Marx also notes, again, here, the progressive and historically necessary function of capital in centralising and concentrating the scattered means of production. His use of the term primitive accumulation of capital, here, is slightly different to his use of the term in Capital I. Here the emphasis of the definition is on this historically progressive and necessary function of centralising and concentrating those existing means of production. In Capital I, the emphasis was on the actual historical process by which this was made possible. In other words, it was the fact that under feudalism and mercantilism large money hoards were accumulated by the pirates and privateers, who also established colonies, and operated large merchant companies, like the East India Company, as well as the money accumulated via the slave trade. These activities put large amounts of money into the hands of banks and merchants, which could be utilised as money-capital, and provided the basis, thereby, of bringing about the creation of industrial capitals.
“The primitive accumulation of capital. Includes the centralisation of the conditions of labour. It means that the conditions of labour acquire an independent existence in relation to the worker and to labour itself. This historical act is the historical genesis of capital, the historical process of separation which transforms the conditions of labour into capital and labour into wage-labour. This provides the basis for capitalist production.” (p 314-5)
This primary accumulation is distinguished from the subsequent accumulation precisely by the fact that a) the primary accumulation involves the use of money hoards obtained by means other than the extraction of surplus value from wage labour, whereas subsequent capital accumulation is based upon the accumulation of surplus value produced by wage labour within the context of capitalist production itself; b) the primary accumulation is only a gathering together, a centralisation of the existing means of production, whereas the subsequent capital accumulation is a vast expansion of the means of production, specifically as a consequence of, and for the benefit of the growth of capitalist production, and of capital. Capital thereby begets capital.
“Accumulation of large amounts of capital by the destruction of the smaller capitals. Attraction. Decapitalisation of the intermediate links between capital and labour. This is only the last degree and the final form of the process which transforms the conditions of labour into capital, then reproduces capital and the separate capitals on a larger scale and finally separates from their owners the various capitals which have come into existence at many points of society, and centralises them in the hands of big capitalists. It is in this extreme form of the contradiction and conflict that production—even though in alienated form—is transformed into social production.” (p 315)
And, as Marx describes in Capital III, examining the process of the expropriation of the expropriators, even these big capitalists then become socially redundant, as their social function in production is taken over by the day to day professional managers, technicians and administrators, who, as Hodgskin also notes, are drawn increasingly from the ranks of a more and more educated working-class itself. The role of the capitalists is relegated only to that of providers of money-capital, as they become a parasitical class of rentiers, living off the dividends and interest paid on their loaned money-capital. But, as Marx points out, in Capital III, Chapter 27, as credit itself becomes socialised, even this function of private capital disappears.
“As functionaries of the process which at the same time accelerates this social production and thereby also the development of the productive forces, the capitalists become superfluous in the measure that they, on behalf of society, enjoy the usufruct and that they become overbearing as owners of this social wealth and commanders of social labour. Their position is similar to that of the feudal lords whose exactions in the measure that their services became superfluous with the rise of bourgeois society, became mere outdated and inappropriate privileges and who therefore rushed headlong to destruction.” (p 315)
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