{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":39,"pdf_page":39,"physical_index":39,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"fe23e21766d05f7a272cafc31c05a074a9c0dbe49d13cbb74588b139b6c8f56d"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Primitive accumulation\n\nToday we take the buying and selling of labour power for granted. It seems as \"natural\" as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet nowhere was it more than a minor feature of any society until a few hundred years ago. So in Europe in the late Middle Ages, or in Africa and Asia at the time of European colonisation in the 1 8th and 19th centuries, most people had at least some direct access to the means of getting a livelihood-even if they had to hand over a slice of what they produced to a parasitic landlord. Peasants could grow food on their own land and craftsmen make goods in their own little workshops.\n\nWhat changed this, according to Marx, was a primeval act of robbery-the use of force to remove masses of people from any control over the means of production. This was often carried through by the state at the behest of some of the most privileged groups in society. In England and Wales, for example, the rise of capitalism was accompanied by \"enclosures\"-the forcible driving of peasants from common land they had cultivated for centuries. Laws against \"vagrancy\" then compelled the dispossessed peasants to seek work at whatever wage they could get. In Scotland the \"clearances\" had the same effect, as the lairds drove the crofters (small farmers) from the land so as to replace them first by sheep and then by deer. As Britain's rulers carved out an empire for themselves throughout the rest of the world, they took measures to bring about the same separation of the mass of people from control over the means of gaining a livelihood. In India, for example, they granted complete ownership of the land to the already highly privileged zamindar class. In East and South Africa they usually forced each household to pay a fixed sum of money, a poll tax, which it could only raise by sending some of its members to seek employment with European ranchers or businessmen.\n\nMarx called this process of creating the conditions for the growth of capitalist production \"the primitive accumulation of capital\". Marx tells how:\n\nMarx's Concepts\n\n39","previous_page":38,"next_page":40}