The Contemporary Significance of Primitive Accumulation∗

Abstract

The emerging body of literature on accumulation by dispossession (ABD) sharpens the political edge of the critique of contemporary capitalism. While this is welcome, there are also reasons for concern about the way ABD has been taken up. This is so, because the processes at the heart of Marx's enunciations of primitive accumulation are widely considered passé or are subsumed within the broadened conception of ABD. It matters because the separation of agricultural households from land is an ongoing and central reality of our times, and the social effects have been disastrous. Achieving greater clarity around primitive accumulation and the constellation of issues associated with the agrarian question, then, is of more than passing importance. This article argues that radical geographers should return to the land to undertake an open and materialist engagement with contemporary processes of primitive accumulation.