historical inevitability'. The idea of historical inevitability - be

it in terms of the birth of capitalism (marked in turn by the concept of 'primitive accumulation'

for example) - be it in terms of the demise of capitalism (marked in turn by the concept of the

'falling rate of profit' and the 'auto-crisis' of capitalism for example) has haunted much of

classical or orthodox Marxism - a kind of Marxism deeply problematized by Stephen Resnick

and Richard Wolff, in much of their work. In our encounter with the question of historical

inevitability our focus is on the concept of primitive accumulation and its two and rather

differing renditions in Marx – first, in Capital and then in ‘The Russian Road/Question’ - first in

‘scientific’ Marx and then in ‘late’ Marx. We show, in this paper, how late Marx revised the

concept of primitive accumulation and challenged the idea of historical inevitability - a challenge

characteristic of the work of Resnick and Wolff as well. We also show how in the process, Marx

forces us to rethink the idea of the economy and economic development. We build on Resnick

and Wolff’s incisive interpretation of Marx’s ‘Capital’ and our understanding of late Marx


(Chakrabarti and Dhar, 2009: ch 6 and 7) to give shape to what we believe is, one, a rather

different interpretation of Marx’s take on primitive accumulation and, two, a distinct theorization

of primitive accumulation that can be used to explore the phenomenon of capitalist development

in its many complexities, especially in the global South. In this introductory section, we shall

explore the need to revisit Marx to, one, disinter the idea of the economy as Resnick and Wolff

does and two, inaugurate the turn to late Marx. Both help us re-examine the concept of the

Other/other in what is known as capitalist development.

Transition (to capitalism) in England and the West (primarily England, Germany and

France) formed according to Lenin the three sources and component parts of Marx's work; the

experience and the context of these three countries helped Marx engender the 'critique of

political economy' and the ‘Theories of Surplus Value’. That of course does not make his theory

false; his theorization of surplus labor and the de-familiarization of capitalism remain meaningful

even to this day and in contexts beyond the three countries mentioned above. No matter where

capitalism grows and notwithstanding its variegated forms, it remains by definition an

exploitative organization of surplus (value) in the context of the commodity form of material

forces of production, labor power and produce. Moreover, in his effort to theorize capitalism,

Marx ended up giving us a theoretical clue to confront the idea of ‘economy’ as diverse, in which

capitalism is one social form among many that co-exist together. That is, if we reconceptualize

capitalism in terms of the organization of surplus labor in a dialectical space of mutual

interaction (as Marx argued in Grundrisse), we end up with a de-centered and disaggregated

understanding of the economy in which capitalism is a mere part and not the whole of the

economy. This is in sharp contrast to either the mainstream discourses, Left, neoclassical and

otherwise, where such a differentiation is not available; instead the economy is synonymous with


capitalism or it is reduced to capitalism, a phenomenon Gibson-Graham (1996) called

Capitalocentrism. This re-interpretation of Marx was we believe one of the contributions of

Resnick and Wolff (1987, 2002, 2006). They formalized this impetus of Marx. Which also meant

that in a class divided society, Marx would forever remain a specter to haunt the mainstream and

the tragic consensus of our times.

There was however another Marx, which is also perhaps an Other Marx; where Marx is revisiting

the question of the birth of capitalism, this time in the context of a different circumstance, history and

space-place. This was (late) Marx’s encounter with the Russian agrarian economy that was not capitalist.

This was also Marx's (late) encounter with the question of the possible transition from an agrarian/feudal

economy to a capitalist economy. In other words, it was also about the birth of capitalism through

primitive accumulation. This experience made Marx revisit the question of historical inevitability. Late

Marx thus comes to face economies and forms of life that were different (the Russian rural commune for

example) and that could neither be devalued nor told to mutate along capitalist lines. Taking off from late

Marx, we have theorized this space as world of the third as distinct from third world, where world of the

third is that which marks differance and third world is that which is the 'lacking other'. The turn to late

Marx “renders unfamiliar” the given rendition of primitive accumulation. This displacement of the given

rendition of primitive accumulation is in turn based on late Marx’s encounter with the non-western world

in general and the Russian Mir in particular (Marx 1970, 1975, 1983, 1989). Our description of this

particular encounter and engagement rests principally on Marx’s correspondence with Vera Zasulich

(Marx 1970).

Why revisit this engagement of Marx (a German, coming from Western Europe) with Zasulich (a

Russian, coming from Eastern Europe as also from a landmass that spills largely into Asia; or perhaps

Russia is that which spills into Europe)? It is because late Marx encounters primitive accumulation in a

non-western setting, having encountered it once before in the context of Engaland and British rule in

India. Departing from his take on primitive accumulation in the context of England, he asks again how


primitive accumulation will take shape in a non-western setting in general and how it would take shape in

Russia in particular. Equally importantly for us, he grapples with the question of whether primitive

accumulation is inevitable or not? He asks: can we not bypass the process of primitive accumulation?

This encounter of Marx with the non-western world can be taken as a precursor to a re-

theorization of primitive accumulation in the context of capitalist development. It also marks for us a

turningaway from the Original Marx, from a westernized Marx to an ab-original Marx, to a Marx that is

at the same time ab-Original – that is other than the White Western Original – and that is also tuned to

questions of aboriginality.

The Other Genealogy of Capitalism:

Capitalism in the west, including England, progressed through a conduit of globalization under

colonial conditions. That allowed on the one hand for capitalism to grow organically from

within; on the other, this organic development was mediated by the restructuring of colonial

nations that in turn began the process of implanting capitalism from outside. In short, there are at

least, two genealogies of capitalism, one whose organization was driven from within and the

other a consequence of a drive from outside. Resultantly, the societal configurations it produced

and the opposition that capitalism faced in the West and those in the colonial countries could not

have been the same. The juxtaposition of these two historically distinct entry points in the study

of capitalism is a mistake. It is a mistake because the juxtaposition meant a non-appreciation of

‘coloniality’ in the theorization of economy and capitalism. The significance of ‘coloniality’ here

is not in terms of space, but in terms of Orientalism - Orientalism as modes of knowledge and

'games of truth' - where the formation of a 'lacking/devalued other' (in this case third world) in

relation to the West marked the quintessential western/modernist rationale. The discourse of


development embodies an unique system of representation whereby capitalocentrism and

orientalism in their overdetermination produce the dualism of modern capitalism (as normal) and

the other as traditional/pre-capitalism - hence abnormal, hence in need of

annihilation/assimilation.

The point however is not whether the (post)colonial experience is included in the

evaluative space (many do so and now it is quite common), but the issue is the evaluative space

itself. How far is the historical specificity signified by the language-logic-experience-ethos in

colonial-postcolonial spaces internalized as theoretical components of the evaluative space one

constructs? That would imply as we see the post-colonial imperative in theorizing the idea of

capitalism and its underlying political economy. The problem is compounded by the weight of

what could be called the western-ness (or Eurocentrism) of Marxism. Much of Marxism has

either remained unaware of this problem (sanctioned ignorance), or has been dismissive of it

(arrogance as in case of Asiatic mode of production) or are fearful of facing it (dystopia). The

overwhelming body of Western Marxism shares with the liberals an anxiety with the question of

coloniality or post-coloniality. Finally, one must contend with the changing nature of capitalism

in present time where capitalism is taking a global form from within; global capitalism changes

the cartography of these economies in ways that are distinct from the phase indicative of the rise

of western capitalism in which capitalism acquired its global form through the connection with

colonialism. The transition of these countries are indicative of an overdetermined and

contradictory existence marked by the past-ness of capitalism that appeared first through

colonialism and then development as also the future-ness of global capitalism seen as procreating

from within rather than outside. The challenge is to theorize the idea of capitalism in the context

of this transitional cusp and in a manner that contains its critique. To do this, one must confront


the question of the (colonial) Other as a theoretical impasse. In our own work, we have been

trying to attend to this impasse through the invocation of the concept of the world of the third. It

also arises from the need to de-familiarise the given rendition of the (colonial) Other (where the

Other marking differance is reduced to a 'lacking other') through a critique of the Orientalizing of

the Other.

In short, if one is to reconceptualize primitive accumulation, then there is a need to

examine capitalist development in a critical mould, which also involves de-familiarisation of the

economy, as also rescuing it from its totalizing roots in capitalism (Resnick and Wolff does

exactly that and we owe it to them). In the Southern context, a context marked by both

Capitalocentrism and Orientalism we try to problemtaize the equally totalizing idea and figure of

'third world', through the invocation of what we have called a counter-concept: world of the third

(Chakrabarti, Dhar and Cullenberg 2012). In this paper, we however would visit the troubled

Russian archive of late Marx and through that rethink primitive accumulation; and through

primitive accumulation, rethink the question of capitalist development once again.

One could ask: what such an intervention does to the present context of capitalist

development? First, it shifts the terms of reference from third world-ism to world of the third; in

the process it questions development – development understood in terms of the transition of the

pre-capitalist third world in the image of the modern capitalist west. It thus imparts a spin to

what has hitherto been considered necessary or historically inevitable; in the process it questions

what was deemed as developmental in the milieu of third worldism; it also puts to question the

somewhat naturalized nature of the violence of primitive accumulation, violence on world of the

third. What was hitherto deemed necessary and inevitable, and an integral part of historical

progress in a third worldist milieu, emerges as the violence of primitive accumulation in the


context and perspective of world of the third.

As a precursor to what is to come, a brief theoretical summary of the evaluative space of

capitalist development is necessary to organize our subsequent intervention on primitive

accumulation.

The Epistemology of Capitalist Development

One of the values of Resnick and Wolff’s re-interpretation of Marxism was to render the

economy de-centred and disaggregated through the class focused approach which also entailed

that capitalism and economy should no more be seen as coterminous. From a class-focused

perspective, the following question arises. How can a decentered and disaggregated economy be

transmuted into a 'dual economy'? Does this transmutation involve the reduction of the whole of

the economy - a rather complex, contradictory and overdetermined whole - to a part called

capitalism? Indeed, the epistemological imperative of economic dualism makes a particular class

process – the capitalist class process – the pre-given privileged centre of the economy. Such

Capitalocentrism(Gibson-Graham, 1996) reduces the otherwise de-centred and disaggregated

economy into two homogenous wholes – capitalism and the disposable remainder, ‘non-

capitalism’; non-capitalism however soon get reduced further to pre-capitalism. This dual

economy model opens for analysts, policy makers and practitioners a perspective to re-locate the

otherwise de-centred and disaggregated economy through the prism of capitalism; dualist

economic structure is thus constitutionally ingrained within a monist worldview. However,

countries in the ‘South’ have the additional legacy of Orientalism, which is often not given due


importance in the rendition of the economy. Orientalism (Said, 1985; Hall, 1992; Chaudhury,

1994) structured the way the ‘South’-ern(economies) came to be seen through the cultural-

political experience of colonialism. Weaving its way into development in the post-colonial phase

(Escobar 1995), Orientalism turned the dualistic frame into one that not only differentiated

between capitalism and non-capitalism (the hallmark of Capitalocentrism), but where non-

capitalism is rendered devalued/backward/traditional. Consequently, the term ‘non’ is replaced

by ‘pre’, where ‘pre’ is that which is stuck in archaic time-space. Thus the dualism of capitalist

class process and pre-capitalist class process becomes at times the dualism of modern/tradition,

city/industry and rural/agriculture, or formal/informal. The category ‘third world’ emerge as the

placeholder and shorthand for ‘all of the above’. This foregrounding of a pre-capitalist third

world in turn forecloses the language-logic-ethos-experience of the world of the third

(Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, 2012; Chakrabarti, Dhar and Cullenberg 2012). What is world of

the third? World of the third is constituted by a multitude of class and non-class processes; that

includes a variety of non-capitalist class processes materializing in its overdetermination with

other economic as also cultural, political and natural processes. World of the third societies

conceptually-territorially differ from and defer capitalism. It is world of the third, and not third

world that is the target of primitive accumulation.

Primitive Accumulation in ‘Capital’

Building on the case of England as his site of analysis, Marx defined primitive accumulation as:

...the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production.


It appears as primitive because it forms the pre-history of capital and of the mode

of production corresponding to capital (Marx 1990, 875).

This process involves two transformations. First, it transforms the social means of subsistence

and production into the service of creating capital and, second, it proletarizes, i.e. it transforms

the immediate producers (attached principally to land-agriculture) to (free) wage-laborers (Marx

1990, 873-874). The end result of the two is the creation of a labor market where labor power

can be freely exchanged, thereby acquiring the status of a commodity. For a worker to be ‘free’

under capitalism means that she must not own or possess any means of subsistence and

production, and she must be detached from the shared environment that previously sustained her

forms of life. Primitive accumulation forwards a theory of how a condition of existence for the

origin and expansion of capitalist production – labor power – is created as commodity:

The capitalist system pre-supposes the complete separation of the laborers from all

property in the means of production by which they can realize their labor. As soon as

capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but

reproduces it on a continually extending scale. (Marx 1954, 668)

How could such a massive change in conditions of human existence be achieved and who would

take the lead to enact it? Here, Marx referred to multiple sources, including colonial plunder,

which can be held responsible for producing the desired effect of ‘separation’. Following an

interpretation of Marx by Read (2002), separation by itself does not lead to the creation of wage

labor. It is followed by moments of “bloody legislation” designed to impose strict control over


the disenfranchised peasants and artisans, and the normalization exercise operating through

ideological apparatuses that “obliterates the memory of the past modes of production as well as

any traces of the violent foundation of the new mode of production” (Read 45). The historic

process of primitive accumulation even in its classical form is fairly long drawn and would see

many dynamic variations in forms of wage labor before it settles down to one conducive to the

workings of the capitalist enterprise. We are aware of warnings that the labor market in post-

colonial countries such as India does not represent the classical market for labor power that was

supposed to be the target of primitive accumulation, but this might appear to be a hasty

conclusion if one takes a longer and a more expansive view of history. Moreover, one need to

consider that in countries such as India peasants may have more options concerning their access

to, or ownership of, means of production including land which was and is not available in

settings such as nineteenth century England, twentieth century Soviet Union or present day

China. Therefore, it is not correct to say that primitive accumulation will unfold in the same way,

as Marx warned, in all countries.

The above three moments of force (involving aspects of repression, disciplining and

governance) are telescoped in the process of primitive accumulation and that operates through an

ensemble of repressive and ideological apparatuses. This was Marx’s response to the classical

political economists and their modern incarnation in neo-classical economics which represents

the birth and evolution of capitalism as simply a matter of thrift and entrepreneurship and in

which the element of force is absent (Perelman 2000, 2001). In contrast to the latter’s a-historical

reading of capitalism, Marx’s analysis is a reminder of the social constitution of capitalism, as in

the past and in present. In this history, the dissolution of the feudal mode of production, the

violent origin of the capitalist mode of production and the history of colonialism, on their own


and in relation to one another, defined capitalism as also its specificity across time and space.

There are by now many dissenting voices to this rather teleological rendition of primitive

accumulation. However, the issue is not merely one of historical proof (of primitive

accumulation) but of its theorization in the context of transition in late industrializing countries,

including those with a colonial legacy. To that end, we now examine late Marx’s turn towards

the ‘Russian question’ to map out the turn Marx gave to his initial rendition of primitive

accumulation.

Primitive Accumulation in Late Marx

Confronted with what is known as the ‘Russian question’Marx revised his position on the

question of historical inevitability (Marx 1970, 75, 83, 89; Bailey and Llobera 1981, Shanin

1983, Dhar 2002, Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, ch 7). To begin with, Marx clearly expressed his

displeasure to any translation of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a general

historico-philosophical theory of either development or transition, imposed by fate on all people.

He makes this position clear in the case of Russian question.

…I expressly limited the “historical inevitability” (note: this term is kept under

quotation as a mark of the problematical nature of this term that many of his so-

called followers tried to attribute to him) of this process to the countries of

Western Europe. Why so?....we are dealing here with the transformation of one

form of private property into another form of private property. The land tilled by

the Russian peasants never having being their private property, how is this to be

applied in their case? (1970, 152)


…does this mean that the development of the “land commune” must necessarily

follow the same lines under all circumstances? Certainly not. Its constitutive form

allows the following alternative: either the element of private property implied in

it gains the upper hand over the collective element, or vice versa. Everything

depends upon the historical background in which it finds itself…Both these

solutions are possible a priori, but both obviously require entirely different

historical environments. (1970, 156)

Indeed, this turn in Marx as he was confronting the non-Western setting was supposed to be a

momentous event in the study of Marxism which alas was never quite picked up, except in the

brief and fleeting excitement left by the footprints of Mao’s long march. One needs to ask: does

this go against the grain of argument that seeks to place primitive accumulation as a necessary

sub-moment of history, as an event that in facilitating a move from feudal to capitalist mode of

production will take society one stage closer in the direction of communism? By no means

restricted to classical thinkers who were Marx’s protagonists and now neoclassical thinkers, it is

necessary to confront this position since primitive accumulation was used by Marxists to

legitimize an array of policies pointing to a social engineering of hitherto and erstwhile

‘socialist’ nations; we are pointing to instances of ‘socialist’ primitive accumulation in erstwhile

Soviet Union and the current one in China to facilitate capitalism in the name of ‘socialism with

Chinese characteristics’. To this logic of inevitability encompassing even the Radical terrain,

Marx would say:

At the same time as the commune is being bled and tortured and its land made

barren and poor, the literary lackeys of the “new pillars of society” refer ironically

to the wounds which have been inflicted on the commune as symptoms of its


spontaneous decrepitude. They claim that it is dying a natural death and the

kindest thing would be to put an end to its agony. Here we are no longer dealing

with a problem to be solved, but quite simply with an enemy who must be

defeated. In order to save the Russian commune there must be a Russian

revolution. And the Russian government and the “new pillars of society” are

doing their best to prepare the masses for such a catastrophe. If the revolution

takes place at the right time, if it concentrates all its forces to ensure the free

development of the village commune, the latter will soon emerge as the

regenerative force in Russian society and as something superior to those countries

which are still enslaved by the capitalist regime. (Marx 1970, 161)

Through his particular rendition of primitive accumulation in the Russian context – primitive

accumulation as violence, as unjust, as unethical – Marx can be understood as deconstructing the

idea of inescapable historicity and scientific inevitability tied to the origin and evolution of

capitalism and industrial society. He is also unveiling in the process the ‘masked political

character’ of capitalism and primitive accumulation as also the ‘hidden hostility’ of the modern

West to world of the third.

This we believe is alandmark revision that late Marx is announcing. Three aspects of the

revision can be highlighted. First, when faced with the question of whether the ‘event’ of

primitive accumulation should be accommodated or not in Russia’s transition path, Marx is

clearly veering towards a clear ‘no’. He thus turns what was previously the historic event of

primitive accumulation into a critical political category. This turn in Marx is part and parcel of

an unambiguously critical position vis a vis capitalism. Given that primitive accumulation

announces the birth of capitalism, it is to be opposed. The Marxist description of primitive


accumulation must not be a defense of it. This turn in Marx takes final shape when in the preface

to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto, he writes: “…present Russian communal

land ownership can serve as a point of departure for a communist development”.

Second, his analysis provided the decisive shift in understanding primitive accumulation

as a multifaceted and a continual process rather than see it as a big bang program. In case of

England, as we saw, Marx emphasized the aspect of expropriation of means of production, as a

condition of primitive accumulation. However, following his Russian experience, he wondered

whether expropriating land from the peasantry is a necessary condition for primitive

accumulation. Is expropriating land from the peasantry the same as expropriating the tillers of

the land?

In order to expropriate the tillers of the land it is not necessary to drive them from

their land as was the case in England and elsewhere; nor is it necessary to abolish

communal property by anusake. Just go and deprive the peasants of the product of

their labor beyond a certain point and you will not be able to chain them to their

fields even with the help of your police and army. (159)

This marked a decisive departure from a property-centric reading of primitive accumulation

towards emphasizing the importance of the multifaceted conditions shaping forms of life. Rather

than being simply about land or forcible eviction, Marx was referring to different policy induced

alterations such that world of the third societies grow anemic and meet their end. Primitive

accumulation is not just about a question of land or direct forcible eviction. It also concerns how

the conditions of existence governing world of the third societies can be changed in multiple

ways (through unfavorable modification in terms of trade, debt, knowledge, technology, capital-


labor ratio, water, forests, etc.) in order to bring about a major dislocation in forms of life such

that they finally get dismantled; in the end, they disappear, as if, of their ‘own free will’ dying a

‘natural death’ even if the cause may be the wounds inflicted in some past. In the end, there is no

recognition of the wound that capitalism inflicts and only the decrepitude body remains visible, a

very familiar story even in today’s world. Following Marx, one can think of two immediate

consequences of this revision. One, primitive accumulation is better understood as an ever

changing menu of altered conditions of existence that leads to a gradual and at times quick

dismantling of world of the third forms of life. This also reveals that there is no one trajectory of

primitive accumulation. Rather, depending upon the conditions of existence being altered in such

societies, primitive accumulation would take different paths and forms. Next, one needs to revise

the idea of the ‘complete’ at the moment of separation(which Marx initially forwarded through

his case study of England). Thus there is no need for emphasizing complete separation from the

means of production such as land. Separation itself needs to be rethought which in this case

would appear to be ‘separation’ from any conditions of existence (such as from the ability to

draw water for agriculture) that in turn would ensure that the world of the third subjects

including peasants are unable to reproduce their forms of life. The fact that world of the third

subjects, even if they may have ownership of resources including land, are unable to reproduce

their livelihood should be enough to secure the condition of wage labor. Thus, the direct

connection between creation of wage labor and loss of ownership of property is somewhat

misplaced.

Third, Marx’s Russian turn marks a move away from the Capitalocentric-Orientalist

approach to development. From today’s vantage point, the question of the Russian transition

posed to him the difficult issue of whether Russia should take the path of capitalist development


as it had unfolded in England. Marx’s answer is unambiguous. One need not be enslaved to

capitalism in thinking of paths of development. Rather, the paths itself must be open to thinking.

To think path then opens the field for alternative constructions and deviations from the current

one.

Having many paths to development requires at least a theorization of economy that is

decentered and dis-aggregated, actually and potentially. Did Marx give us any clue regarding the

need to re-conceptualize the economy as decentered and disaggregated? Referring to land

commune in Russia, which he saw as the point of reference and departure for alternative

constructions of economy and society, he observes:

…a commune in which the arable land has become private property, whereas

forests, pasture and waste land, etc., have remained communal property. (154)

Elsewhere:

…although arable land remains communal property, it is redivided periodically

among members of the land commune in such a way that each person cultivates

by himself the fields assigned to him and appropriates the fruits of his own labor,

whereas in the archaic communities production was communal and only the

products were distributed. (155)

In land commune then Marx is clearly pointing to the presence of independent class enterprise

and, for ‘archaic’ communities, communist class enterprise. In fact, given the form of

community economics that prevailed in Russia then and to which Marx was referring to, many

other kinds of class enterprises could very well have been present, including those with

communitic class process. Communitic class process refers to two possible scenarios where (i)


even as direct producers may collectively (C) produce surplus, only one of these producers (A)

would appropriate the surplus and the rest would be excluded, and (ii) even as direct producers

perform surplus labour individually (A), the appropriation is done collectively (C) such that

nobody is excluded from participation in it. The former constitutes CA communitic class process

and the latter AC communitic class process (Chaudhury and Chakrabarti 2000). An example of

CA communitic class process is a family based agricultural farm in which all members labour

but where only one member, say, the head of the family who also is a direct producer alongside

others appropriates the surplus individually by excluding the rest (this is in contrast to slave,

feudal and capitalist class form in which the appropriators are not direct producers of surplus); an

example of AC communitic class process is an agricultural arrangement where farmers farm

individually in their respective land but decide to come together to appropriate the surplus

collectively (this is in contrast to communist class form where a collective performs and

appropriates surplus). In Letters from Russia Rabindranath Tagore reflecting on his experience in

the Soviet Union had observed class-organizational forms-farms of AC communitic kinds, kinds

that were representative of ‘collective appropriation’-‘individual production’. Tagore saw such

class-organizations as solutions to the contradictions inherent in the couple ‘forced

collectivization / free individualism’ In addition, other exploitative class organizations such as

slave, feudal and even small-scale capitalist enterprises may prevail on their own or in tandem

with other class enterprises in such spaces.

Having moved away from historical inevitability, we interpret Marx as pointing to

independent and communist class enterprises (and other arrangements that we talked about) with

reference to land organizations and a theorizing of primitive accumulation as a process of

dismantling existing or possible forms of non-capitalist existences. What this calls for is the need


to consider the presence of different class arrangements within world of the third societies so that

both the deployed form of primitive accumulation and resistance to it can be precisely located

and analyzed. This demands a movement from the categorization of the economy as a

homogenous body to that of a de-centered and disaggregated rendition and from the decrepitude,

devalued, stature of ‘other’ forms of life which later came to be defined as third world to the

differing-deferring Other, world of the third. Evidently, the first aspect demands a different kind

of conception of the economy, which cannot be captured in terms of the mode of production kind

of approach in the classical Marxian mould. To this end, Gibson-Graham (2008) urges us to

relocate the place of the economy away from its capital-centric moorings. It is here that Resnick

and Wolff’s class-focused analysis becomes crucial. The second aspect is crucial if a

defamiliarized rendition of the ‘third world other’ in development has to be inaugurated. This is

because the other qua third worldreduces the heterogeneity of the world of the third into some

stereotyping imagery – the ‘victim third’ (poor, marginalized, excluded, ignorant, etc.) as also

the ‘evil third’ (hysterical, irrational, archaic, etc.). Once incarcerated within third worldism,

primitive accumulation cannot but be necessary. It is only when we have the relocated the ‘third

world other’ by redefining the evaluative space, does new possibilities in contrast and opposition

to capitalist development becomes possible. Movement away from Capitalocentrism is a

necessary but not a sufficient in the context of transitional economies.

From today’s vantage point, however, Marx would not consider world of the third

societies as desirable per se. He would perhaps see it as open to multiple possibilities. In this

context, he would possibly arguefor a particular ethico-political stance not merely to confront the

idea and event of primitive accumulation (as part of the larger logic of capital accumulation), but

also to struggle against injustice and poverty within world of the third. The latter though implies


the space to be disaggregated so that these other possibilities are available and could be

cultivated; which is exactly what we have theorized through world the third. Conceding the fact

that the Russian commune cannot survive in its current form, Marx called for its rejuvenation.

This regeneration could be based on two factors. The first is its movement towards “collective

production and appropriation” that in turn would require creating and securing, and this is the

second factor, various conditions of existence that included common ownership of land as also

modern implements, fertilizers, farming methods, etc., which the concurrent existence of

capitalist production has already made known. The two factors would conjoin into a large scale

agricultural re-organization that would then initiate "normal’ development" of agriculture. While

it has to be mentioned that Marx was referring to the looming crisis in Russian village commune

which he argued would be overcome by large scale collective production and appropriation, our

development of Marx’s framework along the class focused frame makes both communist class

enterprise and AC type communitic class enterprise, large and small scale, important and viable

possibilities. Moreover, taking the broad canvas of Marx into consideration, the struggle for the

collective in agrarian societies must be conjoined with the struggle for collectivity in industrial

societies such that “the return of modern societies to a superior form of the “archaic” type of

collective ownership and collective production” (157) is achieved. Marx thus reversed what the

hegemonic termed as ‘progressive’ into the ‘regressive’, and the ‘regressive’ into the

progressive.’

Rethinking Primitive Accumulation

In the backdrop of our interpretation of Marx’s encounter with the ‘The Russian question”, one

could ask: what would a theoretical framework look like that (i) dissolves the dualistic frame

with its underlying Capitalocentric-Orientalist epistemology, (ii) creates a de-centered and


heterogeneous space in which ‘what are not capitalists’ are disaggregated into numerous modes

of performance, appropriation, distribution and receipt of surplus so that, from within these,

collective and communitic forms can appear as existing and possible, (iii) permits a political

standpoint based on the ethico-justice considerations of non-exploitation, fair distribution and

development justice, and (iv) embodies the different historical paths of primitive accumulation

and hence of capitalism in a manner that unpacks the ‘regressive’ substance of the so-called

‘progressive’ logic advanced by the protagonists of development discourse. In our examination

conducted over the years, working through all these features, we have tried to forward a Marxian

framework that deploys class as processes of surplus labor to produce an evaluative space

containing an assortment of economic arrangements – capitalist and ‘what are not capitalists’. It

is to also open the discursive terrain to world of the third – world of the third as the outside to the

circuits-camp of global capital – as against third world, where third world is what the “new

pillars of society” assume as and attest to be in a process of natural decay due to its self-imposed

decrepitude and where ‘the kindest thing would be to put an end to its agony’. Evidently, we

have been trying to interpret the intervention of late Marx to re-locate the place of primitive

accumulation and in the process rethink its relation with (global) capitalism and world of the

third. Let us present a brief summary of what may emerge.

Before proceeding further, we make two observations related to our conceptualization of

primitive accumulation. First, and this is especially common in the context of the Southern

countries, there is nothing that prevents a subject from holding polymorphous class and non-class

positions. Any theory must incorporate (and not erase as is often the case) such polymorphisms

within its frame. For example, a wage laborer (say, working in the city) could also be the owner-

appropriator of an agricultural farm. Interestingly, he occupies multiple positions: that of an


appropriator of surplus value in the agricultural farm, distributor of surplus value in the same

farm and performer of surplus labor in an industrial enterprise. As explained earlier, there is

necessarily nothing antithetical between a property owning individual (even with attachment to

land) and a wage laborer; driving the person’s livelihood below the subsistence basket of goods

and services is enough to drive him to become wage laborer. As more intricate inter-linkages

between agriculture and rural non-farm employment as also between agriculture and industry

develop, the multiplication of such varied positions occupied by a segment of rural individuals

should not surprise us. Primitive accumulation that emphasizes the exclusivity of pure wage

labor (as against property ownership), as in the classical rendition, would run into trouble in

capturing and explaining such phenomena.

Second, it is becoming evident that the old thesis promising a breakdown of agriculture

resulting from the logic of growth through industrialization has undergone some modifications,

at least in countries such as India. The promised transformation from agrarian society towards a

full-fledged industrialized capitalist economy has taken quite an unpredictable turn so far as the

promised accommodation of ‘surplus’ rural labor force into the modern capitalist economy is

concerned. A remarkable turn in the hegemonic discourse of development has been to clear the

growing modern capitalist sector from any responsibility in integrating migrating population

from agriculture into its ambit which, previously, remained one of the central theses of not only

the dual economy imagination, but also that of the classical form of primitive accumulation.

Whether due to the rapid rise in population or the labor substituting technological changes or

simply the inability of industrial capitalist economy to grow quickly enough or the perverse

nature of the ongoing breakdown in agriculture, or combination of all these factors, the point

remains that the accommodation of workers from agriculture towards large scale industrial


production has not materialized. Instead, another so-called third world ‘traditional’ sector, the

informal sector, has grown in volume and importance in the last fifty years absorbing, by default,

a large reservoir of people coming from agriculture who are unable to find work in the capitalist

industrial economy; informal sector can be seen as a safety net that can potentially absorb ‘left-

over’ populations from agriculture. The informal sector can be split into two where one part –

through outsourcing, subcontracting and offshoring – has emerged as economic supplement to

(global) capitalist enterprises while another part remains outside the circuits-camp of (global)

capital (Chakrabarti, Cullenberg and Dhar 2007). The second part of informal sector making up

world of the third exists in urban as also rural areas. This testifies to the further point that

primitive accumulation does not simply work with respect to world of the third agriculture, but

also world of the third informal sector where the latter’s conditions of existence are expropriated

or reset to facilitate the control and march of (global) capital (Chakrabarti, Chaudhury and

Cullenberg 2009).

Given these clarifications, we have made an effort to rethink the transition of economies

such as India through the mutually intersecting, reinforcing and compensating axes of

globalization, capitalism and development (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2013). As part of this

transition, the economy that is otherwise de-centered and disaggregated is attempted to be

discursively re-located into the circuits-camp of global capital and world of the third. As part of

this hegemonic rendition, the otherwise diverse economy is displaced into Capitalocentrism and

Orientalism ensures that world of third is displaced or is devalued as third world or its substitute,

social capital or hapless community. The relocation of world of the third as third world is

decisive for capitalism to work through the logic of development. Seen from above, development

qua progress is now re-presented as the marchand expansion of circuits-camp of global capital


which, in its material embodiment, comes to be indicated by the reduction in the surface area and

depth of world of the third forms of life. Evidently, since the logic of global capitalist

development is founded on securing, facilitating and expanding the circuits-camp of global

capital, the process of primitive accumulation that works overtime on world of the third appears

in multifaceted forms. That is, the expansion of the net of global capitalism disturbs-dislocates-

displaces the world of the third in diverse ways and, as explained earlier, through various

strategies and means. Broadly, the forms could be divided into two: the non-classical and the

classical form (Chakrabarti and Dhar 2009, ch 7-8).

The non-classical form pertains to changing one or two conditions of existence of world

of the third societies (such as changing the ground levels of water through the sudden setting up

of the production unit of a global capitalist enterprise) such that world of the third has no

alternative but to first get dislocated and then get disintegrated. The classical form takes the form

of wholesale displacement of world of the third societies. Either way, primitive accumulation is

impacting world of the third economies such as India massively and in the process reshaping the

circuits-camp of global capital and world of the third at a frantic pace. However, the more

mundane non-classical forms of primitive accumulation (that do not imply direct land acquisition

but other avenues of dislocation of world of the third societies by changing their conditions of

existence) unfolding rapidly are not really accounted for by the policy makers; their discursive

‘invisibility’ and unaccountability renders them absent from the policy making paradigm of the

state. In case of India’s transition, for example, the high growth rate regime achieved through the

expansion of circuits-camp of global capital and the growing resistance of world of the third

subjects have initiated a rethinking of the rationale of land acquisition and its perceived models.

In so far as the Indian state is considered, it is one form of primitive accumulation – direct land


acquisition – that has particularly caught attention (not least because of fierce resistance

movements). However, primitive accumulation through the non-classical route could and does

unfold intermittently and unevenly in dispersed time and space, producing varied processes of

turning world of the third societies into anemic and decrepitude existences of third worldliness.

Whether it is over an entire region or taking place intermittently across a region, primitive

accumulation thus symbolizes an assortment of dislocations that are an integral component of

development logic. It captures a facet of development logic that enables an expansion of the

circuits-camp of global capital through industrialization. It also never allows world of the third to

settle into what Marx called “normal development” – development experienced, understood,

imagined, conceptualized, practiced and modeled by world of the third itself or in its terms. It

was a point emphasized by Marx, but one which was not greatly valued by his followers; his

take, as we see, sought an interrogation of primitive accumulation and capitalist development not

from the top and from the outside but from below and from inside. Western Marxists made the

transition question a debate between the ‘English path’ and the ‘Prussian path’, and of the

transition of Southern countries into whether it fitted either of these two models, whether the

historical dialectic was released or blocked into passive revolution of capital. The transition

debate in India remained in the process Eurocentric and Capitalocentric, and it still

predominantly continues to be so.


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On Primitive Accumulation: Encore

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