I miss the days when my daughter asked me questions like who made everything? Why do we die? Are you going to die? Am I going to die? How did Jim Keltner get all those gigs? Why did Dylan go Christian? Why did Joni Mitchell stop playing the dulcimer? I was confident I knew it all and then she asked what is the difference between primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession? Turns out I wasn’t monitoring as many Paw Patrol episodes as I should have but alright, I’m modern, I can tell her the truth.
.
The Earth made everything and everything dies, I can’t tell you why but probably it is the same answer as why we are alive, I will die you will too, Keltner obviously made a deal with an evil magician, Dylan believed in those ideas, Joni got into modern jazz and the dulcimer was locked into a diatonic sequence, she might yet play it again. Marx was trying to sort out the big historical picture of who had wealth and how did they get it, generally it was from stealing, robbing and murder. Harvey is talking about the same thing but updating the term because Marx was writing 150 years ago, language changes.
.
It’s a pity, in your father’s humble opinion, that some Marxists might fight too long over these differences because the larger issue is the plight of the poor or the concentration of power by a few, regardless of everything else. Musicians use to waste hours like this too over analogue vs. digital. Have you noticed Ryder is always telling Skye, Chase, Zuma and Rocky what to do and where to go? For every rescue completed by the little pups they never acquire the positionally of Ryder despite the fact that they perform the work. Look closer, see how the worker perpetuates themselves as workers and the capitalist as capitalist?