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June 3 - October 26, 2025
The invisible is defined by the visible as its invisible, its forbidden vision: the invisible is not therefore simply what is outside the visible (to return to the spatial metaphor), the outer darkness of exclusion—but the inner darkness of exclusion, inside the visible itself.—
markets provide the most efficient method for organizing production. An uncompromising advocacy of laissez-faire is, ostensibly, the intended lesson of classical political economy.
To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support.
classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages.
Rather than contending that market forces should determine the fate of these small-scale producers, classical political economy called for state interventions of one sort or another to hobble these people’s ability to produce for their own needs.
Smith’s celebrated discussion of the invisible hand was developed as a means of avoiding the challenge that primitive accumulation posed for his system. By showing that the social division of labor would evolve without recourse to outside intervention, Smith had hoped to put the question of primitive accumulation to rest. Although Smith’s theory was accepted as such, practice continued in a different manner.
the struggle against self-provisioning is not confined to the distant past. It continues to this day
classical political economy conforms to a consistent pattern of almost always supporting positions that would work to harness small-scale agricultural producers to the interests of capital.
classical political economy was concerned with promoting primitive accumulation in order to foster capitalist development, even though the logic of primitive accumulation was in direct conflict with the classical political economists’ purported adherence to the values of laissez-faire.
Simple dispossession from the commons was a necessary, but not always sufficient condition to harness rural people to the labor market.
Primitive accumulation cut through traditional lifeways like scissors. The first blade served to undermine the ability of people to provide for themselves. The other blade was a system of stern measures required to keep people from finding alternative survival strategies outside the system of wage labor.
The classical political economists joined in the chorus of those condemning the sloth and indolence of the poor. Although they applauded the leisure activities of the rich, they denounced all behavior on the part of the less fortunate that did not yield a maximum of work effort.
We might ask, was there ever a nation in which the rich found the poor to be sufficiently industrious?
Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life.
Marx rejected Smith’s otherworldly conception of previous accumulation. He chided Smith for attempting to explain the present existence of class by reference to a mythical past that lies beyond our ability to challenge it. Marx insisted, “Primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology”
a temporal cleavage between the initial moment of primitive accumulation, when capitalists accumulated by virtue of direct force, and the era of capitalist accumulation, when capitalists accumulated surplus value in the market.
Marx did not want his readers to conclude that the ills of society resulted from unjust actions that were unrelated to the essence of a market society.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated at one pole of society in the shape of capital, while at the other pole are grouped masses of men who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Nor is it enough that they are compelled to sell themselves voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws.
Centuries are required before the “free” worker, owing to the greater development of the capitalist mode of production, makes a voluntary agreement, i.e. is compelled by social conditions to sell the whole of his active life.
the separation of people from their traditional means of production occurred over time as capital gradually required additional workers to join the labor force.
capital would manipulate the extent to which workers relied on self-provisioning in order to maximize its advantage.
In the case of the destruction of small-scale farming in the United States, the federal government was central in developing the transportation and research systems that tipped the balance in favor of large-scale agriculture
Because people have to earn more wages to compensate for the increased difficulty of providing for certain of their own needs, they have less time to do other sorts of work on their own, inducing families to transfer still more labor from the household to the commercial sector.
the denial of ownership to a particular means of production creates a change in the mix of wage and nonwage labor.
classical political economists saw primitive accumulation as a means of radically reordering the social division of labor, which they recognized as a precondition of the creation of a proletariat.
Game Laws were one of the most hated institutions of feudalism, most remembered today for leading the legendary Robin Hood into a life of crime. More important, they helped to create conditions that eventually contributed to the undermining of the feudal aristocracy’s hegemony in British society.
Here was the problem that the classical model of primitive accumulation highlighted. People preferred their leisure rather than the small value they could obtain from a long stint of wage labor.
a gentleman in Surrey asked a young man how he could live on a half crown per week. “I don’t live upon it,” said he. “How do you live then?” “Why,” he replied, “I poach; it is better to be hanged than to be starved to death”
Purchasing an intermediate good may help an employer extract surplus value from the labor employed at the job site, but the intermediate good, in itself, does not produce surplus value—at least from Marx’s perspective.
Technology for increased poductivity. The 2025 GenAI craze is a modern example. The ruling class does not want to reduce labor headcount because that would reduce consumers and hence demand. Instead, the owner wants a doubling of labor output - i.e., increased surplus value - of which little to none will go to wage increases.
As employers adjust the mix of the constant capitals that they purchase, they alter the social division of labor.
All labor performed within the household that promotes economic reproduction, as well as production, falls within this definition of the social division of labor. By reproduction, I mean such activities as the replenishment of those who work for wages and the raising of new generations of workers.
capital demanded that the household function as a factory (see Cairncross 1958, 17). In terms of reproduction, households were a special sort of factory that specialized in the production of workers, who “resemble[d] the component parts of the vast machines which they direct”
Under capitalism, the working class was left with the responsibility of laboring to earn its wages, then exchanging those earnings for its means of subsistence, and finally efficiently combining these commodities with household labor in order to renew its supply of labor power. In this sense, no other form of social organization went so far in “transform[ing]… lifetime into labortime”
In one respect, slaves were more fortunate than wage earners. Some slave owners felt an obligation to care for their sick and aged chattel. Employers of wage labor were generally unburdened by such thoughts.
We break the aggregate working day into three segments: (1) the number of hours that households devote to production on their own account; (2) the number of hours in which they work for wages while producing those goods and services they will purchase as commodities; and (3) the number of hours that they work for wages while producing those goods and services that will be bought by other classes. For convenience, assume that the second stretch of time is devoted to the production of necessities and the third to luxuries and goods for capital accumulation. This third segment would measure
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The more that households produce their necessities on their own account, the less wages they will require to be able to achieve their normal standard of living.
So long as workers remained within the household economy, they could enjoy the same standard of living without having to devote time and energy to the production of luxury goods or surplus value.
when the working class had to exchange a great deal of labor to obtain a relatively small value of commodities in return, it resisted wage labor by producing for itself as much as possible.
even after capitalist technologies progressed to the point that self-provisioning became less technologically efficient than wage labor, workers were often still loathe to engage in wage labor. They frequently opted instead to withhold their labor, preferring to substitute leisure for commodities that they might potentially purchase.
The substitution of household work for work done for wages reduces the value of labor power and raises the rate of surplus value.
the more that households provide for themselves, the less that employers would have to pay for an hour of work.
Adam Smith, insofar as he addressed the subject, treated the social division of labor as the result of voluntary choices on the part of free people. Even so, on closer inspection, when we review Smith’s works as a whole, we find that he also preferred the use of nonmarket forces to manipulate the social division of labor.
classical political economy was, first and foremost, meant to be a formula for accelerating the overall accumulation process.
in an environment where self-sufficient people would be producing all of their own needs, the value of their labor power would be extremely low. Consequently, they would be less than eager to exchange their labor for wages.
One set of workers could not specialize in the full-time production of shoes, clothing, or even food unless others would make a complementary choice to supply other goods, which the former workers ceased to produce for themselves.
the standard of living of the subsistence farmer sets the level of wages, which given the existing technology, determines the rate of profit.
the degree of poverty among the peasantry determined the wage rate,
Hunger makes almost a perfect substitute for the whip, and what was formerly called fodder is now called wages.
They wanted to make sure that workers would be able to be self-sufficient enough to raise the rate of surplus value without making them so independent that they would or could resist wage labor.
when relatively advanced economies begin to decline, the peasant sector offers a convenient buffer that saves the need for welfare costs.
