"Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations"- Karl Marx

[Big Bill Jefferson]

I
The process which precedes the formation of the capital relation or of original accumulation

One of the prerequisites of wage labor, and one of the historic conditions for capital, is free labor and the exchange of free labor against money, in order to reproduce money and to convert it into values, in order to be consumed by money, not as use value for enjoyment, but as use value for money. Another prerequisite is the separation of free labor from the objective conditions of its realization — from the means and material of labor. This means above all that the workers must be separated from the land, which functions as his natural laboratory. This means the dissolution both of free petty landownership and of communal landed property, based on the oriental commune.

In both these forms, the relationship of the worker to the objective conditions of his labor is one of ownership: this is the natural unity of labor with its material prerequisites. Hence, the worker has an objective existence independent of his labor. The individual is related to himself as a proprietor, as master of the conditions of his reality. The same relation holds between one individual and the rest. Where this prerequisite derives from the community, the others are his co-owners, who are so many incarnations of the common property. Where it derives from the individual families which jointly constitute the community, they are independent owners co-existing with him, independent private proprietors. The common property which formerly absorbed everything and embraced them all, then subsists as a special ager publicus separate from the numerous private owners.

In both cases, individuals behave not as laborers but as owners — and as members of a community who also labor. The purpose of this labor is not the creation of value, although they may perform surplus labor in order to exchange it for foreign labor — i.e., for surplus products. Its purpose is the maintenance of the owner and his family as well as of the communal body as a whole. The establishment of the individual as a worker, stripped of all qualities except this one, is itself a product of history.

The first prerequisite of this earliest form of landed property appears as a human community, such as emerges from spontaneous evolution : the family, the family expanded into a tribe, or the tribe created by the inter-marriage of families or combination of tribes. We may take it for granted that pastoralism, or more generally a migratory life, is the first form of maintaining existence, the tribe not settling in a fixed place but using up what it finds locally and then passing on. Men are not settled by nature (unless perhaps in such fertile environments that they could subsist on a single tree like the monkeys; otherwise they would roam, like the wild animals). Hence the tribal community, the natural common body, appears not as the consequence, but as the precondition of the joint (temporary) appropriation and use of the soil.

...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

[Big Bill Jefferson]

2. Wow

That's really good. Gonna have to print that one out.

[leftstreet]

4. The older cartoons are fascinating

...a time when economic issues were prominent in the national discourse

Now, not so much.

Welcome to DU!

[Starry Messenger]

3. k & r

I was just looking for something like this. I wish the historical roots of capitalism was taught in school. I feel like I'm relearning all of history.

[Drale]

5. The problem with Marxism and all

systems is that they are so easily corrupted.

[Hannah Bell]

6. more so than capitalism, you say?

[Drale]

7. No thats I said ALL SYSTEMS

including capitalism. All the different systems have their merits and their drawbacks, there is no one perfect system.

[maryf]

8. but let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the best....

Sorry, I hate the quote I based that on but, equal distribution of the wealth, time for work and play, all needs met for all...sounds damn good to me...

[Drale]

11. it sounds great

but it will never happen there will always be people elevated above everyone else, which is what happened in Russia and in China. Marxism is a fantastic idea but it will not work in the real work. Like I said one "pure" system will not work. What needs to be tried is a hybrid system, were people still have to work for their housing and food but health care, power needs and a few other things are taken care of by the government.

[Panaconda]

12. Who

builds the house?

[Drale]

13. um how bout

construction workers as their would still people who do manual labor jobs because people would still need a job to feed themselves and their families and buy stuff. In a Marxist society everyone is equal therefor there is no reason for people to work hard if you're going get the same as everyone no matter what you do, that is one of the reasons that the system does work in reality.

[leftstreet]

14. Are you suggesting the Walton heirs work harder than I do?

...than my neighbor, a welder & HVAC technician, does? Than said neighbor's wife, a homemaker, does?

You're saying in order to 'get more' we must 'work harder?'


:beer:

[Hannah Bell]

15. there's no reason to work hard now. 4 million chinese produce about half the world's consumer goods

and 2/3 of the working population in the us is employed in control functions (police/military, social work, psychology/psychiatry, etc.) or absolutely useless shit (1/3 of healthcare spending is about paperwork to figure out who gets paid, e.g.)...walmart workers selling disposable home goods which give buyers a temporary hit of soma...building more office towers & cheap houses to add to the 20% vacancy rate we already have...while 2% of the population goes homeless...

waste of time & resources...

if everyone in the world worked a couple of hours a day there'd be plenty for everyone...and people wouldn't need fucking psychologists & prozac.

[maryf]

16. +100 nt

[Panaconda]

18. Yep

Good post.

[Starry Messenger]

22. +1000

[Cal Carpenter]

23. Meanwhile,

under capitalism, American workers' 'productivity' levels have increased over the last several decades while wealth inequality has grown enormously - the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Wages and benefits for the regular people go down, down, down...

Somehow folks still think a system like capitalism that is designed to reward greed, to protect wealth for the few, is more realistic or inevitable or 'democratic' than any other alternative like Marxist socialism.

[TBF]

19. Well we can see for sure that Capitalism does not work

unless you happen to be in the billionaire club at the very top. Why defend such a system? Why not try to find something a bit more equitable and humane?

[maryf]

24. why not indeed, nt.

[JackRiddler]

17. Nice of you to invoke your conditioned response to the trigger word Marx, but...

what does this assertion of yours have to do with the linked text in the OP? Nothing whatever.

[Iterate]

21. I've looked through your line of posts and frankly don't know where to begin.

I'll assume you are earnest, so either you have not thought through this or haven't lived with it long enough to have the contradictions come into play.

No need to worry about purity, or corruption, or what the Russians and Chinese have done, because I wouldn't want people to think capitalism is bad just because they have made such a mess of it. In fact, it might be better to call their current versions either criminal-oligarchic capitalism, or slave-wage capitalism. Strangely enough, all of that concentration of power and resources at the top makes them look very similar to the other two very different economic systems they labored under in the past century.

Instead, just look around at the many exchanges people make every day. That $20 you kicked in for the neighborhood block party, doesn't that make you a socialist? Or the flowers in the front garden you labored over for free, just because they looked nice and people walking by might enjoy them? Do you charge money for people to have a peek?

And what about Wikipedia and open source software? The farmers markets? National parks? Black & Veatch? The cousin with a truck and some tools who fixes houses? What about charities? Public schools? The more I look around the more kinds of exchange and economies there are. I don't think there's a problem with variety or purity.

Or is there? Because one version seeks to dominate all the rest and make them untenable. Let's call it predatory or commodity-labor capitalism, American style. All of those other types of economies might work in harmony, but that one won't tolerate the others.

And yet that one is the one you seem to be saying we must all work for, or perish.

Yet you post on DU, unpaid, freely sharing the world's knowledge and making a contribution to a community. Doesn't that make you a communist?

[maryf]

9. K&R

great excerpt, thanks so much!

[Panaconda]

10. K&R n/t

[TBF]

20. Recommended. nt