Course on Marx's Capital: Part 23
Mogadishu, 1993
Colonialism
Here we are,
nearly at the end of Capital, Volume 1, the famous and huge book that so many
people talk about and so few people read. We have read it. We are more fit to
be cadres. We are more fit to be the vanguard. What remain are only the three
last chapters, which are not difficult to read, although as always they
challenge us to be brave and to act, and action will never be easy.
In Chapter 31 Marx states that the origin
of the industrial (not farming) capitalist is in colonialism.
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the
extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population,
the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of
Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the
rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are
the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the
commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre.”
“To-day industrial supremacy implies commercial
supremacy. In the period of manufacture properly so called, it is, on the other
hand, the commercial supremacy that gives industrial predominance. Hence the
preponderant rôle that the colonial system plays at that time. It was "the
strange God" who perched himself on the altar cheek by jowl with the old
Gods of Europe, and one fine day with a shove and a kick chucked them all of a
heap. It proclaimed surplus-value making as the sole end and aim of humanity.”
This last
describes in a single sentence, the state of affairs that Marx's book was
written to expose; and Marx did succeed in exposing “capital” as “surplus-value
making”.
Yet it appears
that Marx did not deal with Primitive Accumulation in the sense that the phrase
would nowadays be understood. Marx does not establish that capitalism required
a ready pile of money or its equivalent. What he establishes is how the
requisite class forces were brought into being, in Western Europe, in the
revolutions that overthrew feudalism.
It is a mistake to
think that a capitalist business requires “capital” in advance, if by “capital”
is meant money in the bank, or land, buildings, equipment et cetera. It does
require such things, but they do not make it a capitalist business as opposed
to any other kind of project. What makes a business work as capitalism is a
dual relationship. The first part of it is the relationship between the worker
and the capitalist. The second part is the relationship of the capitalist with
his market. If these two relationships do not exist, or are faulty, then a
capitalist business will not survive. But if they do exist, then the other
means will probably be found without too much difficulty.
Marx shows clearly
how the proletariat arose historically in Europe in the 16th century. He shows
how the bourgeois class arrives on the scene. He shows how all the social
building blocks including proletariat and market, are assembled, but not the
money. In any case, capital is not money, it is a relation. Marx says so,
directly, in Chapter 33. So the accumulation necessary for capitalism is not
treasure, but is an accumulation of relationships; this is what we learn from
the chapters in “Capital” on Primitive Accumulation.
Marx does not, in
Capital, make a strong distinction between slavery and capitalism. He describes
slavery candidly and without flinching from the horror of it. But he never
discusses slavery in a comparative way, as distinct from
surplus-value-extracting bourgeois-and-proletarian capitalism. Yet (bourgeois)
slavery also started in the 16th century, or slightly before, and it ran on as
a transcontinental Atlantic system for the next three hundred years, in
parallel with the early development of capitalism proper, until Marx’s time,
such that the last end of bourgeois slavery was the cataclysm of the American
Civil War, that was happening while Marx was writing Capital.
Chapter 32 of Capital, Volume 1 contains about 1000 words in
only four paragraphs. It is a full historical sweep from the past of slaves and
serfs through present capitalism to the future, when the expropriators will be
expropriated. It resembles the Communist Manifesto.
Chapter 33 is very interesting but in spite of its title, it is
not really about colonialism. Instead, Marx uses the example of part of one
colony of the time, Australia, to make points about capitalism and to “discover
in the Colonies the truth as to the conditions of capitalist production in the
mother country”. Also note the very last paragraph of the chapter (and the
book), which says:
“We are not concerned here with the conditions of the
colonies. The only thing that interests us is the secret discovered in the new
world by the Political Economy of the old world, and proclaimed on the
housetops: that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore
capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the
annihilation of self-earned private property; in other words, the expropriation
of the laborer.”
“...capital is not a thing, but a social relation
between persons, established by the instrumentality of things,” says Marx.
In the next part,
we will commence a ten-week course Capital, Volumes 2 and 3.
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