Dark Designs: The Transformation of Peasants into Factory Workers

Michael Perelman’s The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation provides a necessary albeit insufficient counterweight to the existing hagiographies of the classical school of political economy. The belief that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and other classical political economists were uncompromising proponents of laissez-faire policies towards the regulation of markets has come to be accepted even by many Marxist scholars (p. 1–2). Perelman sets out to discredit the dominant interpretation by documenting that Smith, Ricardo, and others actively advocated policies to deprive small-scale producers of their traditional means of support. The aim of the economists’ activism was to transform self-sufficient peasants into wage earning factory workers. According to Perelman these thinkers did not advocate a gradual or voluntary approach for the transition to a market economy. Rather, Perelman argues that the classical political economists supported “brutal acts associated with the process of stripping the majority of the people of the means of producing for themselves” (p. 2).

Perelman believes that the classical political economists only revealed their true preferences in their diaries, letters, and more practical writings. He appropriately fixes his gaze upon these marginal texts in order to reveal the “secret history of primitive accumulation.” Perelman is not content to scrutinize the canonical authors of the classical school. He seeks to expand the scope of the classical school beyond the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo to include the works of authors such as Sir James Steuart and Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He states that the new emphasis will highlight important lessons from classical political economy and reveal a deliberate attempt to ignore the heartless heritage of the classical school (p. 8). While the expanded and refocused scope is laudable, it does create difficulties for the lay reader. The reader is not provided with even a minimal set of criteria to judge whether a scholar was or was not a member of the classical school. The author seems to consider distinct groups such as the French Physiocrats as affiliated with the classical political economists. Even the appropriation of Sir James Steuart as a classical political economist could be contested given the importance of the statesman in Steuart’s work. Additionally, Perelman cites such a wide array of authors from Thomas Hobbes to Alfred Marshall in order to support his arguments that a reader unfamiliar with the history of economic thought can easily become confused.

Primitive Accumulation

The author sets out to demonstrate that primitive accumulation was a critical force in the development of capitalism and that the classical political economists supported this process. The concept of primitive or previous accumulation connotes a brutal, pre-capitalist form of accumulation that set the stage for the silent compulsion of capitalism. By separating common people from the means of providing for themselves, the process of primitive accumulation functioned to increase the supply of individuals dependent on wage labor for survival. A system of stern measures, such as restrictions upon hunting, reinforced the capitalist economy by keeping people from finding alternative survival strategies outside the system of wage labor (p. 14, 46). As the labor supply increased, the wage rate fell, further enhancing the development of a capitalist economy. For several decades Marxist historians have documented the process of primitive accumulation that preceded the industrial revolution in England. However, these scholars have not traced the complicity of classical political economists in accelerating the assimilation of peasants into factory workers.

The connivance of the classical political economists in the process of primitive accumulation is difficult to demonstrate. Clearly, the political economists showed a degree of contempt for the “idle peasantry”. Of course, Smith showed a great deal of disapproval for the idle and unproductive gentry as well. However, it is less clear that the political economists actively and consciously supported the brutal aspects of the process of primitive accumulation. For example, Game Laws forbade peasants from hunting and gathering timber, thereby restricting...