Marx’s
Capital Volume 1, Part 10b
Mogadishu, 1993
Colonialism
Here we
are, nearly at the end of Capital, Volume 1, the famous and huge book that so
many people talk about and so few people read. We have read it. We are more fit
to be cadres. We are more fit to be the vanguard. What remain are only the
three last chapters, which are not difficult to read, although as always they
challenge us to be brave and to act, and action will never be easy.
In Chapter 31 Marx states that the origin
of the industrial (not farming) capitalist is in colonialism.
“The discovery of gold and silver in America,
the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal
population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the
turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins,
signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic
proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels
treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a
theatre.”
“To-day industrial supremacy implies commercial
supremacy. In the period of manufacture properly so called, it is, on the other
hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial predominance. Hence the
preponderant rôle that the colonial system plays at that time. It was "the
strange God" who perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old
Gods of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked them all of a
heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity.”
This last
describes in a single sentence, the state of affairs that Marx's book was
written to expose; and Marx did succeed in exposing “capital” as “surplus-value
making”.
Yet it
appears that Marx did not deal with Primitive Accumulation in the sense that
the phrase would nowadays be understood. Marx does not establish that
capitalism required a ready pile of money or its equivalent. What he
establishes is how the requisite class forces were brought into being, in
Western Europe, in the revolutions that overthrew feudalism.
It is a
mistake to think that a capitalist business requires “capital” in advance, if
by “capital” is meant money in the bank, or land, buildings, equipment et
cetera. It does require such things, but they do not make it a capitalist
business as opposed to any other kind of project. What makes a business work as
capitalism is a dual relationship. The first part of it is the relationship
between the worker and the capitalist. The second part is the relationship of
the capitalist with his market. If these two relationships do not exist, or are
faulty, then a capitalist business will not survive. But if they do exist, then
the other means will probably be found without too much difficulty.
Marx shows
clearly how the proletariat arose historically in Europe in the 16th century.
He shows how the bourgeois class arrives on the scene. He shows how all the
social building blocks including proletariat and market, are assembled, but not
the money. In any case, capital is not money, it is a relation. Marx says so,
directly, in Chapter 33. So the accumulation necessary for capitalism is not
treasure, but is an accumulation of relationships; this is what we learn from
the chapters in “Capital” on Primitive Accumulation.
Marx does
not, in Capital, make a strong distinction between slavery and capitalism. He
describes slavery candidly and without flinching from the horror of it. But he
never discusses slavery in a comparative way, as distinct from surplus-value-extracting
bourgeois-and-proletarian capitalism. Yet (bourgeois) slavery also started in
the 16th century, or slightly before, and it ran on as a transcontinental
Atlantic system for the next three hundred years, in parallel with the early
development of capitalism proper, until Marx’s time, such that the last end of
bourgeois slavery was the cataclysm of the American Civil War, that was
happening while Marx was writing Capital.
Chapter 32 of Capital, Volume 1 contains about 1000 words
in only four paragraphs. It is a full historical sweep from the past of slaves
and serfs through present capitalism to the future, when the expropriators will
be expropriated. It resembles the Communist Manifesto.
Chapter 33 is very interesting but in spite of its title,
it is not really about colonialism. Instead, Marx uses the example of part of
one colony of the time, Australia, to make points about capitalism and to
“discover in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist
production in the mother country”. Also note the very last paragraph of the
chapter (and the book), which says:
“We are not concerned here with the conditions
of the colonies. The only thing that interests us is the secret discovered in
the new world by the Political Economy of the old world, and proclaimed on the
housetops: that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and
therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the
annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation
of the laborer.”
“...capital is not a thing, but a social
relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things,” says Marx.
In the next
part, we will commence a ten-week course Capital, Volumes 2 and 3.
Please download and read the text
via the following link:
Further
reading:
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