International Institute of Social History
May 29th, 2019
In all, the conference Primitive Accumulation, worked to thoroughly question the concepts that have been handed down to us by holding them up to history. Are state and market really so separate? Are peaceful exchange and violent expropriation really opposite poles? Is slavery really antagonistic to wage labor? In rousing final speeches, Silvia Federici and Peter Linebaugh linked these historical and theoretical questions to political questions facing us today. As global capitalism trudges through a long existential crisis and violence proliferates, it is useful analyze how its various elements have hung together and persisted.