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chapter 1 The Enduring Importance

of Primitive Accumulation

Common fields and pastures kept alive a vigorous co-operative spirit in the com-

munity; enclosures starved it. In champion [sic] country people had to work to-

gether amicably, to agree upon crop rotations, stints of common pasture, the up-

keep and improvement of their grazings and meadows, the clearing of the ditches,

the fencing of the fields. They toiled side by side in the fields, and they walked

together from field to village, from farm to heath, morning, afternoon and evening.

They all depended on common resources for their fuel, for bedding, and fodder for

their stock, and by pooling so many of the necessities of livelihood they were

disciplined from early youth to submit to the rules and customs of the community.

After enclosure, when every man could fence his own piece of territory and warn

his neighbours off, the discipline of sharing things fairly with one’s neighbours was

relaxed, and every household became an island unto itself. This was the great

revolution in men’s lives, greater than all the economic changes following en-

closure. Yet few people living in this world bequeathed to us by the enclosing and

improving farmer are capable of gauging the full significance of a way of life that is

now lost.—Joan Thirsk, ‘‘Enclosing and Engrossing’’

Compulsion and the Creation of a Working Class

The brutal process of separating people from their means of providing for themselves, known as primitive accumulation, caused enormous hard- ships for the common people. This same primitive accumulation pro- vided a basis for capitalist development. Joan Thirsk, one of the most knowledgeable historians of early British agriculture, describes above the nature of some of the harshest social and personal transformations associ- ated with the enclosures.

Some people denounced this expropriation. Marx (1977, 928) echoed their sentiment, charging: ‘‘The expropriation of the direct producers was accomplished by means of the most merciless barbarianism, and under the stimulus of the most infamous, the most sordid, the most petty and the most odious of passions.’’

Formally, this dispossession was perfectly legal. After all, the peasants did not have property rights in the narrow sense. They only had tradi-

Perelman, Michael. The Invention of Capitalism : Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, Duke University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/detail.action?docID=1167546. Created from uow on 2023-04-12 09:45:58.

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tional rights. As markets evolved, first land-hungry gentry and later the bourgeoisie used the state to create a legal structure to abrogate these traditional rights (Tigar and Levy 1977).

Simple dispossession from the commons was a necessary, but not al- ways sufficient condition to harness rural people to the labor market. Even after the enclosures, laborers retained privileges in ‘‘the shrubs, woods, undergrowth, stone quarries and gravel pits, thereby obtaining fuel for cooking and wood for animal life, crab apples and cob nuts from the hedgerows, brambles, tansy and other wild herbs from any other little patch of waste. . . . Almost every living thing in the parish however insig- nificant could be turned to some good use by the frugal peasant-labourer or his wife’’ (Everitt 1967, 405).

To the extent that the traditional economy might be able to remain intact despite the loss of the commons, a supply of labor satisfactory to capital might not be forthcoming. As a result, the level of real wages would be higher, thereby impeding the process of accumulation. Not sur- prisingly, one by one, these traditional rights also disappeared. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, ‘‘property became absolute property: all the tolerated ‘rights’ that the peasantry had acquired or preserved . . . were now re- jected’’ (Foucault 1979, 85).

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 sys- tem of wage labor. A host of oftentimes brutal laws designed to under- mine whatever resistance people maintained against the demands of wage labor accompanied the dispossession of the peasants’ rights, even before capitalism had become a significant economic force.

For example, beginning with the Tudors, England enacted a series of stern measures to prevent peasants from drifting into vagrancy or falling back onto welfare systems. According to a 1572 statute, beggars over the age of fourteen were to be severely flogged and branded with a red-hot iron on the left ear unless someone was willing to take them into service for two years. Repeat offenders over eighteen were to be executed unless someone would take them into service. Third offenses automatically re- sulted in execution (Marx 1977, 896ff.; Marx 1974, 736; Mantoux 1961, 432). Similar statutes appeared almost simultaneously during the early sixteenth century in England, the Low Countries, and Zurich (LeRoy Ladurie 1974, 137). Eventually, the majority of workers, lacking any alter- native, had little choice but to work for wages at something close to subsistence level.

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importance of primitive accumulation 15

In the wake of primitive accumulation, the wage relationship became a seemingly voluntary affair. Workers needed employment and employers wanted workers. In reality, of course, the underlying process was far from voluntary. As Foucault (1979, 222) argues:

Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became the politi- cally dominant class in the course of the 18th Century was masked by the establishment of an explicitly coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parlia- mentary, representative regime. But the development and generaliza- tion of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes . . . supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mech- anisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non- egalitarian.

Indeed, the history of the recruitment of labor is an uninterrupted story of coercion either through the brute force of poverty or more direct regula- tion, which made a continuation of the old ways impossible (Moore 1951). Of course, the extractions common to traditional relatively self-sufficient household economy kept many people at or just above the subsistence level, but for many the market was a step backward. The disorienting introduction of the individualistic ways of the market cut people off from their traditional networks and created a sense of dehumanization (see Kuczynski 1967, 70). A purported need for discipline justified the harsh measures that the poor endured. Indeed, writers of every persuasion shared an obsessional concern with the creation of a disciplined labor force (Furniss 1965; Appleby 1978). Supporters of such measures typically defended their position by invoking the need to civilize workers or stamp out sloth and indolence. Yet capital required these measures to conquer the household economy in order to be able to extract a greater mass of surplus value. In fact, almost everyone close to the process of primitive accumulation, whether a friend or foe of labor, agreed with Charles Hall’s (1805, 144) verdict that ‘‘if they were not poor, they would not submit to employments’’—at least so long as their remuneration were held low enough to create substantial profits.

Employers were quick to perceive the relationship between poverty and the chance to earn handsome profits. Ambrose Crowley, for example, set up his factory in the north rather than the midlands, for there ‘‘the cuntry is verry poore and populous soe workmen must of necessity increase’’ (cited in Pollard 1965, 197). This process was cumulative. An increase in poverty begat more population, which in turn created further poverty, and so on. In this regard, Marx (1865, 72) noted that the level of wages in the

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agricultural districts of England varied according to the particular condi- tions under which the peasantry had emerged from serfdom. The more impoverished the serfs, the lower their descendants’ wages would be.

Classical Political Economy and the War on Sloth

The classical political economists joined in the chorus of those condemn- ing 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.

Consider the case of Francis Hutcheson—‘‘the never to be forgotten Dr. Hutcheson,’’ as his student, Adam Smith, later described him in a letter to Dr. Archibald Davidson (reprinted in Mossner and Ross 1977, 309)—the same Francis Hutcheson whose Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books (1742) seems to have served as a model for the economic sections of Smith’s Glasgow lectures (see Scott 1965, 235, 240). A later work, his System of Moral Philosophy, exemplifies Dr. Hutcheson’s contributions to that noble field of moral philosophy. After a few brief notes on the need to raise prices, Hutcheson (1755, 2:318–19) mused: ‘‘If a people have not acquired an habit of industry, the cheapness of all the necessaries of life encourages sloth. The best remedy is to raise the demand for all necessaries. . . . Sloth should be punished by tempo- rary servitude at least.’’ The menacing ‘‘at least’’ in this citation suggests that the never-to-be-forgotten professor might have had even sterner med- icine in mind than mere temporary servitude. What else might the good doctor recommend to earnest students of moral philosophy in the event that temporary servitude proved inadequate in shunting people off to the workplace?

This attitude, of course, is not unique to classical political economy. We might ask, was there ever a nation in which the rich found the poor to be sufficiently industrious? The universal howl of ‘‘sloth and indolence’’ can be heard as far away as nineteenth-century Japan, to cite one example (see T. Smith 1966, 120). However, no country seems to have gone as far as England in its war on sloth. Indeed, writers of the time charged that a want of discipline was responsible for criminality as well as disease. By the late eighteenth century, even hospitals came to be regarded as a proper me- dium to instill discipline (see Ignatieff 1978, 61ff.).

Almost poetically, Thomas Mun (1664, 193) railed against ‘‘the general leprosy of our piping, potting, feasting, fashions, and misspending of our time in idleness and pleasure.’’ Josiah Tucker (1776a, 44–45) employed a military metaphor to make a similar point:

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importance of primitive accumulation 17

In a word, the only possible Means of preventing a Rival Nation from running away with your Trade, is to prevent your own People from being more idle and vicious than they are. . . . So the only War, which can be attended with Success in that Respect, is a War against Vice and Idleness; a War, whose Forces must consist of—not Fleets and Armies—but such judicious Taxes and Wise regulations, as will turn the Passion of private Self-Love into the Channel of Public Good.

Primitive Accumulation and the Eradication of Holidays

Although their standard of living may not have been particularly lavish, the people of precapitalistic northern Europe, like most traditional peo- ple, enjoyed a great deal of free time (see Ashton 1972, 204; see also V. Smith 1992; Wisman 1989). The common people maintained innumer- able religious holidays that punctuated the tempo of work. Joan Thirsk estimated that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, about one-third of the working days, including Sundays, were spent in leisure (cited in K. Thomas 1964, 63; see also Wilensky 1961). Karl Kautsky (1899, 107) offered a much more extravagant estimate that 204 annual holidays were celebrated in medieval Lower Bavaria.

Despite these frequent holidays, the peasants still managed to produce a significant surplus. In English feudal society, for example, the peasants survived even though the gentry was powerful enough to extract some- thing on the order of 50 percent of the produce (see Postan 1966, 603). As markets evolved, the claims on the peasants’ labors multiplied. For in- stance, in southern France, rents appear to have grown from about one- fourth of the yield in 1540 to one-half by 1665 (LeRoy Ladurie 1974, 117).

Although people increasingly had to curtail their leisure in order to meet the growing demands of nonproducers, many observers still railed against the excessive celebration of holidays. Protestant clergy were especially vocal in this regard (Hill 1967, 145–218; see also Marx 1977, 387; Freuden- berger and Cummins 1976). Even as late as the 1830s, we hear the com- plaint that the Irish working year contained only 200 days after all holidays had been subtracted (Great Britain 1840, 570; cited in Mokyr 1983, 222).

Time, in a market society, is money. As Sir Henry Pollexfen (1700, 45; cited in Furniss 1965, 44) calculated: ‘‘For if but 2 million of working people at 6d. a day comes to 500,000£ which upon due inquiry whence our riches must arise, will appear to be so much lost to the nation by every holiday that is kept.’’

Zeal in the suppression of religious festivals was not an indication that representatives of capital took working-class devotion lightly. In some

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rural districts of nineteenth-century England, tending to one’s garden on the Sabbath was a punishable offense. Some workers were even impris- oned for this crime (Marx 1977, 375–76n). Piety, however, also had its limits. The same worker might be charged with breach of contract should he prefer to attend church on the Sabbath rather than report for work when called to do so (ibid.).

In France, where capital was slower to take charge, the eradication of holidays was likewise slower. Tobias Smollett (1766, 38) complained of the French: ‘‘Very nearly half of their time, which might be profitably employed in the exercise of industry, is lost to themselves and the com- munity, in attendance upon the different exhibitions of religious mum- mery.’’ Voltaire called for the shifting of holidays to the following Sunday. Since Sunday was a day of rest in any case, employers could enjoy approxi- mately forty additional working days per year. This proposal caused the naive Abbe Baudeau to wonder about the wisdom of intensifying work when the countryside was already burdened with an excess population (cited in Weulersse 1959, 28). How could the dispossessed be employed?

Of course, changes in the religious practices of Europe were not induced by a shortage of people but by people’s willingness to conform to the needs of capital. For example, the leaders of the French Revolution, who prided themselves on their rationality, decreed a ten-day week with only a single day off. Classical political economists enthusiastically joined in the con- demnation of the celebration of an excessive number of holidays (see Cantillon 1755, 95; Senior 1831, 9). The suppression of religious holidays was but a small part of the larger process of primitive accumulation.

Classical Political Economy and the Ideal Working Day

Once capital began to dislodge the traditional moorings of society, the bourgeoisie sought every possible opportunity to engage people in produc- tive work that would turn a profit for employers. Accordingly, classical political economists advocated actions to shape society around the logic of accumulation in order to strengthen the dependency on wage labor.

In the utopia of early classical political economy, the poor would work every waking hour. One writer suggested that the footmen of the gentry could rise early to employ their idle hours making fishing nets along with ‘‘disbanded soldiers, poor prisoners, widows and orphans, all poor trades- men, artificers, and labourers, their wives, children, and servants’’ (Puckle 1700, 2:380; cited in Appleby 1976, 501).

Joseph Townsend (1786, 442) proposed that when farm workers re- turned in the evenings from threshing or ploughing, ‘‘they might card,

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importance of primitive accumulation 19

they might spin, or they might knit.’’ Many were concerned that chil- dren’s time might go to waste. William Temple called for the addition of four-year-old children to the labor force. Anticipating modern Skinnerian psychology, Temple (1770, 266; see also Furniss 1965, 114–15) speculated, ‘‘for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habitu- ated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.’’ Not to be outdone, John Locke, often seen as a philosopher of liberty, called for the commencement of work at the ripe age of three (Cranston 1957, 425).

Others called for new institutional arrangements to ensure a steadily increasing flow of wage labor. Fletcher of Saltoun recommended perpetual slavery as the appropriate fate of all who would fail to respond to less harsh measures to integrate them into the labor force (see Marx 1977, 882). Hutcheson, as we have seen, followed suit. Always the idealist, Bishop George Berkeley (1740, 456) preferred that such slavery be limited to ‘‘a certain term of years.’’

No source of labor was to be overlooked. For example, in a movement that Foucault has termed ‘‘the great confinement,’’ institutions were founded to take charge indiscriminately of the sick, criminal, and poor (Foucault 1965, 38–65). The purpose was not to better the conditions of the inmates but rather to force them to contribute more to the national wealth (for a selection of citations that reflect more charitably on the early political economists, see Wiles 1968).

Occasionally, writers of the time found signs of progress. By 1723, Daniel Defoe (1724–26, 86; see also 493) was delighted to discover that so much progress had taken place in Norwich that ‘‘the very children after four or five years of age, could every one earn their own bread.’’

For classical political economy such edifying scenes of hard labor were not common enough. To his credit, Jean-Baptiste Say (1821, 50–51; see also Ricardo 1951–73, 8:184), generally a strong proponent of capitalist development, penned one of the few protests of the state of affairs in Britain in a letter to Robert Malthus:

I shall not attempt to point out the parts of this picture which apply to your country, Sir. . . . But if social life [a term that Say used almost like the social division of labor] were a galley, in which after rowing with all their strength for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, they might indeed be excused for disliking social life. . . . I maintain no other doctrine when I say that the utility of productions is no longer worth the productive services, at the rate at which we are compelled to pay for them.

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Sadly, no other classical political economist was willing to side with Say in this regard.

Bentham and Laissez-faire Authoritarianism

Classical political economy frequently couched its recommendations in a rhetoric of individual liberty, but its conception of liberty was far from all- encompassing. Liberty, for capital, depended on the hard work of common people.

Lionel Robbins (1981, 8), a strong proponent of market society, also alluded to this authoritarian side of laissez-faire, noting, ‘‘the necessity of a framework of law and an apparatus of enforcement is an essential part of the concept of a free society.’’ Earlier, he wrote, ‘‘If there be any ‘invisible hand’ in a non-collectivist order, it operates only in a framework of delib- erately contrived law and order’’ (Robbins 1939, 6; see also Samuels 1966). Within this contrived law and order, workers found their rights to orga- nize unions and even to act politically severely restricted. The entire judicial edifice was erected with an eye toward making ownership of capi- tal more profitable (Tigar and Levy 1977).

Max Weber (1921, 108; see also Perelman 1991a, chap. 3) once observed that rational accounting methods are ‘‘associated with the social phe- nomena of ‘shop discipline’ and appropriation of the means of production, and that means: with the existence of a ‘system of domination’ [Herr- schaftsverhältniss].’’ Similarly, the rational accounting system of politi- cal economy required a ‘‘system of domination,’’ albeit on a grander scale. Weber concluded, ‘‘No special proof is necessary to show that military discipline is the ideal model for the modern capitalist factory’’ (1156).

In this sense, we may see Jeremy Bentham, rather than Smith, as the archetypal representative of classical political economy. Indeed, Ben- tham’s dogmatic advocacy of laissez-faire far exceeded that of Smith. For example, after Smith made the case for a government role in controlling interest rates, Bentham (1787b, 133) caustically rebuked him with the words, ‘‘To prevent our doing mischief to one another, it is but too neces- sary to put bridles into our mouths.’’

Although Bentham theoretically championed laissez-faire in the name of freedom, he was intent on subordinating all aspects of life to the in- terests of accumulation. Bentham limited his passionate concern with laissez-faire to those who conformed to the norms of a capitalist society; a jarring confrontation with state power was to be the lot of the rest. Accord- ing to Bentham, ‘‘Property—not the institution of property, but the consti- tution of property—has become an end in itself’’ (Bentham 1952, 1:117).

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importance of primitive accumulation 21

Bentham was absolutely clear about the need for this ‘‘constitution of property.’’ He realized that even though control over labor is a major source of wealth, labor stubbornly resists the will of the capitalist. In Bentham’s (1822, 430) inimitable language:

Human beings are the most powerful instruments of production, and therefore everyone becomes anxious to employ the services of his fellows in multiplying his own comforts. Hence the intense and uni- versal thirst for power; the equally prevalent hatred of subjection. Each man therefore meets with an obstinate resistance to his own will, and this naturally engenders antipathy toward beings who thus baffle and contravene his wishes.

Bentham never acknowledged any contradiction between his advocacy of laissez-faire and his proposals for managing labor. For him: ‘‘Between wealth and power, the connexion is most close and intimate: so intimate, indeed, that the disentanglement of them, even in the imagination, is a matter of no small difficulty. They are each of them respectively an in- strument of the production of the other’’ (Bentham 1962, 48; cited in Macpherson 1987, 88–89).

Bentham understood that the struggles to subdue the poor would spill over into every aspect of life. He hoped to turn these struggles into profit for himself and, to a lesser extent, others of his class. Given labor’s natural resistance to creating wealth for those who exploited them, unfree labor held an obvious attraction for Bentham. He designed detailed plans for his fabled Panopticon, a prison engineered for maximum control of inmates in order to profit from their labor.

In a 1798 companion piece to his design for the Panopticon, Pauper Management Improved, Bentham proposed a National Charity Company modeled after the East India Company—a privately owned, joint stock company partially subsidized by the government. It was to have absolute authority over the ‘‘whole body of the burdensome poor,’’ starting with 250 industry houses accommodating a half million people and expanding to 500 houses for one million people (Bentham n.d., 369; cited in Him- melfarb 1985, 78).

Bentham planned to profit handsomely from these inmates, especially those born in the houses, since they would then have to work as appren- tices within the company. He rhapsodized, ‘‘So many industry-houses, so many crucibles, in which dross of this kind [the poor] is converted into sterling’’ (cited in Himmelfarb 1985, 80). A strict regimen, unremitting supervision and discipline, and economies of diet, dress, and lodging would make profits possible. Jeremy Bentham, vigorous advocate of free-

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dom of commerce that he was, dreamed of the profits that would accrue from the use of inmate labor:

What hold can another manufacturer have upon his workmen, equal to what my manufacturer would have upon his? What other master is there that can reduce his workmen, if idle, to a situation next to starving, without suffering them to go elsewhere? What other master is there whose men can never get drunk unless he chooses that they should do so. And who, so far from being able to raise their wages by combination, are obliged to take whatever pittance he thinks it most his interest to allow? (see also Ignatieff 1978, 110; Foucault 1979)

According to classical political economy, all social conditions and all social institutions were to be judged merely on the basis of their effect on the production of wealth. In this spirit, Bentham recommended that chil- dren be put to work at four instead of fourteen, bragging that they would thereby be spared the loss of those ‘‘ten precious years in which nothing is done! Nothing for industry! Nothing for improvement, moral or intellec- tual!’’ (cited in Himmelfarb 1985, 81).

Bentham went even further, intent on subordinating every facet of hu- man existence to the profit motive. He even wanted to promote the ‘‘gen- tlest of all revolutions,’’ the sexual revolution. In this regard, Bentham was not the least concerned with furthering the bounds of human free- dom, but with ensuring that the inmates would have as many offspring as possible (ibid., 83). Bentham was even planning to call himself the ‘‘Sub- Regulus of the Poor.’’ Unfortunately, because of lack of government sup- port, his plans came to naught. As he complained in his memoirs, ‘‘But for George the Third, all the prisoners in England would, years ago, have been made under my management’’ (Bentham 1830–31, 96).

Alas, Bentham never succeeded in his personal goals. Perhaps he was too greedy. Perhaps his methods were too crude. Instead, as we shall see, capitalism found more subtle methods for harnessing labor. As a result, today we remember Bentham as a valiant defender of the ideals of laissez- faire rather than as the Sub-Regulus of the Poor.

Victory

Classical political economists were generally more coy about their inten- tions than Bentham. Despite their antipathy to indolence and sloth, they covered themselves with a flurry of rhetoric about natural liberties. On closer examination, we find that the notion of the system of natural liber- ties was considerably more flexible than it appeared. Let us turn once

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importance of primitive accumulation 23

again to Francis Hutcheson, who taught Smith about the virtue of natural liberty. He contended that ‘‘it is the one great design of civil laws to strengthen by political sanctions the several laws of nature. . . . The pop- ulace needs to be taught, and engaged by laws, into the best methods of managing their own affairs and exercising mechanic art’’ (Hutcheson 1749, 273; emphasis added). In effect, Hutcheson realized that once primi- tive accumulation had taken place, the appeal of formal slavery dimin- ished. Extramarket forces of all sorts would become unnecessary, since the market itself would ensure that the working class remained in a con- tinual state of deprivation. Patrick Colquhoun (1815, 110), a London po- lice magistrate, noted:

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. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civiliza- tion. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no re- finement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.

Or, as Marx (1865, 55–56) phrased it: ‘‘We find on the market a set of buyers, possessed of land, machinery, raw materials, and the means of subsistence, all of them, save land, the products of labour, and on the other hand, a set of sellers who have nothing to sell except their labouring power, their working arms and brains.’’

Later political economists disregarded the compulsion required to force labor into the market, blithely assuming that the market alone was suffi- cient to guarantee the advancement of the accumulation process without the aid of extramarket forces. Workers at the time generally understood the strategic importance of measures to foster primitive accumulation. In this spirit, Thomas Spence, a courageous working-class advocate, pro- claimed that ‘‘it is childish . . . to expect . . . to see anything else than the utmost screwing and grinding of the poor, till you quite overturn the present system of landed property’’ (cited in E. P. Thompson 1963, 805).

The system, however, was not overturned, but instead grew stronger. Workers were forced to surrender more and more of their traditional peri- ods of leisure (see Hill 1967; Reid 1976, 76–101). The working day was lengthened (Hammond and Hammond 1919, 5–7). The working class, in the person of Spence, cried out: ‘‘Instead of working only six days a week

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we are obliged to work at the rate of eight or nine and yet can hardly subsist . . . and still the cry is work—work—ye are idle. . . . We, God help us, have fallen under the hardest set of masters that have ever existed’’ (cited in Kemp-Ashraf 1966, 277; see also Tawney 1926, esp. 223). This state- ment was eloquent enough to earn its author a sentence of three years’ imprisonment after its publication in 1803—a result typical of the fate of those who challenged the capitalist order. Whenever the working class and its friends effectively protested against capitalism, the silent compul- sion of capital (Marx 1977, 899) gave way to compulsory silence.

Spence’s silencing was not completely effective. Although some merely wrote him off as a ‘‘radical crank’’ (Knox 1977, 73), more recent studies have demonstrated that Spence deserves a more respectful reception (Kemp-Ashraf 1966). Indeed, Spence’s biographer asserts that Owenism and the subsequent heritage of British socialism stands in direct line of descent from Spence’s critique of capitalism (Rudkin 1966, 191ff.). Jour- nalists of the time agreed with this evaluation (see Halevy 1961, 44n). Unfortunately, the Spences of the world were unable to reverse or even impede the process of primitive accumulation.

No society went so far as the British in terms of primitive accumula- tion. This aspect of capitalist development is all but forgotten today. In- stead, separated by two centuries, contemporary economists such as Mil- ton Friedman (1962) gloss over the dark side of capitalism, ignoring the requisite subordination, while celebrating the freedom to dispose of one’s property. These modern economists, as we shall see, are very much mis- taken in their interpretation of the evolution of the so-called free market.

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