Tuesday, March 2, 2010

David Harvey's Accumulation by Dispossession

By [accumulation by dispossession] I mean 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 privatization 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 (most spectacularly represented by China); suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labor power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neocolonial, 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 New Imperialism, 2003, p. 159)

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