The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions

by Jason Hickel

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, called this ‘previous accumulation’ – the initial process of amassing capital that is necessary for capitalism to get going, and without which capitalism cannot exist. Karl Marx called it ‘primitive accumulation’, perhaps to highlight its barbaric nature, for the process of accumulation was violent: ‘The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.24 These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.’ Colonial extraction, according to this view, was the driver of accumulation, and accumulation is what made capitalism possible. As