Neoliberalism
And Primitive Accumulation In India
By Pratyush Chandra & Dipankar Basu
09 February, 2007
Radical
Notes
Recent
events in Singur - a town which is less than 40 kms away from Kolkata
(Calcutta), where the West Bengal government is struggling to acquire
and sell 1000 acres of agricultural land to Tata Motors - indicate the
extent to which capitalist-parliamentarianism can regiment a counter-hegemonic
force once it agrees to play by the rules. At the least, it clearly
shows that the Communist government, which boasts of being the longest-running
democratically elected Marxist government in the world, is hopelessly
caught in the neoliberal project. And Singur is not an isolated event.
In the state of West Bengal alone, the process of state-led land grab
and the resultant opposition is already gaining momentum in at least
three different locations: (a) in Kharagpur, West Medinipur district,
where vast tracts of multi-crop farmland is being taken over for yet
another Tata vehicle factory; (b) in Nandigram, East Medinipur district,
where a chemical industries hub is proposed to be set up by the Salim
group on a 10,000-acre area; and (c) in North Bengal where a Videocon
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is proposed to come up in the near future.
Nor is this story limited
to West Bengal. Throughout India, resources are being acquired for Special
Economic Zones and numerous other industrial schemes meant to facilitate
corporate capital expansion. Since laws permitting this acquisitions
were passed an year ago, state governments have notified 267 SEZs, which
will require more than a half million hectares of land. Of this, the
state has already acquired 137,000 hectares for 67 SEZs while another
80 have `in principle' been approved.(1) The Government has converted
the erstwhile Export Processing Zones located at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat),
Cochin (Kerala), Santa Cruz (Mumbai-Maharashtra), Falta (West Bengal),
Madras (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Noida (Uttar
Pradesh) into SEZs. In addition, 3 new Special Economic Zones that had
been approved for establishment at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Manikanchan
(Salt Lake, Kolkata) and Jaipur have since commenced operations.
In this backdrop, the West
Bengal government's adamant attitude towards land acquisition, despite
the popular unrest, shows that the Indian State and its agencies, irrespective
of their ideological masks, are working relentlessly to provide the
private sector with "an internationally competitive and hassle
free environment". In this note, we wish to conceptualise this
political economic process, identifying its different facets and understanding
their interlinkages. It is our contention that using the recently re-interpreted
Marxist concept of "primitive accumulation" can provide crucial
insights in this regard. We wish to demonstrate that current developments
in India can be fruitfully understood by employing the notion of primitive
accumulation, understood as a constitutive primitive of capitalism,
the process which continuously creates and consolidates the capital-relation.
Adopting this new perspective might also help in redefining the agenda
of struggles and counter-hegemonic politics in the neoliberal context.
Primitive Accumulation:
Two Interpretations
As is well known, Marx had
brought up the concept of primitive accumulation to try to understand
the historical origins of capitalism. It is generally accepted by economic
historians that in pre-capitalist modes of production the primary producers
(majority of whom were peasants) had ownership of the means of production,
most crucial among them being land. If we agree that capitalism is distinguished
from these other modes of production by the relationship of a class
of propertyless labourers (who have nothing to sell but their labour
power) and a class of propertied capitalists (the owners of the means
of production) mediated through the market (2), then the following question
naturally arises: how did we arrive at the class of propertyless labourers
from a class of producers who had the ownership (or at least the right
of usage) of the means of production? It is this historical question
that Marx sought to answer with the concept of "primitive accumulation".
In a sense, the answer is
already contained in the question. Primitive accumulation is the process
by which the producer is divorced from her/his means of production.
Since, moreover, land is the primary means of production in pre-capitalist
societies, the main focus of primitive accumulation was to separate
peasants from the land. While the gradual penetration of market relations
had a role to play in this, outright use of force was far more important,
and in a sense the key. Only by evicting peasants from their lands and
disrupting their livelihood could the development of markets in free
labour and land be ensured; and only this could provide the firm basis
for the emergence and consolidation of the capital-relation:
"The capital-relation
presupposes a complete separation between the workers and the ownership
of the conditions for the realization of their labor. As soon as capitalist
production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this separation,
but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale. The process, therefore,
which creates the capital-relation, can be nothing other than the process
which divorces the worker from the ownership of the conditions of his
own labor; it is a process which operates two transformations, whereby
the social means of subsistence and production are turned into capital,
and the immediate producers are turned into wage-laborers. So-called
primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical
process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears
as 'primitive' because it forms the pre-history of capital, and of the
mode of production corresponding to capital."(3)
It is worth recalling that
Marx studied the "enclosure movement" in Britain within this
overall perspective. One crucial aspect of primitive accumulation should
be noted immediately: it effects a redistribution and transfer of claims
to already existing assets and resources, rather than creating any new
assets. In this sense, it is an accumulation of intangible rights and
not the accumulation of tangible assets or goods. This aspect of primitive
accumulation is important for our purposes because the current frenzy
of state-assisted acquisition of land and other resources in India is
precisely a process whereby rights of access and usage of already existing
resources are being redistributed and transferred.
The last decade has witnessed
a resurgence of debate around attempts to re-interpret the concept of
primitive accumulation.(4) This debate has indicated that there are
two distinct but related interpretations of primitive accumulation,
one which stresses the temporal aspect and the other which stresses
the constitutive or originary aspect. For the first, more traditional,
interpretation the primitiveness of primitive accumulation is understood
in a purely temporal sense. Primitive accumulation is seen as the historical
phase which created the preconditions for the development of capitalism
by forcing the separation of workers and means of production. The second
interpretation notes that there is both a temporal and a continuity
argument in Marx's account of primitive accumulation. For this interpretation,
therefore, the primitiveness of "primitive accumulation" does
not arise simply from its location in historical time, relevant only
as the initial stage of capitalism; rather, it is the constitutive primitive
of the capitalist system, a process that is essential for perpetuating
its fundamental class structure - the separation between producers and
means of production.
If primitive accumulation
is constitutive, then it must arise as a continuous process within capitalism
viewed as a global system. Expanded reproduction of the system requires
reproduction of the capital-relation at every moment; separation of
workers and means of production must be maintained continuously. In
its day-to-day functioning, a mature capitalist economy enforces this
separation through the market, i.e., by economic means; but at the boundaries
(both internal and external), where capitalism encounters other modes
of production, property and social relations attuned to those modes
and also to the earlier stages of capitalism, other ways of subsistence,
primitive accumulation comes into play. More often than not, direct
use of force is necessary to effect the separation at the boundaries.
And since capitalism, as a global system, continuously encounters other
modes of production along with the simultaneity of diverse stages of
capitalism in various localities, the constitutive role of primitive
accumulation is always in demand. One can probably go so far as to assert
that capital accumulation is the extension of primitive accumulation,
enforced through the market. In fact, in Volume 3 of Capital, Marx himself
calls the concentration and centralisation of capital, which occur during
the course of market-induced capital accumulation, as "simply the
divorce of the conditions of labour from the producers [which occurs
through primitive accumulation] raised to a higher power"(5).
But this does not mean that the two are identical. In fact two differences
are especially important to grasp for the development of our overall
argument:
(a) "[W]hile accumulation
relies primarily on "the silent compulsion of economic relations
[which] sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker,"
in the case of primitive accumulation the separation is imposed primarily
through "[d]irect extra-economic force" (Marx 1867: 899-900),
such as the state (Marx 1867: 900), particular sections of social classes
(Marx 1867: 879), etc. We can say therefore that primitive accumulation
for Marx is a social process instigated by some social actor (the state,
particular social classes, etc.) aimed at the people who have some form
of direct access to the means of production. This social process often
takes the form of a strategy that aims to separate them from the means
of production."(6)
(b) "As opposed to accumulation
proper, what may be called primitive accumulation... is the historical
basis, instead of the historical result, of specifically capitalist
production' (Marx 1867: 775). While sharing the same principle - separation
- the two concepts point at two different conditions of existence. The
latter implies the ex novo production of the separation, while the former
implies the reproduction - on a greater scale - of the same separation."(7)
Keeping these differences
are important because one comes to the rescue of the other when market
processes falter. Since capital accumulation operates through the market,
the services of primitive accumulation are required almost by definition
when the market is in crisis. During crucial phases of capitalist crisis,
primitive accumulation emerges to help transcend barriers to accumulation
in two ways: (a) by facilitating the transition from the critically
fated regime to a new regime of accumulation, and (b) by continuously
negotiating the spatial expansion (both internal and external) of capitalism.
During periods of transition and expansion, "new enclosures"
are required for putting the normal course of capitalist reproduction
back on track. Securing these enclosures through force and other "direct
extra-economic means" is the function of primitive accumulation.
This re-definition allows us to grasp the function of the State and
its continuous politico-legal activism in every stage of capitalism.
The present neoliberal phase
can probably be understood fruitfully from this perspective. Despite
the talk of separating the political from the economic, which is a staple
rhetoric of the current phase, it is the state as the instrument of
politico-legal repression that facilitates neoliberal expansion. Firstly,
the state intervenes with all its might to secure control over resources
- both natural and human ("new enclosures") - and secondly,
to ensure the non-transgression of the political into the economic,
which essentially signifies discounting the politics of labour and the
dispossessed from affecting the political economy. David Harvey notes
that, "The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization...
has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income";
the main mechanisms for achieving this is referred to by Harvey as "accumulation
by dispossession", by which he means,
"... the continuation
and proliferation of accumulation practices which Marx had treated of
as 'primitive' or 'original' during the rise of capitalism. These include
the commodification and privatisation of land and the forceful expulsion
of peasant populations...; conversion of various forms of property rights
(common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights...;
suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power
and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production
and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation
of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and
taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly
in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating
of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation
by dispossession. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions
of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these
processes."(8)
Harvey identifies four main features of "accumulation by dispossession":
privatisation, commodification, financialization and the management-manipulation
of assets, each feeding on the other, supported by the other and gaining
strength from the other. The neoliberal resurgence since the mid-1970s
can be understood as capital's counter-revolutionary response to the
crisis that enwrapped "embedded liberalism" internationally
in the late-1960s, with "signs of a serious crisis of capital accumulation...everywhere
apparent. Unemployment and inflation were both surging everywhere, ushering
in a global phase of 'stagflation' that lasted throughout much of the
1970s."(9)
The Politics of Primitive
Accumulation in India
What is going on in India
today can be understood by employing the concept of primitive accumulation
(as understood in the second interpretation) in almost all of the above
senses: separating primary producers from land; privatisation of the
"public", conversion of common property resources into marketable
commodities, destroying non-market ways of living, etc. To our mind,
each of the instances of ``displacement" or state-led "land
grab" are willy-nilly feeding into the overall process of primitive
accumulation in India by divorcing primary producers from the land or
restricting direct access to other common property resources like forest,
lakes, river, etc. A question crops up immediately. Being a labour-surplus
economy, does India need to generate additional labourers, which is
an obvious result of primitive accumulation, before absorbing what is
already available? Certainly not, if we think from the perspective of
labour. But the answer changes if we see the whole process from the
perspective of capital. Fresh entrants into the already burgeoning ranks
of the proletariat will increase the relative surplus population - floating,
latent and stagnant - depressing real wages and thereby increasing the
rates of profits on each unit of invested capital. Moreover, one of
the major features of the neoliberal regime of accumulation has been
the incessant `informalisation' of the labour process, and further growth
of the relative surplus population makes late-capitalist countries like
India finely attuned to this. As Jan Breman notes:
"Mobilization of casual
labour, hired and fired according to the needs of the moment, and transported
for the duration of the job to destinations far distant from the home
village, is characteristic of the capitalist regime presently dominating
in South Asia."(10)
Separation of producers from
their means of production and subsistence, especially land and other
natural resources, also creates markets for these resources; and thus
comes into being the various agencies that thrive through hucksterage
in these markets. These intermediaries play the crucial role of facilitating
and normalising the process of primitive accumulation. Examples abound:
Trinamool Congress goons, grassroots-level CPI(M) leadership, local
middle classes like school teachers, lawyers, and other similar forces
in the Singur case; state-traders, local elites-supported Salwa Judum
in Chhatisgarh.
The major target of land
acquisition in India today is in areas where either peasant movements
have achieved some partial success in dealing with capitalist exploitation
and expropriation or areas largely inhabited by the indigenous population
whose expropriation could not be increasingly intensified because of
the welfarist tenor of the pre-liberalisation regime. West Bengal is
the prime example of the former, where Left Front rule congealed due
to its constituents' involvement in the popular movements. Now, the
movements' institutionalisation and incorporation of the leadership
into the state apparatus is facilitating the present-day resurgence
of primitive accumulation. Examples of the second kind of area could
be parts of Chhatisgrah, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, which
the corporate sector is eyeing for mining activities and for setting
up steel plants.
As an instructive example,
if nothing else, let us see how displacement in Singur will affect the
various class forces on the ground. While the state apparatuses are
trying to secure resources for corporate capital, sections of the local
elite, including the well-off farmers led by the mainstream non-left
political parties - like the Congress and Trinamool (TMC) - have joined
the movement against land acquisition essentially to obtain various
kinds of concessions, a higher price for giving up the land to the State
and perhaps also for increasing the land price for their future real
estate speculation around the upcoming industrial belt. For example,
"a TMC leader and ex-pradhan of one of the gram panchayats was
initially with the movement, but finally gave away his land. Many of
the landed gentry, some of them absentee, who own bigger portions of
land, depend on 'kishans' (i e, hired labours, bargadars, etc) for cultivation
of their lands. They principally depend on business or service and have
come forward to part with their land in lieu of cash."(11) In case
the government talks to the protesters and gives larger concessions,
it is these sections that will benefit the most.
The people who are really
the backbone of the movement in Singur are the landless working class
and poor peasantry. According to a recent report, "many agricultural
workers and marginal peasants will lose their land and livelihoods.
Though the State Government has decided to compensate the landowners,
no policy has been taken for the landless agricultural workers, unrecorded
bargadars and other rural households who are indirectly dependent for
their livelihood on land and agricultural activities."(12) The
region is also inhabited by the poor who "frequent the nearby town,
being employed in factories, shops and small businesses. Some of the
youth have migrated to cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, working
there principally as goldsmiths or construction workers. There were
several cases of reverse migration when people came back to their village
after the closing down of the industries where they were working or
finding it more profitable to work on the land than to work in petty
industries or businesses, drawing a paltry sum in lieu of hard labour."(13)
For this population as also for the landless workers and marginal peasants,
the Singur struggles are existential ones.
As an example of the second kind of land acquisition, we can turn our
attention to Chhatisgarh. A report on recent developments in Chhatisgarh
notes that, in India,
"[t]ribal lands are
the most sought after resources now. Whether it is in Orissa or Chhattisgarh
or Andhra Pradesh, if there is a patch of tribal land there is an attempt
to acquire it. It is no geographical coincidence that tribal lands are
forested, rich with mineral resources (80 per cent of India's minerals
and 70 per cent of forests are within tribal areas) and also the site
of a sizeable slice of industrial growth. The tribal districts of Chhattisgarh,
Orissa, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra are the destination of
us $85 billion of promised investments, mostly in steel and iron plants,
and mining projects. Ironically, these lucrative resources are of no
benefit to the local people: an estimate of 10 Naxal-affected states
shows that they contribute 51.6 per cent of India's GDP and have 58
per cent of the population. As with Chhatisgarh, all these states have
a strong Naxal presence and are witness to movements against land acquisition.
The state governments say these protests are Naxal-inspired. Local people
say, however, that all they are trying to do is protect their land,
forests and livelihood."(14)
Here the State's mode of
facilitating primitive accumulation is by raising mercenaries, the Salwa
Judum. This extra-legal use of force is supported by the traditional
exploiters of the indigenous population - traders, usurers, civil servants
and tribal neo-elites, who have functioned as intermediaries in the
regime of commerce-based surplus extraction. On the one hand, absence
of any recognised land rights of tribal communities, has allowed the
State to use principles of terra nullius and eminent domain to expropriate
them. On the other, these communities have continued to exist in defiance
of all these legalities. However, with the recent intensification of
efforts to secure resources for corporate profiteering, along with the
continued presence of primitive extractive modes of exploitation, these
communities have been left with no real choices but to arm themselves
for securing their unrecognised rights. Hence,
"Most tribal people
living in forests are officially 'encroachers'. They live under the
constant threat of being alienated from their land and livelihood. While
the government completely failed to reach out to them, the Naxals succeeded
in connecting to sections of the people. They spread to the state's
11 districts (200 districts in the country). Unable to contain them,
government supported the creation of a civilian militia - Salwa Judum".(15)
Besides these widely discussed
cases of recent land acquisition and displacement, there have been numerous
conflicts around the rights over water resources over the years. In
almost all such cases, the state has come forth as being hell bent upon
the construction of big dams and other hydroelectric projects despite
all evidence of the net negative marginal costs of these projects. During
the past two decades, Narmada Bachao Andolan has been a prominent force
constantly exposing the anti-people, anti-environment character of these
projects. Even in the Himalayan region of Uttaranchal (site of the legendary
Chipko Andolan), riverbeds and surrounding lands have been 'enclosed'
for private capital to be used for power generation and lucrative tourism
projects. In fact, recent politics in this region cannot be fully understood
without understanding the conflicts around these enclosures. Closer
to urban India has been the neoliberal systematisation of commercial
and financial centres, the `clearing' of slums, in cities like Delhi
and Mumbai, which have naturally been the hotbed of the politics of
and against "new enclosures".
Understanding all these diverse
processes in the framework of primitive accumulation has several strategic
implications. Perhaps, most urgently, this can provide a unified framework
to locate the numerous struggles going on in the country right from
the `new' social movements, like landless workers movements, Narmada
Bachao Andolan and other local mobilisations of 'development-victims',
to anti-privatisation movements of public sector workers, all the way
to the revolutionary movements led by the Maoists. This unified framework
can then possibly facilitate dialogue among these movements, something
that is more than essential at this juncture if the movement of labour
against capital is to be strengthened.
A Future Beyond Capital
Using this framework will
also mean re-evaluating many of the theoretical positions that are currently
in use. For example, it will be necessary to rethink the classical communist
position that characterises the Indian state as semi-feudal and semi-colonial,
and thereby sees the struggle of the peasantry as being directed primarily
against feudal oppression. It is possible that the inherent limitations
of this ideological framework disallow revolutionaries and other radicals
to formulate effective strategies against the whole system, a system
that preserves various vestigial forms to facilitate accumulation but
is not defined by them. Thus, movements struggling against different
forms of these vestiges are easily localised, regionalised, marginalized,
dispersed, and even utilised in the intra-ruling class competition and
conflicts. The state of the official Indian left is illustrative in
this regard. It, too, stresses on the presence of "vestiges"
and the insufficiency of development, but then turns around and justifies
its accommodation in the neoliberal capitalist project as a fight against
these vestiges!
Despite the apparent popularity
of the new movements of Latin America among the official Left in India,
their attachment to a schematic notion of national capitalist development
retains all its strength. The devastating consequence, of course, is
the deferral of the revolutionary moment till that development is attained;
in reality, this amounts to postponing the revolutionary moment beyond
the horizon of all concrete possibilities. Surely, this is not simply
an ideological problem coming from a faulty understanding of the dynamics
of capitalism or socialism. It is a consequence of the official left
leadership's accommodation in the capitalist-parliamentary framework,
an accommodation moreover that forces them to participate in the competitive
race for representation. In the pursuit of presenting itself as the
legitimate representative of the "plurality of opinions",
which parliamentary politics poses against the notion of class struggle,
the left reproduces this plurality within itself, along with its built-in
hierarchy. With partial successes in this exercise, representatives
of the opinions that count, i.e., the hegemonic class interests, solidify
themselves within the party structures. And it is this congealment within
the Left Front in West Bengal that leads the "communists"
to vocalise neoliberal myths of neutral industrial development, dubbing
every protest against its policies as anti-developmental, backward and
manipulative. Parallels with the neoliberal demonisation of the transgression
of the political into the economic can hardly be missed. Echoing well-heeled
mandarins in Delhi, the Left Front government regularly uses the classic
threat of capital flight to regiment all protesting voices.
Without comprehending the
function of vestiges of earlier modes of production within capitalism
or the role of earlier stages of the capitalist mode of production in
sustaining capital accumulation, any fundamental challenge to the hegemonic
forces in a late capitalist society like India cannot be formulated.
It can hardly be denied that, "we suffer not only from the development
of capitalist production, but also the incompleteness of that development.
Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited
evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes
of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social
and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from
the dead. Le mort saisit le vif [The dead man clutches onto the living]!"(16)
We will have to recognise
the fact that during the stage of imperialism, and more so in the present
postcolonial situation, "a high level of capitalist development
no longer require[s] the elimination of the traditional class of 'small
producers'" and other pre-capitalist 'remnants'.(17) Even in a
country like Japan, "in which capitalist society developed only
at the so-called finance-capitalist stage of world capitalism, a high
level of capitalist development has not been incompatible... with the
survival of the traditional class of 'small producers'."(18)
Indian capitalism, like Japanese,
came into being in the stage of imperialism, when finance capital and
inter-imperialist rivalries were already subjugating the whole world.
Moreover, development under direct colonialism foisted some unique features
on to the general characteristics of "late capitalism". During
the colonial period, "self"-expansion of Indian capital beyond
the physical horizons of India was implausible because this would have
required an Indian State committed to these interests. Colonialism ruled
this out almost axiomatically. However, there were other channels available.
The simultaneous existence of various socio-economic formations at diverse
levels of Indian society allowed some possibility of 'internal' colonialism
and "enclosures", thus, providing the basis for capitalist
expansion. Even after Independence, Indian capital relies heavily on
the 'diversity' (or unevenness) of Indian economy and society for primitive
accumulation and expansion. Additionally, 'semi-feudal' conditions at
various locations within the country provide a vast reserve army of
labour. The important characteristic of this insecure and docile population
is that they can be pulled out of their original locations and thrown
into the growing labour market without disturbing the essential fabric
of society. In other words, pre-capitalist forms of exploitation provide
vast and near permanent pools of cheap labour, which competes with the
urban proletariat, thereby bringing the latter under political and economic
control. Moreover, this seems (19) to resolve the "agrarian problem"
of Indian capitalism, by 'externalising' rural and underdeveloped India
from the "core" industrial islands. Concentrating capitalist
agricultural development in particular locations of India (for example
in West and North-west India), Indian capitalism could afford to under-develop
other locations so that they could serve as "external markets"
and as reserves of "footloose labour".
Because unevenness is the
essential feature of capitalist development, any mode of regulation,
including neoliberal globalisation, has to negotiate with diverse stages
of societal development. Hence local reactions against this new wave
of capitalist consolidation and accumulation are bound to be diverse.
The revolutionary vision consists in coordinating these diverse forces
for building a formidable challenge to capitalism. Even the struggles
against vestigial forms, if they have to be decisive, need to be recognised
as contesting capitalist relations that sustain them and are articulated
through them. In the Indian context, they are all struggles against
a stuttering capitalism, against the inherent brutalities of primitive
accumulation. We will have to realize that the movements are not about
"saving" tribals/indigenous populations or their way of lives;
the movement is a movement of labour against capital. Tribals, poor
peasants, marginal peasants, landless labourers, informal sector workers,
all these sub-classes are fighting against the tyranny of capital, against
being fed - with their labour and resources - into the capitalist machinery.
Obviously, in this fight against capital, we cannot cling on to any
nostalgia for a pristine past, rather our vision must be directed towards
the future, a future built on the transcendence of capital, a socialist
future rooted in a participatory economy and polity. Only then can the
vast majority suffering in the margins of capitalism and toiling under
vestigial relations, can make a concerted, decisive effort to end the
tyranny of capital.
Notes & References
(1) Prem Shankar Jha, "Compensation
not enough", Daily News & Analysis (October 2, 2006), http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1056324&CatID=19
(2) Marx refers to this as
the capital-relation.
(3) Karl Marx, Capital Vol.
1, Penguin Books (1976 [1867]), pp. 874-75
(4) See the contributions
in The Commoner No 2. (September, 2001), http://www.commoner.org.uk/
(5) Karl Marx, Capital Vol.
3, Penguin Books (1981 [1894]), pp. 354
(6) Massimo De Angelis, "Marx
and primitive accumulation: The continuous character of capital's "enclosures",
The Commoner No 2 (September, 2001)
(7) Ibid. (Note: ex novo
is used in the sense of `original' or `from the scratch').
(8) David Harvey, A Brief
History of Neoliberalism, Oxford (2005), pp. 159
(9) Ibid, pp. 12
(10) Jan Breman, Footloose
Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy, Cambridge University Press
(1996), pp. 23
(11) Parthasarthi Banerjee,
"Land Acquisition and Peasant Resistance at Singur", Economic
& Political Weekly (November 18, 2006)
(12) Paschim Banga Khet Majoor
Samity, "Terror Cannot Suppress Them: People's Resistance to Forced
Land Acquisition In Singur", (December 6, 2006)
(13) Parthasarthi Banerjee,
op cit
(14) "Anti-Naxal operations
a cover for exploiting tribal people", Down to Earth Vol 15 No
11 (October 18, 2006)
(15) Ibid.
(16) Karl Marx, "Preface
to the First Edition", Capital Vol 1, Penguin (1976 [1867]), pp.91
(17) Kozo Uno, Principles
of Political Economy, Harvester Press (1980 [1964]), p.xxvii.
(18) Ibid, pp. 125
(19) Japanese Marxist Kozo
Uno stressed that capitalism is incapable of solving the agrarian question.
"We can say that it became clear on a world scale that the ability
to solve the agrarian question would entail the ability to construct
a new society to replace capitalism, and we may regard the League of
Nations as having been one such attempt. The solution to this problem,
of course, means no more than the external expression of the internal
contradictions of capitalism, and cannot occur unless the issue of class
relations is solved. In this sense, the failure of the League of Nations
was only to be expected." (Quoted in Andrew E Barshay, The Social
Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions, University
of California Press (2004), pp.128)
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