slow but sure expropriation; violence of this character works especially with the aid of fiscal arrangements.[1]
"(b) Next comes the concentrated and organised force of the State, which acts directly on labour, 'to regulate wages, i.e. force them within the limits suitable to surplus value making, to lengthen the working day, and to maintain the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence; this is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.[2]
"(c) We have, finally, violence properly so called, which occupies so great a place in the history of primitive accumulation, and which constitutes the principle subject of history."
A few supplementary observations may be useful here.
We must first of all observe that these different phases are placed in a logical sequence, starting from states which most resemble an organism, and in which no independent will appears, and ending in states in which individual minds bring forward their considered plans; but the historical order is quite the contrary of this order.
At the origin of capitalist accumulation we find some very distinct historical facts, which appear each in its proper time, with its own characteristics, and under conditions so clearly marked that they are described in the chronicles. We find, for instance, the expropriation of the peasants and the suppression of the old legislation which had constituted "serfdom and the industrial hierarchy." Marx adds: "The history of this
- ↑ Marx points out that in Holland taxation was used to raise the price of necessities artificially; this was the application of a principle of government: this system had a vicious effect on the working class and ruined the peasant, the artisan, and the other members of the better-paid workers; but it secured the absolute submission of the workers to their masters, the manufacturers (Capital, Eng. trans. p. 781).
- ↑ Capital, Eng. trans. p. 761.
