Towards a Global History of Primitive Accumulation
23A conference co-sponsored by the International Institute of Social History, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh
This conference aims for a historically grounded rethinking of the concept of “primitive” or “original” accumulation of capital. With this phrase, Karl Marx tried to capture the dual process by which wealth was accumulated in the hands of capitalists on the one hand, and labor power was commodified and made available for exploitation on the other. Recalling the often neglected violence of the centuries-long process that transformed peasant producers into industrial workers, Marx famously raged that its history was “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.” More than 150 years later, the same processes he described have continued to unfold all over the world, including in ostensibly socialist countries like the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and many postcolonial states throughout the global south. Given the current wave of interest in the role of violence and forced labor in the history of the global economy, we think the time has come to critically re-examine these processes, focusing in particular on the ways in which primitive accumulation has been a critical feature of economic development on a world scale.Call for papers
In order to begin the development of a broader conceptual framework that more fully captures the role of accumulation through violence in the history of the global economy, we solicit proposals for papers that are both grounded in empirical research and theoretically informed, and that explore any aspect of the worldwide history of primitive accumulation Download the full Call for Papers here
