Promotional Information

Rethinks the history of classical political economy by assessing the Marxian idea of primitive accumulation," the process by which a propertyless working class is created."

Table of Contents

Introduction: Dark Designs

1. The Enduring Importance of Primitive Accumulation

2. The Theory of Primitive Accumulation

3. Primitive Accumulation and the Game Laws

4. The Social Division of Labor and Household Production

5. Elaborating the Model of Primitive Accumulation
6. The Dawn of Political Economy

7. Sir James Steuart’s Secret History of Primitive Accumulation

8. Adam Smith’s Charming Obfuscation of Class

9. The Revisionist History of Professor Adam Smith

10. Adam Smith and the Ideological Role of the Colonies

11. Benjamin Franklin and the Smithian Ideology of Slavery and Wage Labor

12. The Classics as Cossacks: Classical Political Economy versus the Working Class

13. The Counterattack

14. Notes on Development
Conclusion
References
Index

About the Author

Michael Perelman is Professor of Economics at California State University, Chico. His books include The Natural Instability of Markets: Expectations, Increasing Returns, and the Collapse of Markets.

Reviews

"This study is to be admired for its comprehensiveness, scope, and the amount of unearthing and excavation Perelman provides The indictment of political economists who addressed themselves to the matter of primitive accumulation is masterful."--H. T. Wilson, York University