Marx Flashcards
What is the idyllic myth of the origins of capitalism, according to Marx? What is his critique of that myth?
- Myth of primitive accumulation being the lazy rascals and the frugal elite, whose ancestors now reap what they sowed but this is incorrect.
- The myth does not only suggest that early capitalists got their wealth by frugally saving and investing, but also that anyone can become a capitalist by the same means and that if they don’t, they have no one to blame but themselves.
- The idyllic myth is used to justify not only the origins of capitalism, but also ongoing class disparities.
What are the actual origins of capitalism, according to Marx?
- What actually happened was that the emerging class of capitalists (the Knights of Industry) imposed the social order using force.
What are the two senses in which workers are freed during the period of the emergence of capitalism?
Workers are freed in a double sense:
- neither are they owned (i.e., as slaves) as means of production
- nor do they own the means of production: change in form of servitude,
What can we deduce about peoples’ response to primitive accumulation from capital’s need to use violence to impose its new kind of civilization?
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What is the historical process of primitive accumulation?
- the historical process of primitive accumulation is that of divorcing the producer from the means of production, emancipation from serfdom on the one hand and expropriation of the labourer on the other to create owners of money and “free” labourers.
What were feudal obligations of landowners to the state replaced with when Capitalism arrived?
- feudal obligations of landowners to the state were replaced with taxes on the peasantry and modern property rights, huge amounts of state land were seized and eventually the seizing of commons was done by decree as well as force.
- independent yeomen (holding & cultivating small esate) were replaced with servile tenants and the commons were added to large farms.
Events helping rise of Capitalism in U.K?
- seizure of commons (largely illegally)
- the reformation with the seizing of church lands
- highland clearances with the former heads of clans driving their clansmen off the land to replace them with sheep/ deer
- rising wool prices leading to nobility driving commoners off land to make room for sheep
What happened to those driven off land?
- Too many to all find jobs in manufacturing
- Violent legislation kept wages down, lengthened working day, and prevented organisation, “satanic mills”
- The demand for labour grew faster than labouring population so working class were able to demand withdrawal of anti-organisation laws
Genesis of capitalist farmer?
- leases were long (99 years) so they paid the same even as money depreciated in value and the value of the product of the land grew.
Genesis of capitalist farmer?
- some serfs became farmers provided with seed and implements by the landlord and employing wage labour, dividing profits with the landlord.
- this situation changed to the farmer paying rent and advancing his own capital.
- leases were long (99 years) so they paid the same even as money depreciated in value and the value of the product of the land grew.
What was the true dawn of the era of capitalist production?
- colonisation of the americas, asia and africa was the true dawn of the era of capitalist production, as it formed the principal form of primitive accumulation, followed by the commercial wars of the european nations.
- loot brought home from the colonies turned into capital. trade ripened and colonies became markets for manufacture, with accelerated accumulation thanks to the monopoly of trade.
Political emancipation v human emancipation
- Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” addresses Arendt’s main criticism and argues that “political” emancipation, or freedom, falls short of “human” emancipation by subjecting social labour to private property and stripping man of his status as a social being.
- Marx saw property as the rights of selfish man, separated from his community.
- Arendt sees freedom as something that is performed in the world, rather than something that resides in the will.
Marx v Arendt on poverty
- Arendt believes that Marx’s genius and theoretical error was reading the social question in political terms
- Marx understood poverty as a supression of freedom
- Marx thought poverty was a political not a natural phenomemon, the result of “violence and violation” rather than scarcity.
What did Marx call individual rights?
- Marx called individual rights the “rights of selfish man”
- Atria believes the emergence of social rights was itself a critique of the “selfish” nature of individual rights.
- Atria agrees with Höffe that social rights are dependent on co-operation but that individual rights are not.
Schmidt on Marx
Schmidt says Marx doesn’t understand that appropriation is the origin of legal order.