Marx and the Concept of Historical Time · 第 178 页

¹⁴⁵ The implicit temporal orientation of those analyses that stress the ‘continuous character’ of originary accumulation is – for the most part – the past, which is to say that originary accumulation is (within capitalism) predominantly theorised as a reactionary process. This is the underlying assumption behind David Harvey’s rereading of originary accumulation as ‘accumulation by dispossession’, such that the ‘new imperialism’ is fundamentally a response to the economic crises of the 1970s. See David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). De Angelis argues that ‘the temporal dimension [of originary accumulation] includes in principle both the period of the establishment of a capitalist mode of production and the preservation and expansion of the capitalist mode of production any time the producers set themselves as an obstacle to the reproduction of their separation to the means of production.’ De Angelis, ‘Marx and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital’s “enclosures”’, 13. Originary accumulation thereby becomes a deliberate response or strategy, ex post facto, to existing forms of class struggle. This is not incorrect, but it obscures the sense in which originary accumulation is also and systematically structured by the future, such that it represents a form of speculation – a gamble, a hedge – on capital’s need to self-expand. ¹⁴⁶ Marx, Grundrisse, 459.

¹⁴⁷ ‘Thus, primitive accumulation becomes not only a cause of the capitalist mode of production but its effect.’ Read, ‘Primitive Accumulation: the Aleatory Foundation of Capitalism’, 37.

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