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What Is The So-Called Primitive Accumulation?

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From the text reading “The Selected Writing of Karl Marx” Marx states “The so-called “Primitive Accumulation,”is nothing more than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. “Marx states his theory appears as primitive because it forms the prehistoric stage of capital and the mode of production corresponding with it.” (Page 296) “For example, Marx states the economic structure of the capitalist in our society has grown out of the economic structure of what was once a feudal society.” (page 296) Marx further argues “the dissolution of the latter sets free the elements of the former. The immediate producer, the laborers, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and
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Throughout his life, Karl Marx has altered the way that he views labor and what labor means to society as well as the individual. We can see how in The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof Karl Marx is still concerned about the laborers but is more focused on scientific notions and ideology as well as the economic components compared to what how he focuses on social aspects in The Alienation of Labor. The Alienation of Labor was written first, in 1844. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof was written in 1867. Over the course of these twenty three years Marx began to shift his focus from what labor means to the individual to a more abstract distanced look at the capitalist system.

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