Marx, the State, and Primitive Accumulation

Critically engaging with contributions from both the Global North and South, this book offers a systematic rethinking of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation and its relevance to contemporary capitalism. The book argues that recent attempts to reinterpret dispossession often suffer from conceptual overstretch and a neglect of production and class relations. The book’s focus is the concept of expanded primitive accumulation: an ongoing, capitalist state-mediated process of extra-economic coercion that separates producers from privately owned, communal, and state-owned means of production and subsistence. This concept is situated within a broader framework that distinguishes and relates primitive accumulation, labour exploitation, normal capitalist exchange relations, and class differentiation within the totality of capitalist social relations. The analysis foregrounds the capitalist state as both enforcer and manager of dispossession, and shows that such processes are shaped by class struggle and require ideological legitimation. Combining theoretical reconstruction with empirical analysis, including a case study from Odisha, India, the book develops the political implications of dispossession, emphasizing the need for working-class leadership in struggles against capitalism. It will be of interest to scholars and students across the social sciences, as well as to readers concerned with Marxist political and economic thought, capitalism, dispossession, and the state.