Devalorization

Abstract

This chapter shows that the process of primitive accumulation or direct appropriation is and must be internal to Marx’s theory of value. This is the case for precisely the methodological reasons Marx describes in his postface to the second edition of Capital. The core concepts in the “mode of presentation” (use-value, exchange-value, and value) describe the strictly immanent conditions or core “logic of capitalism” but are also derived from the historical “mode of inquiry.” Since primitive accumulation is part of the historical mode of inquiry, there must be a conceptual place for primitive accumulation in the mode of presentation itself. If not, then the mode of presentation is strictly speaking inadequate to the mode of inquiry—something that any dialectician, and Marx himself, must reject.