Affixing the Nomads: Revisiting Marx’s Theory of “So-Called Primitive Accumulation” with a Deleuzo-Guattarian-Inspired Theory of the Colonial State

Abstract

This essay tests Karl Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation on nomadic and seminomadic populations. Drawing on a comparative historical-sociological analysis of nomadic communities in North Africa and North America, it argues that in primitive accumulation, the control of mobility is as central as that of land enclosure. It theorizes the role of the colonial state as an apparatus of capture that operates not only through enclosure but through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. For the colonized, this historical and continuous process of primitive accumulation operates through a double enclosure: land and mobility. For the empire, this process consolidates imperialism and statehood. Primitive accumulation deployed by a colonial state is empire making. This essay thus agrees with indigenous and critical scholars about the race-making function of primitive accumulation and provides a theoretical foundation regarding the primitive accumulation of mobility relevant to—but occulted by—the field of the sociology of migration.