Dominant bourgeois thought has replaced the historical reality of capitalism by an imaginary construction based on the principle, claimed to be eternal, of the rational and egoistic behaviour of the individual.[37]
‘Rational’ society—produced by the competition required by this principle—is thus seen as having arrived at the ‘‘end of history’’. Conventional economics, which is the fundamental base of this thinking, therefore substitutes the generalised ‘market’ for the reality of capitalism (and the ‘‘capitalist market’’).
Marxist thought has been built up based on quite another vision, that of the permanent transformation of the fundamental structures of societies, which is always historical.
In this framework—that of historical materialism—capitalism is historical, has had a beginning and will have an end.
Accepting this principle, the nature of this historical capitalism should be the object of continual reflection, which is not always the case in the ranks of the ‘‘historical Marxisms’’ (that is, Marxism as interpreted by those who claim it). Certainly one can accept the very general idea that capitalism constitutes a ‘necessary’ stage, preparing conditions for socialism—a more advanced stage of human civilization. But this idea is too general and insufficient precisely because it reduces ‘‘capitalism—necessary stage’’ to really existing historical capitalism.I shall sum up my reflections on this question in the following points that will be developed in the following pages:
Accumulation through dispossession is a permanent feature in the history of capitalism.
• Historical capitalism is, therefore, imperialist by nature at all stages of its development, in the sense that it polarises by the inherent effect of the laws that govern it.
• From this it follows that this capitalism cannot become the ‘unavoidable’ stage for the peoples of the peripheries of the historical capitalism system, that is necessary to create, here as elsewhere (in the centres of the system), the conditions for overtaking it by ‘socialism’. “Development and under-development” are the two inseparable sides of the historical capitalism coin.
• This historical capitalism is itself inseparable from the conquest of the world by the Europeans.
It is inseparable from the Eurocentric ideology which is, by definition, a non-universal form of civilization.• Other forms of response to the need for ‘‘accelerated accumulation” (compared with the rhythms of the accumulation of the ancient epochs of civilization), a necessary premise for the socialism of the future, would have been ‘possible’. This can be discussed. But these forms, perhaps visible in an embryonic way elsewhere than in the Europe of the transition to capitalism (in China, among others), have not been implemented as they have been crushed by the European conquest.
• Thus there is no alternative for human civilisation other than to engage in a construction of socialism, this in turn being based on the strategic concepts that must command the objective results produced by the globalised and polarising expansion of ‘western’ capitalism/imperialism.
The vulgar ideology of conventional economics and the cultural and social ‘thinking’ that goes with it claims that accumulation is financed by the ‘virtuous’ savings of the ‘rich’ (the wealthy owners), like the nations. History hardly confirms this invention of the Anglo-American puritans. It is, on the contrary, an accumulation largely financed by the dispossession of some (the majority) for the profit of others (the minority). Marx rigorously analysed these processes which he described as primitive accumulation, such as the dispossession of the English peasants (the Enclosures), that of the Irish peasants (for the benefit of the conquering English ‘landlords’) and that of the American colonisation being eloquent examples. In reality, this primitive accumulation was not exclusively taking place in bygone and outdated capitalism. It continues still today.
It is possible to measure the importance of the accumulation through dispos- session-an expression that I prefer to that of primitive accumulation. The measure that I am proposing here, is based on the consequences of this dispossession-and can be expressed in demographic terms and in terms of the apparent value of the social product that accompanies it.
The population of the world tripled between 1500 (450-550 million inhabitants) and 1900 (1,600 million), then by 3.75 during the twentieth century (now over 6,000 million).
But the proportion of the Europeans (those of Europe and of their conquered territories in America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) increased from 18 % (at most) in 1500 to 37 % in 1900, to fall gradually during the twentieth century. The first four centuries (1500-1900) correspond to the conquest of the world by the Europeans, the twentieth century—which continues through to the twenty first century—to the ‘‘awakening of the South’’, the renaissance of the conquered peoples.The conquest of the world by the Europeans constitutes a colossal dispossession of the Indians of America, who lost their land and natural resources to the colonists. The Indians were almost totally exterminated (a genocide of the Indians of North America) or reduced, by the effects of this dispossession and their overexploitation by the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, to a tenth of their former population. The slave trade that followed represented a plunder of a large part of Africa that set back the progress of the continent by half a millennium. Such phenomena are visible in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Algeria, and still more in Australia and New Zealand. This accumulation by dispossession characterises the state of Israel, which is a colonisation still in progress. No less visible are the consequences of colonial exploitation among the peasantry subjected by British India, the Dutch Indies, the Philippines and of Africa, as evinced by the famines (the famous one of Bengal, those of contemporary Africa). The method was inaugurated by the English in Ireland, whose population—formerly the same as that of England—still today only represents one tenth of that of the English, caused largely by the organised famine denounced by Marx.
Dispossession not only affected the peasant populations, which were the great majority of peoples in the past. It also destroyed capacities for industrial production (artisanat and manufacturing) of regions that once and for a long time had been more prosperous than Europe itself: China and India, among others (the developments described by Amiya Kumar Bagchi, in his last work, Perilous Passage, provide indisputable proof of this).
It is important here to understand that this destruction was not produced by the ‘‘‘aws of the market”, European industry—claimed to be more ‘effective’—having taken the place of non-competitive production.
The ideological discourse does not discuss the political and military violence utilised to achieve it. They are not the ‘canons’ of English industry, but the cannons of the gunboat period. These won out in spite of the superiority—and not inferiority—of the Chinese and Indian industries. Industrialisation, which was prohibited by the colonial administration, did the rest and ‘‘developed the under-development’’ of Asia and Africa during the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries. The colonial atrocities and the extreme exploitation of workers were the natural means and results of accumulation through dispossession.From 1500 to 1800, the material production of the European centres progressed at a rate that was hardly greater than that of its demographic growth (but this was strong in relative terms for that era). These rhythms accelerated during the nineteenth century, with the deepening—and not the attenuation—of the exploitation of the peoples overseas, which is why I speak of the permanent accumulation by dispossession and not ‘primitive’ (i.e. ‘first’, ‘preceding’) accumulation. This does not exclude that the contribution of accumulation financed by technological progress during the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries—the successive industrial revolutions—then took on an importance that it never had during the three mercantilist centuries that preceded it. Finally, therefore, from 1500 to 1900, the apparent production of the new centres of the capitalist/imperialist world system (western and central Europe, the United States and, a late arrival, Japan) increased by 7-7.5 times, in contrast with those of the peripheries which barely doubled. The gap widened as had never been possible in the history of all humanity. During the course of the twentieth century, it widened still further, bringing the apparent per capita income to a level of 15-20 times greater than that of the peripheries as a whole.
The accumulation by dispossession of centuries of mercantilism largely financed the luxuries and standard of living of the governing classes of the period (the ‘‘Ancien Regime”), without benefiting the popular classes whose standard of living often worsened as they were themselves victims of the accumulation by the dispossession of large swathes of the peasantry.
But, above all, it had financed an extraordinary reinforcement of the powers of the modern State, of its administration and its military power. This can be seen by the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire that marked the junction between the preceding mercantilist epoch and that of the subsequent industrialisation period. This accumulation is therefore at the origin of the two major transformations that had taken place by the nineteenth century: the first industrial revolution and the easy colonial conquest.The popular classes did not benefit from the colonial prosperity at first, in fact until late in the nineteenth century. This was obvious in the tragic scenes of the destitution of workers in England, as described by Engels. But they had an escape route, the massive emigration that accelerated in the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries—to the point that the population of European origin became greater than that of the regions to which they emigrated. Is it possible to imagine two or three billion Asians and Africans having that advantage today?
The nineteenth century represented the apogee of this system of capitalist/ imperialist globalisation. In fact, from this point on the expansion of capitalism and ‘westernisation’ in the brutal sense of the term made it impossible to distinguish between the economic dimension of the conquest and its cultural dimension, Eurocentrism.
The various forms of external and internal colonialisms, to which I refer here (for more details see From Capitalism to Civilization, p. 108 et seq.) constituted the framework of accumulation by dispossession and gave substance to imperialist rent, the effects of which have been decisive in shaping the rich societies of the contemporary imperialist centre.
5.1