Primitive Accumulation: How The Capitalists Made Their Wealth

The idea that wealth is something to strive towards and is within reach of everyone if we just work harder is ever present. Open a newspaper and you might see an article of a couple in their 20’s who bought a home by simply “ditching the takeaways” or they “quit drinking and partying for five years” but of course these articles leave out crucial details of these young people having a helping hand from wealthy parents or family in the form of free accommodation or sizeable lumps of money. Anyone can do it!

These stories avoid the unimaginable wealth the capitalists of our day have actually accumulated. Newspaper articles and TV shows which push this line serve a larger purpose. They claim wealth and property are earned through clean and honest hard work. Karl Marx was infuriated by similar arguments of economists of his time and dedicated a good part of his book “Capital” on what he termed “primitive accumulation.”

As time changes so does language and what he meant by “primitive” in 1867 would be closer to “original” today. Marx railed against earlier influential economic writers like Adam Smith who argued that the rich simply amassed their wealth by working harder and had saved up while workers had lived frivolously. The simplified explanation went “In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living… Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins.” [pg505, Marx]

Marx argued against the stupidity of such arguments and put forward that wealth was only built up by violence, exploitation and force. He wrote: “If money, according to Augier, ‘comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek’ capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” [pg536, Marx]

He didn’t just use emotional writing to make his argument. He used concrete examples from history and traced the accumulation of wealth back to violent means of seizing it. He wrote about the Enclosure acts of Parliament in the 1750’s in Britain which allowed wealthy landlords to fence off land. This land had previously been used in common, public ownership to graze animals and had the effect of forcing ordinary people into renting land they had previously had access to for extortionate rates.

Through state powers and the legal system the land was violently seized by a rich minority and the mass of ordinary people were deprived of their “means of production” by which Marx meant access to land. They then forced these “liberated” masses from the land and into city slums where they would have to find work in hellscape factories. Marx followed this by showing how many European countries violently took the wealth of other countries and used slavery, genocide, and theft to amass capital and wealth: “Liverpool waxed fat on the slave trade. This was its method of primitive accumulation.”

He was disgusted by how the success of wealth flowing through the city’s port was celebrated. He quoted a writer called Aikin who said this new ‘respectability’ for the city of Liverpool “has coincided with that spirit of bold adventure which has characterised the trade of Liverpool and rapidly carried it to its present state of prosperity.” Marx exploded this myth of adventure with the following facts: “Liverpool employed in the slave-trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760, 74; in 1770, 96; and in 1792, 132.” [pg536 Marx]

The rich accumulated their wealth though murder, theft and violence. They used every means to force people into slums and factories by depriving the masses access to the land. Once they had a captive workforce they ruthlessly exploited the workers to accumulate even greater wealth. No one becomes a billionaire by saving their wage. It’s impossible. The rich are only rich because of centuries of violence.

Today you will see news reports about the corporate tax take for Ireland and how it keeps the economy going. Citi Bank is one of the largest investors in the extraction of coal, oil and gas in the Amazon rain forest and is based in Dublin’s IFSC. They funded 19% of all oil and gas extraction in the Amazon in 2024-25 alone. Their profits are steeped in the blood of indigenous groups who were forced off their land by violent means while the Amazon is polluted and poisoned beyond recognition.

Marx showed that wealth isn’t just built up by vicious individuals exploiting others in a “free market”. This was all constructed and financed through legislation and enforced by state power. It is the only way that wealth is built up and it is not just some historical event. Although the period of “primitive” accumulation may have passed, the methods of the capitalist class are still the same today.

It is the essential character of capitalism and there can be no clean or ethical way of continuing as we are. In our lifetime we have seen this in action in Ireland. Following the 2008 financial crash mortgages were restricted for ordinary workers. We were too risky for banks was the news headline. Meanwhile the Irish state was cutting taxes for international funds and Irish banks were providing them cheap credit to buy up Irish properties to rent back to us at extortionate rates and the state ultimately steps in to help them evict us.

A socialist society where the workers are in charge and the people producing the wealth keep it and use it for the benefit of everyone is the only way forward. Karl Marx was a prolific writer and while at first his style of writing can appear inaccessible his writings were fighting the same system, defended by the same arguments we are bombarded with today.

Capitalism maintains a clear separation between us workers and a small elite who own the means of production - the factories and offices. This separation was initially created through dispossession, violence, and exploitation which was facilitated by the state. The great grandchildren of those who enacted that terrible violence still use precisely the same means to maintain their power over us today.