Rev Left Radio - Unity & Struggle (Pt.2): Primitive Accumulation and the Social Construction of Race

Episode Date: November 24, 2019

This is the second installment in our new and ongoing collaboration with Unity and Struggle. This Rev Left mini-series will trace and engage with the development of Unity and Struggle's deep study of race through the lens of Marxist historical and dialectical materialism. In this second edition, Breht is joined by Eve and Kei to cover primitive accumulation and its role in constructing race and racism.  Check out, and contribute to, Unity and Struggle's study here: http://www.unityandstruggle.org/2019/11/racestudypart1/ Check out more from Unity and Struggle here: http://www.unityandstruggle.org/ Follow them on twitter @unityandstrug Intro Clip from The Michael Brooks Show ft. Richard Wolff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLRWDft8VZc   Outro Music: 'Glory Box' by Portishead. ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Marx's point in that section is to say there's, the accumulation of capital happens in two different ways. One way is built into capitalism. It's the capitalist getting as much profit as he can and plowing it back into the business. That's capitalist accumulation. But capital also has to accumulate in a sense before we have capitalism to kind of get the ball rolling to get cash. You have to have on the one hand a bunch of people who have some wealth in their hands and another bunch of people who have nothing because then a deal will be struck. Those who have nothing are in danger of dying because they have nothing.

Those who have a lot say to themselves, wait a minute, I have a lot, but maybe I can get the one who's scared to die to work for me, producing a profit for me. That way he survives because I pay him wages and my wealth goes up, which is what I want. How did you get things set up that way? How did you have a situation where a large number of people were desperate, had nowhere to turn, and a relatively small number of people had a big pot of money in their hands with which to hire them?

The enclosure of the commons? Right. The process of that happening before capitalism is called primitive commemulation. And the example Marx gives is England in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, where you had peasantry, the famous English yeoman peasant, who self-employed little peasants, who survived partly out of their little land and their animals, but partly out of the very crucial commons,

the ability of every peasant in an area to graze his or her cattle on the common meadows, to go into the common forest for hunting, for getting wood. There were these shared resources. And at a certain point, the landlord class took them, took the meadows, took the woods, shut them, fenced them, literally fenced them, called the enclosure movement because they wrapped, they literally enclosed, the formerly common areas denied the peasants couldn't survive because they needed that land to graze, they needed the wood, they needed the hunting.

So the peasants then leave the countryside, because they're dying there, they can't survive, go into the cities. When they arrive in the cities, they have nothing. And they meet people who have become quite wealthy by enclosing the commons and producing stuff there. And then the new deal is struck. It isn't the serf and a lord, because in a sense, the serfs have run away. It's now the merchant in the city who has been selling lovely things to these landlords that are enclosing, has collected wealth in his hands and says, okay, I'm going to to give you desperadoes that have come off the land, the peasants, a job. You're going to work for me, and you're going to produce more for me than I give you to survive. But you don't

care because you're going to survive. I like this, because I'm going to get the profit, and then its capital accumulation in capitalism is launched, but it had to have that primitive pre-capitalist accumulation to get started. Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. Today is our second installment of our ongoing sub-series with Unity and Struggle on their project concerning race and its relationship to capitalism and history. So today we have on Eve and K from Unity and Struggle to talk about the next level of their study, which is on primitive accumulation. So before we get into the content of this part of the section, let's just go ahead and introduce both of yourselves. I know Eve was on last time, but Kay is new to the show.

And then maybe recap on the project that, you know, overall, what's going on so people that might have missed the first episode have an understanding of what we're doing here. Great. Thanks so much for having us back or having me back, Brett. We appreciate it. So again, I'm Eve. I'm located in New York. And I work with the anti-state communist collective unity and struggle.

And I do some local organizing. Everybody in the group does local organizing around different projects. I've been doing migrant justice work in New York for a while, and we are embarking on this long-term race study as a way to kind of reflect on our experiences through organizing and Black Lives Matter in particular. We find the question extremely relevant to the work we do, and so we're just taking some time to dive deep into the question. So yeah, thanks for having us. Absolutely. Kay, would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm Kay. I'm also in unity and struggle. I live in Atlanta, where I also do local organizing, mostly over the last few years, have been involved

with some labor organizing, but also anti-police stuff or police abolition work. So I was excited to do this race study thinking about my work over the last few years as well and how this will inform my work going forward. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's an honor to have both of you on. So let's go ahead and jump into it. Again, these episodes are a little shorter than our normal episodes because it's a long like multi-month sort of collaboration with unity and struggle. We keep these episodes as short and tight as we can. But as we'll say at the end of this conversation, there's an online shared document where anybody listening right now can go and engage with unity and struggle in their project about race and capitalism and all of this

and contribute in real time to a shared document. So the goal of having them on Rev. Left is just to give them a platform to get the basic ideas out about what they're doing so that as many people who are really interested can then go, go to their website and engage with this project. And again, if you listen through the end of this episode, we'll tell you all the places to go in order to do just that. But today we're talking about primitive accumulation. So for the first question, I guess just why is it important to study primitive accumulation, specifically in a project centered around understanding race? Yeah. So for us, we wanted to start with, or kind of our second session here on primitive accumulation, because of two reasons, which we'll get into kind of with the definition.

of primitive accumulation as well. You know, historically, it refers to this particular period of time, and this is the time in which kind of capitalist racial relations are emerging. So if we can rewind to that transition to capitalism, then we can try to trace race within the logical development and capitalism as well. And it's also at the same time this is relevant to our current moment still. We want to look at primitive accumulation as a continual or ongoing process, not just a historical process and specifically as a strategy that capital uses to manage crisis. So in these moments of

crises, race needs to be reformed or reconfirmed. Okay, so then can you define primitive accumulation for us? Maybe, you know, both the traditional like orthodox Marxist definition of the term, and then as well as some updated or extended definitions from thinkers that have come after Marx? Yeah. So I think, so we start this part of our study, which is sort of a living and breathing document by the way so you know we're open to shifting things and learning from people as we go but we start this section with reading marks directly and i think this is an important starting point because when people think of primitive accumulation the first thing that comes to mind is the chapters from capital volume one and so for marks primitive accumulation is a particular moment and he centers around the

enclosures that happen in western europe however we expand on this bringing in people like federici Bonefeld, Wolf, to understand it as an unfolding process that, you know, is sort of renewed over time. So for us, primitive accumulation means accumulating constant capital and variable capital by force. So constant capital meaning sort of the land, technologies, and resources that capitalism needs in order to accumulate surplus labor. And then variable capital, meaning labor cultures and histories and the actual activity that goes into creating surplus labor. So in a moment of primitive accumulation, if we kind of zero in and look at it as a moment, then we see the renewing and the refreshing of these conditions and these, you know, specifically by force.

So taking land, taking labor, and then renewing and refreshing the conditions for capitalist exploitation. So Marx discusses this, again, you know, in terms of enclosures and land grabs, but this is an ongoing process from colonization and slavery, which hunts as Federici spends a lot of time on. But then also today, we see this unfolding, you know, the land grabs are still happening. The IMF and World Bank use strategies to extract land and labor from new populations across the globe, as well as reinforce the conditions of production among people that are already, you know, part and parcel of proletarian life. Okay, do you have some thoughts about that? Yeah, well, one, going back to, for one second, like one of the key parts for us, I think, in the study, too, was understanding premium of accumulation is requiring force.

You had mentioned violence, but that force being a really important process, especially when we think about, like, racial relations emerging this time and in an ongoing way. So to sort of summarize, the classic Marxist definition is basically in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, there had to sort of be pushing people off of their land and away from their natural resources. and the word we often hear is an enclosure of the commons, the commons being, you know, common natural ground that people could hunt on or, you know, in one famous case, gather firewood on, right? So you had a situation where in the transition there were peasants in Europe who were going out and collecting firewood. And then part of the primitive, accumulative enclosure of the commons was to create a set of laws saying you can no longer go out into the woods and pick up firewood. And part of that was because, you know, you're trying to make firewood a commodity

and that means that you just can't have people going out, picking it up and bringing it home, but it has to be bought and sold on the market. So that's a sort of violent process. But I think what, and correct me if I'm wrong, what you're arguing and what other thinkers have argued is that that process is not just something that happens between feudalism and capitalism, but is an ongoing process within capitalism even to this day. Is that correct? Exactly, yeah.

And I think we see it more pronounced in moments of crises. So one person that we read pretty regularly is Lauren Goldner, and he argues that in moments of crises, one of the strategies that capitalists use to overcome crises is to return to this process of primitive accumulation. So we see this, you know, increased violence and sort of expansion of capitalist social relations around crises. I think right now we're seeing this, you know, globally, and there's all these uprisings happening because people are struggling against, you know, this like further encroachment of capitalist exploitation on our day-to-day lives. Yeah, and we can see it existing today in a very obvious example, which is the internet. The internet was originally conceived as a sort of digital commons as a place that was supposed to sort of be non-hierarchical and anybody can use it no matter how much money or wealth you

had. And for the first, you know, decade or so of the internet, that certainly was the case. But what we've seen in the last several years especially is an, you know, an enclosure of that commons, an enclosure of the internet by the big tech companies, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. We now see way more ads than we saw even five years ago. Even the ads for YouTube videos now aren't giving you the opportunity to skip past them. And so, you know, it took a little while for the big capitalist corporations to sort of catch up to the change of the internet. But now, especially in the last five years, I think we've really seen that the process of sort of enclosing the comments happening on the internet. And then another example, I think that's very easy to

to point to, and correct me if I'm wrong here, because maybe I'm using this in a little looser of a way than you prefer. But the situation in Bolivia right now, when you have the rise of, quote-unquote, green technology and a more desperate urge to move away from fossil fuels, you look in Bolivia, you see the number one world's largest resource of lithium, which is essential to power electric vehicles, smartphones, et cetera, is really going to be a crucial part of building, quote-unquote, green capitalism. And we saw with, you know, any left. left-wing government that tries to not allow those resources to be siphoned and funneled up north be, you know, this subject to right-wing, fascist or imperialist coups. And so I think we see that

happening. And there's this liberal delusion that we can have green capitalism and that we could use capitalism and slowly gradually move into a better world. But this underbelly of brutality and exploitation and domination and resource extraction exists constantly. And so there is no way to get to that idealistic understanding of capitalism. Capitalism will always require making sure people don't have control over their own resources so we can control them. Is that fair to say? Yeah, definitely. And in Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia as well, we see it's really indigenous movements that are at the front of the movements there as well, which I think is like

both historically relevant for primitive accumulation, which we'll get to in a minute. But then also, yeah, definitely what's happening today. before we hopped on this call to even I was discussing this question a few days ago about is it kind of too loose of a definition to look at or like to include in primitive accumulation the enclosure of the internet or other people have talked about like data mining right how even our desires become a new market for capitalism right and we see that kind of everywhere it's like not just our desires but through advertisements or whatever but like anything that can be commodified will be commodified and so while we're both like producing products we also become the market for those new products right and that's being an ongoing process as well yeah and you mentioned federici's caliban and the witch and i think you know one of the great things that that she really contributed to sort of marxist understanding is this feminist understanding of how you know reproductive labor and women's bodies were really dominated and forced into capitalist submission during the witch hunts and you know capital obviously needs the reproduction of a working force and they don't want to pay mothers obviously to do to create those new workers and raise those new workers so they can profit off of them later and so you know caliban and the witch is really applying marxist understanding of primitive accumulation to at least in part even the very bodies of women absolutely and one of the things I really appreciate about

her method is that it's not a total rejection of Marx's method but that she actually uses his method to you know create something new and understand something a little bit deeper. So, you know, again, kind of returning to the basic, you know, sort of definition of primitive accumulation. One aspect is definitely the land and sort of the resource extraction, but the other side of it is labor and forcing people into, you know, different varied situations of forced and coerced labor. And I think that's the side of it that we're sort of exploring around racialization.

One of the arguments that Wolf makes, which is really interesting, is there's sort of a duality around primitive accumulation and this land labor dynamic, where on the one hand, indigenous people are exploited and, you know, sort of violently colonized

in order to divorce them from their land and sort of grab their land. And then at the same time, black people are enslaved and forced into, certain kinds of labor. So those are two sides of the same coin, but different processes that result in different racialization processes as well. So both genocide and slavery were crucial parts of primitive accumulation. Right. Exactly. So what is the connection between primitive

accumulation and race as a social relation specifically? Basically just continue going deeper in this direction. Yeah, I think it's what Eve was saying that, you know, for a wolf, he looked at specifically private property. And it's interesting because for Federici, she thinks about the division of labor with gender. And Wolf is thinking about private property with race. But actually a division of labor and gender, as Mark says, are like in unity, right? Those are two sides of the same coin.

But so like race both emerging historically in this moment. And then Wolf logically posits that and it's about private property and that, as Eve just said, like about the indigenous racialization process emerging around land and then the black racialization process emerging around accumulating labor. And for Wolf 2, he says that these two processes kind of don't happen without each other. You don't have the indigenous race process without black race process because in order for capital to continue to expand, you have they claim land, right, but then you need labor to work that land. And vice versa, in order to like realize that value from labor, you need land to work, right, to realize that value. And so those two things like going

in hands of hand. And then importantly for Wolf, each process of race is distinct, right? And there's exceptions, sometimes major exceptions. We're thinking about Potosi, other places to this like clear land and labor divide. But generally, he says this is like historically true, these two different processes. But also he's, you know, we're looking at, okay, but racialization processes are renewed, right? Continually. Race isn't something that just happens historically

and then goes away. And that could be. like a dangerous trap to fall into thinking of that way. So we're like, okay, race is and static or cross place and time, but actually through these moments of crisis, which might look like new moments of primitive accumulation, race is not only like renewed or restored, but also sometimes it might emerge like slightly distinct in the same way that we've seen gender, like the category of women or something change and shift and what that's meant. Never entirely, right, but having these small shifts. Absolutely. So yeah, so you're really rooting the construction of race as a social relation in not only the initial acts of primitive accumulation, like the genocide of

indigenous populations or the enslavement of Africans, but the ongoing primitive accumulation that continues to redefine and reorient race as a social relation within capitalism. Is that sort of a fair way to summarize what you're trying to do here? Yeah, I think that's a good summary. Yeah, and just to add to that a little bit, I think this is, again, like sort of one piece of a long-term study. So I think, you know, there's a little bit of a danger in looking at these things through the lens of primitive accumulation, because I think what we're trying to get at through the study is that, you know, racialization is a social relationship that is proliferated through many different things under capitalism. So, you know, we have several different

sections that are looking at it from different angles. So I think there's, you know, I sort of hesitate a bit in this conversation to kind of fit racialization neatly into a box around primitive accumulation. So I think there just needs to be a caveat that, you know, this is an unfolding process that involves many different aspects of capitalist social relations. And hopefully we can get to that more, you know, as the study goes on. Yeah, great point. And I probably almost certainly overstated that connection and sort of simplified it in my summary. So I appreciate that caveat in that elaboration because that is important. you know primitive accumulation is just one part of this study next month we're coming back with a

whole new lens through which to understand these issues so yeah just definitely keep that in mind for the listeners going forward next question though i've never i never heard of this this indifferent capitalism theory so can you talk about the indifferent capitalism theory and just basically your response or critique of it yeah so this is something that we have been returning to since you know really the first week of this study so this is sort of the other side of what we've been describing. So on the one, so, you know, kind of what we've been talking about is that, you know, there's a trap around maybe assuming primitive accumulation equals racialization, and that's sort of like a mechanical sort of treatment of a broader social relationship.

I think the other side of that is some Marxists that come from, you know, unitary theory backgrounds or other sort of maybe like ultra-left backgrounds that see racialization as sort of an different consequence of capitalism. So capitalism could have developed without race, you know, or gender, but it's just sort of like a coincidence that these things happened. And I think, again, you know, what we're trying to describe through the study is both the historical and logical necessity of race. So the way, you know, all of these things are, are part of social relations of capitalism. So for us, you know, people sometimes come to race discussions asking, you know, which came first. Did rice come first? The capital come first. And for us, that doesn't make any

sense at all. And I think, you know, again, like in talking about primitive accumulation, I think it's important to sort of reject those two pitfalls, I guess. On the one hand, you know, being deterministic that permanent accumulation equals race. And then on the other hand, sort of dismissing the logical components of racialization under capitalism. I see. So, yeah, so the indifferent capitalist theory would just be that. inherently capitalism is indifferent to race. It was just sort of a historical accident that race got so bound up with capital. But in a hypothetical third possible world, you know, capitalism could have been jump started without any attention to race, basically, right? So that's the

theory of capitalism being indifferent to race, but that is an error. Am I saying that correctly? Yeah, I think so. And I think people who only look at sort of the historical trajectory of race and can only sort of describe it, maybe fall into this pitfall without realizing it, because they're not actually locating the social relations of race within the capitalist social relations. Ah, I see. Yeah, that's really interesting. Certainly clarifying for sure.

What will the next topic be? And where can listeners go to learn more about what we've talked about today? And as I mentioned earlier in the show, contribute to this project? Yeah, so we're looking forward to the next section, which is on free and on free. labor. We just started that, so we're hoping, you know, to generate some interesting ideas from that part of the study. Again, this is sort of an open project. We're, you know, it's kind of putting ourselves out there a bit in ways that we haven't before. And we're inviting people to engage with us. So just a quick shout out to people who have engaged, like Robert, Maga, Will,

other people who have reached out to us through Instagram and Facebook, have given us concrete suggestions on how to make the syllabus stronger. And, you know, some friendly critiques to make us better. So we appreciate that. So you can find our open syllabus on our website, Unity and Struggle.org, or on social media, we're on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Unity and Strug. So that's U-N-I-T-Y-A-N-D-S-T-R-U-G, just one-G.

Awesome. All right. And as usual, all of those links will be in the show notes to this episode. Definitely go help and contribute if you can. And if you just want to learn, definitely go check out that website, check out the project, and just learn, listen, you know, follow these episodes, follow the project. I think this is a really important, theoretically clarifying thing that's happening right now. And I think it's essential to understand these connections.

So unity and struggle is really doing great work on this front. And we're happy here at RevLeft Radio to be able to facilitate and amplify this project. So thank you, Eve and Kay, for coming on, and I look forward to talking to you next month. Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for having that. I'm so time I'm playing playing with this bow and a row

gonna give my heart away leaving to the other girls to play for I've been a tempterance too long yes give me a reason to love

Give me a reason to be a woman. I just want to be a woman. We're all looking at a different picture Through this new frame of mine A thousand flowers could bloom Move over and give us some room Give me a reason to love you Give me a reason to be a woman.

I just want to be a woman. So don't you So don't you step. And a man Just take a little look From our son When you came So

A little tenderness No matter No matter if you cry Give me a reason to love you Give me a reason to be a woman I just want to be a woman But this is a beginning of forever And ever

It's time to have to move So tired of playing Playing with this bow and arrow Gonna give my heart away Leave it to the other girls to play For I've been a tempterous too long Thank you.