<sup>126</sup> The difference between originary accumulation and capitalist accumulation (the latter is frequently labelled as ‘mature accumulation’ or ‘accumulation proper’) must be maintained, so as not to conflate these concepts in Marx, who on a number of occasions explicitly differentiates them: ‘It is indeed this separation between the conditions of labour, on the one hand, and the producers, on the other, that forms the concept of capital, as this arises with originary accumulation…subsequently appearing as a constant process in the accumulation and concentration of capital, before it is finally expressed…as the centralisation of capitals already existing in few hands, and the decapitalisation of many.’ See Marx, Kapital 3, 256 (Capital 3, 354-55). Commenting on this passage, De Angelis suggests that ‘while sharing the same principle – separation – the two concepts point at two different conditions of existence. [Originary accumulation] implies the ex novo production of the separation, while [capitalist accumulation] implies the reproduction – on a greater scale – of the same separation.’ Massimo De Angelis, ‘Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s “enclosures”’, 8. Thus even as, strictly speaking, ‘originary accumulation’ is the originary accumulation of capital, such that it is, at a certain level, misleading to suggest that it is not a kind of ‘capitalist’ accumulation (particularly since capitalist accumulation (proper) creates the conditions, as we will see, whereby originary accumulation is constantly reproduced), it is necessary, on another level, to differentiate these two accumulations. Only one – capitalist accumulation – actually creates surplus-value, whereas the other is the condition of possibility for this. Likewise, capital is the subject of capitalist accumulation, whereas it is not the subject of (its) originary accumulation (the state is).
<sup>127</sup> I am indebted to De Angelis for the passages cited here, specifically section 3.2 of his ‘Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s “enclosures”’: ‘Separation and the secret of (primitive) accumulation’.
<sup>128</sup> Marx, Kapital 3, 256 (Capital 3, 354).
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