{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","uuid":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","normalized_title":"marxandtheconceptofhistoricaltime","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":216,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Marx%20and%20the%20Concept%20of%20Historical%20Time","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/search"},"page":{"printed_page":177,"pdf_page":181,"physical_index":181,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"231006b6acbb19d6328957015dfb30994d7f130a6e44459768bfcca6bcb3f339"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"Bonefeld’s work brings into relief a defining problem of the relation between originary and capitalist accumulation: namely, does the ‘permanence’ of originary accumulation refer to the principle of separation it first enacts, or – on top of this – originary accumulation itself? That is, consequent to the sublation of originary within capitalist accumulation, is it just the separation of labour from its means that is incessantly reproduced by capital, as capital’s own presupposition and result, or is originary accumulation itself also therefore reproduced? Is it possible to grasp originary accumulation – not just the separation it first engenders – as not simply the historical premise but the historical result of capitalist accumulation? In short, is originary accumulation itself an ongoing process?<sup>141</sup> To answer this question affirmatively is to come into unavoidable conflict with Marx himself, who on multiple occasions – in Capital and elsewhere – makes assertions to the effect that originary accumulation ‘is not the result of the capitalist mode of production but its point of departure’<sup>142</sup>, that this accumulation ‘is the historical basis, instead of the historical result, of specifically capitalist production.’<sup>143</sup> Marx should be critiqued here. Originary accumulation is not just continuous because the separation to which it gives rise ‘subsequently appear[s] as a constant process in the accumulation and concentration of capital’<sup>144</sup>, but also because, consequent to capitalist accumulation ‘proper’, human beings continue to be separated from the means of production in ways that cannot be secured by capitalist accumulation alone. At the crux of this issue is the difference and relation between a ‘capitalist’ and ‘non-capitalist’ labour-process. What is important to realise is that there is no linear progression here, no movement towards the ‘complete subsumption’ of what is ‘non-capitalist’ by what is ‘capitalist’. Rather, the vast majority – at least today – of ‘noncapitalist’ labour-processes are in fact capitalist labour-processes that have been re-designated by capital as ‘non-capitalist’. In this way, the ongoing totalisation of capital is not just ongoing because the subsumption of countless labour-processes under the valorisation-process is in fact the manifold differentiation and expansion of labour-processes themselves, but equally because the totalisation of capital designates existing labour-processes as either ‘insufficiently capitalist’ or as outright ‘non-capitalist’: ‘antiquated’ labour-processes (this process dovetails with the dialectical production of the ‘new’ qua the active creation of the ‘old’, as outlined in relation to the ongoing first historical act in Chapter 1). Herein lies the importance of originary accumulation. The designation of what is an ‘insufficiently’ or ‘non-capitalist’ labour-process is of course dialectically subject to what is ‘sufficiently’ capitalist, and hence subject to being re-created – subsumed – as a new labour-process. What makes this re-creation possible is the re-separation of the means of production from the producers, a process which is in no way predominantly characterised by coercion and violence, but which is never absent the latent possibility (everywhere) and overt actuality (somewhere) of originary accumulation. To deny this is to effectively deny capital’s ongoing need for a state (only the state ensures and insures capital as the subject of capitalism), in addition to its ongoing recourse to war.<sup>145</sup> In this regard, the real subsumption of labour – or the ‘specifically capitalist mode of production’ – not only results, as previously shown, in the expansion of the formal subsumption of labour, but in the originary accumulation of capital itself. If real subsumption constitutes a ‘constantly repeated revolution’ in the production-process, then originary accumulation is both a presupposition and result of this. To put this another way, originary accumulation is simultaneously the cause and effect of the actuality that ‘separation’ is not a one-off act but is in capitalism ephemeral, precisely because what constitutes the ‘means’ and ‘conditions’ of production – and thus the production-process of capital more generally – is constantly being revolutionised. In other words, if ‘once developed historically, capital itself creates the conditions of its existence (not as conditions for its arising, but as results of its being)’<sup>146</sup>, then originary accumulation must be understood as one of the conditions that is the result of capital’s being.<sup>147</sup>\n\n<sup>140</sup> Bonefeld, ‘The Permanence of Primitive Accumulation: Commodity Fetishism and Social Constitution’, 6.\n\n<sup>141</sup> As Bonefeld conveys it: ‘primitive accumulation is a constantly reproduced accumulation, be it in terms of the renewed separation of new populations from the means of production and subsistence, or in terms of the reproduction of the wage relation in the “established” relations of capital’, such that, and as previously cited, originary accumulation ‘is the presupposition of capital and the result of its reproduction.’ Ibid. 1-2, emphasis added. Both Bonefeld and De Angelis point towards Samir Amin’s Accumulation on a World Scale: a Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment (1974) as a pioneering work that explicitly presents originary accumulation itself as necessarily ongoing. <sup>142</sup> Marx, Capital 1, 873.\n\n<sup>143</sup> Ibid. 775.\n\n<sup>144</sup> Marx, Capital 3, 355.\n\n177","previous_page":176,"next_page":178}