Original Accumulation: Iberian Empires and Modes of Exchange

• In Event: Theorizing Original Accumulation in Latin America

Abstract

Recently, Kojin Karatani has argued that it is necessary to shift the attention from historical materialism (with its emphasis on modes of production and industrial capitalism) to modes of exchange (including the State and reciprocal modes of exchange as well as commodity exchange). This paper will posit that such a shift, which highlights the ongoing process of the subordination of non capitalist modes of exchange to the self generative movement of capital, is key to exploding the teleology of Marx’s so-called “primitive accumulation.” We propose to examine the historical example of early Spanish and Portuguese empires to determine the effect of this expansion on the geopolitical development of capital, including its analogies and continuities in the present. The latter goal of the paper will question in particular the relationship between material contexts of exchange and the metaphysical idealist systems of credit, which are often indifferent to the source of surplus value. Far from being a mere disavowed episode of violence and plundering of the State, original accumulation under Iberian empires made possible the emergence of a global network of credit, and circulation of commodities that exceeded the control of the Catholic Crown. We will argue that this historical example exposes the theoretical links between zones of genocidal or biopolitical violence and networks of exchange in a model that continues to be relevant today, despite historical changes in the state-form.

Authors

• Orlando Nelson Bentancor Trebino, Barnard College

• Anna H More, Universidade de Brasília