Marx’s primitive accumulation is actually capitalist accumulation itself.
Evidence
There is much that is true here but also much that is not. A hundred years after Marx described primitive accumulation and set it between the stages of feudalism and capitalism, Oliver C. Cox, the Black theorist, tried to correct Marx’s error: “[Marx] begins his analysis of the nature of capitalism almost where he might have ended it; and as is commonly the case in classical economics, he relegates as subsidiary the very things which should have been the center of his study… . His ‘primitive accumulation’ is none other than fundamentally capitalist accumulation; and, to assume that feudal society dissolved before capitalist society began is to over-emphasize the fragility of feudalism and to discount its uses to the development of capitalism.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1730
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: This directly builds on the book’s core argument distinguishing the Black radical tradition’s understanding of capitalism from orthodox Marxism, and connects to Cox’s Capitalism as a System.
Related
- Black theorist Oliver Cox argued slavery and capitalism were simultaneous, not sequential (similarity 0.87)
- Capital cannot yield all of Marxism without further theoretical development because capitalism constantly develops (similarity 0.83)
- Marx held slavery as central to capitalism’s primitive accumulation (similarity 0.80)
- Capitalism emerged from feudalism, not as its negation (similarity 0.79)
- Capitalism and racism evolved organically from feudalism rather than negating it (similarity 0.79)
- Feudalism’s social composition determined capitalism’s form (similarity 0.79)
- Marx’s primitive accumulation credited source societies with producing the enslaved (similarity 0.79)
- Marx’s historical method centers capitalism as the primary lens by 1847. (similarity 0.78)
- Marxism is an internal critique that cannot ground Black liberation by itself (similarity 0.78)