Marx on “The Origin and Development of Capitalism” Key Terms

Bourgeoisie ideal of modern individual, rational, self-interested, capitalist, owner of means of production; “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian nations, into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it call civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after itself.” (137)

Bourgeoisie Politics “the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (128)

Proletariat working class of capitalist society; free laborers “free” in double sense: 1) free to choose where to sell his/her labor; 2) free (disconnected) from the product of his/her labor; (politically free, socially unfree)

Feudalism predecessor to capitalism; “the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundations the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing instury, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.” (138)

Capital (as opposed to wealth) exists not for the betterment of human life, not to fulfill human needs, but exists primarily to reproduce itself and expand

Commodity anything created with the sole intention to sell and make a profit (requires “free” labor and private means of production)

Primative accumulation pre-history of capital, enclosure of the commons, privatization of all property, displacement of those who depended upon land for work and subsistence, sparks migration into the city, landless peasants become industrial proletariat by selling their labor to capitalists in the city

Industrialization revolutionary advance of capitalism, confluence of private ownership, increased technology, global trade and exchange, results in rapid advancement of goods, materials, wealth, and living standards

Private property key to capitalism; “antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labor and external conditions of labor belong to private individuals” (139)

Means of production system by which a given society produces what it needs

Unions “the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself” (141)

The epidemic of overproduction “commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society…” “because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society” (142)