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Towards a Global History of Primitive Accumulation Conference - report

27 May 2019 - 20:09

Forged in blood and fire. Report from the Conference 
“Towards a Global History of Primitive Accumulation”
By Marten Dondorp

How are land, seas, habitats, and human bodies incorporated into global market society? This question animated more than forty researchers to come together at the “Towards a Global History of Primitive Accumulation” conference. This conference at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam, from 9 to 11 May, 2019, was co-sponsored by the IISH, the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Houston. The organizing committee consisted of Pepijn Brandon, Nyklas Frykman, Wendy Goldman, Marcus Rediker and Marcel van der Linden.

Apart from the speakers and chairs, it drew visitors from many countries, including the US, Japan, Brazil, the UK, Sweden, Germany and Austria. The large audience that followed the conference proceedings throughout these three days, shows the re-emergence of interest in questions of the role of violence and dispossession in capitalism’s long history. 

Towards a Global History of Primitive Accumulation

In his keynote address, Jairus Banaji linked these conceptualizations of the state back to the wider history of capitalism, focusing on the way merchants and states shaped each other in different moments of capitalist development. Banaji also called for an end to “stagist” histories of capitalism, which try to confine the state, merchant capital, or primitive accumulation to particular time-periods. A thorough history of capitalism analyzes how these three elements continue to exist and affect each other. 

Blood on the red banner

Questions surrounding the continuing role of the state were developed most starkly by the presentations covering primitive accumulation under ostensibly socialist regimes, an under-researched area when it comes to primitive accumulation.

In her keynote address, Wendy Goldman analyzed the contentions surrounding industrialization in the early Soviet Union. State planners were faced with the question of how to industrialize without a sufficiently concentrated surplus to draw on. Should the peasantry therefore be made to produce at a loss, so that their capital could flow to the cities? Or should they be granted market prices for their produce, with the expectation that their consumption would eventually stimulate urban industry? 

Playlist Primitive Accumulation on Youtube