The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation

"The originators of classical political economy—Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Steuart, and others—created a discourse that explained the logic, the origin, and, in many respects, the essential rightness of capitalism. But, in the great texts of that discourse, these writers downplayed a crucial requirement for capitalism’s creation: For it to succeed, peasants would have to abandon their self-sufficient lifestyle and go to work for wages in a factory. Why would they willingly do this?

Clearly, they did not go willingly. As Michael Perelman shows, they were forced into the factories with the active support of the same economists who were making theoretical claims for capitalism as a self-correcting mechanism that thrived without needing government intervention. Directly contradicting the laissez-faire principles they claimed to espouse, these men advocated government policies that deprived the peasantry of the means for self-provision in order to coerce these small farmers into wage labor.

To show how Adam Smith and the other classical economists appear to have deliberately obscured the nature of the control of labor and how policies attacking the economic independence of the rural peasantry were essentially conceived to foster primitive accumulation, Perelman examines diaries, letters, and the more practical writings of the classical economists. He argues that these private and practical writings reveal the real intentions and goals of classical political economy—to separate a rural peasantry from their access to land."

Albin Egger-Lienz (Stribach bei Lienz 1868–1926 St. Justina bei Bozen), Zwei Schnitter, um 1922/1924

A Few Things for Us To Think About ( #1647 )   1.) The idol body is of no value to anyone! 2.) Good friends will tell us when we screw up! 3.) The poor starve slowly, the rich starve quick! 4.) In this life if we stumble and fall most people will throw rocks at us! 5.) Most people want other people to be lower than them! 6.) A poor servant of Christ will give away their only food to others! 7.)…