Chapter 31 of volume 1 of Capital is called the “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.”This chapter contains Marx’s views on the relationship between imperialism and colonialism and early capitalist development in Europe, which some modern Marxists have used to argue that imperialist looting and theft of wealth was a necessary precondition for Western capitalism (Brewer 1984: 82; Harvey 2010: 297). And Marx indeed does seem to think that the many aspects of the imperialist exploitation of the...
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