Das Kapital

Marx begins this final part with the “history of economic original sin” (873). Christianity has the story of Adam and Eve, who caused humanity to fall into original sin when Adam bit the forbidden apple. Similarly, the myth of the “economic original sin” suggests there are two types of people, the “diligent, intelligent and above all frugal elite” and the “lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living” (873).

Marx goes on to explain the historical reality. When feudalism ended, the former serfs became free to sell their own labor power, and over time workers also overcame the guilds’ restrictions on their labor power. Eventually, the old feudal masters and guild leaders were replaced by industrial capitalists. At the same time, workers lost “all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements” (875). In the end, workers only experienced the “transformation of feudal exploitation into capitalist exploitation” (875). Marx traces the beginning of “capitalist production” mainly to the 16th century (876), although he also argues it began with the separation of agricultural workers—the serfs—from the land in the Middle Ages.

By the end of the 14th century in England, Marx explains that serfdom had “disappeared in practice” (877). Although feudalism continued in a much weaker form, serfs, who were once bound to the land, became free farmers. Peasants also had access to common land shared between them and their neighbors.

The next stage of change came in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when old groups of feudal retainers were broken up by the monarchy. These retainers were then forced into the labor market. The old feudal lords added to this growing number of workers when they increasingly confiscated the common lands held by peasants, a process which was motivated by the decline of the old nobility and the expansion of the wool trade and industry.

The process of English people being dragged into the labor market increased with the Protestant Reformation. The dissolution of the monasteries, who owned a great deal of land in England with numerous peasant tenants, caused the lands to fall into the ownership of new landlords who evicted the tenants, forcing them to have to sell their labor. The last feudal restrictions that gave landowners any legal obligations were abolished in the 17th century, giving them total property rights.

With the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Marx says the “landed and capitalist profit-grubbers” came to power (884). A new class of landowners evicted peasant tenants and initiated mass agricultural production, which had the effect of “increasing the supply of free and rightless proletarians driven from their land” (885). The process of taking peasants’ communal land was a violent one, carried out against the law. The end result was small, independent farmers becoming farmers who had to rent their own land yearly or becoming wage laborers.

By the start of the 19th century, even more independent farmers were deprived of their land, especially in the Scottish Highlands. Much of the sheepwalks in these lands, used for grazing sheep, were turned into private hunting grounds for the rich, causing a famine. Marx labels this historical process of turning communal land and land once held by the state and the Church into private property used mainly for capital “primitive accumulation” (895).

Marx notes that the “free and rightless proletariat” created by the historical processes he detailed in the previous chapter could not have possibly found employment (896). Instead, many of them became criminals and beggars. This in turn inspired legislation that outlawed begging in many circumstances. For example, a law from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I punished beggars who did not have a license by being beaten and branded or forced into servitude for two years (897-98). Marx describes such laws to illustrate the point that the power of the state is used to force people into wage labor. Furthermore, the capitalist mode of production is presented as based on “self-evident natural laws” and becomes something that “breaks down all resistance” (899).

After describing the history of how peasants were made into beggars or wage laborers, Marx looks at the development of wage labor itself since the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, wage laborers existed but were a small minority. Marx also argues that the capitalist mode of production did not yet exist. Beginning in the 14th century in both England and France, as the number of wage workers rose, laws began to be enacted that extended the working day, imposed a maximum on wages without a minimum, and outlawed “combinations of workers” or worker unions (903). In the 19th century, many such laws were repealed, but certain laws against strikes remained and were bitterly fought. Marx points out that such laws were only overcome by the “pressure of the masses” (903).

With this chapter, Marx asks the question, “[W]here did the capitalists originally spring from?” (905), at least when it comes to agricultural capitalists. Marx traces their origin to the end of serfdom and the rise of independent farmers, who began as bailiffs, serfs with greater responsibility and some power. More so than other peasants, these farmers were able to afford wage laborers and create a little surplus value despite still paying rent to their landlord.

With the revolution in agriculture that began in the 15th century, these farmers became richer while other peasants became poorer. They especially benefited from the enclosure of common land, which allowed them to herd and profit from more cattle. By the 16th century, when wages fell but the price of agricultural products rose, it diminished the cost of rent for farmland because land rents in that time were often based on 99-year contracts, so rents tended to be based on amounts determined before the costs rose. Thus, by the end of the century, England “had a class of capitalist farmers who were rich men in relation to the circumstances of the time” (907).

Before practices like enclosure and the expulsion of peasants became commonplace, peasants were mostly “self-supporting” (908), able to make their own subsistence and raw materials and commodities for trade. Under capitalism, they came to depend on wages from capitalists. This is not just because of the displacement of rural farm workers but also craftsmen and artisans who lost their traditional livelihoods to enclosure and the expansion of the capitalist mode of production.

Instead of artisans and craftsmen working across the countryside, the workers, machines, and raw materials are now all concentrated in fewer and larger areas. Furthermore, instead of producing their own commodities, local communities have to purchase those commodities on the market. This process caused the destruction of the “home market” and its replacement by “industrial capital” (913).

Marx notes that the history of the industrial capitalist “did not proceed in such a gradual way as that of the farmer” (914). With the dissolution of feudal retainers and the expulsion of rural peasants, manufacturers were free to establish themselves in areas where they were outside the control of the traditional guilds established in towns and cities. Colonialism, specifically the pillaging of gold and silver from the Americas and the establishment of the African slave trade, also encouraged the development of the capitalist means of production through supplying raw materials and creating a great concentration of wealth that would provide the funding for industrialization.

In turn, this spawned wars between colonial powers for control over trade. In addition, industrialization was fed by public debt by nations and the rise of international banking. Marx therefore argues that the history of capitalism was not driven by the economic thrift of a class of early capitalism or by “eternal natural laws” (925), which some classical economists argued. Instead, it was driven by violence, exploitation, and large national and international debt and credit systems.

Capitalist accumulation depends on private property, but Marx notes that private property has “innumerable different shades” depending on who owns it (927). In the first stage, it begins with the mode of production of “small-scale industry” (927). This mode can coexist along with slavery and feudalism. It is characterized when peasants can own their own land and artisans can own their own tools. Production is decentralized and low.

Then “capitalist private property” emerges and is imposed through force, through means like enclosure (928). As the capitalist mode of production develops, businesses are centralized, and labor is carried out in increasingly organized and cooperative ways. Eventually, the centralization of capital grows to an extent that makes it vulnerable: The working class becomes organized enough that it can resist capitalists.

For Marx, capitalism in Europe is justified by “notions of law and of property inherited from a pre-capitalist world” (931). In Europe’s colonies around the world, however, the capitalist mode of production is openly imposed by force.

To illustrate this, Marx examines the works of the economist E.G. Wakefield on the English colonies in Australia, Canada, and elsewhere. Finding that markets in the colonies do not produce enough labor for the profit of capitalists, Wakefield made a proposal adopted by the English government. He suggested putting an artificially high price on land, which would force migrants to work wage jobs directly under the capitalists. Marx sees this practice as exposing the “secret” behind political economy in Europe, namely “that the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property as well, have for their fundamental condition the annihilation of the private property which rests on the labour of the individual himself; in other words, the expropriation of the worker” (940).