Primitive accumulation against primitive communism

The fact that remnants survive of the way of life that existed under forms of what Engels (social-democratic buddy/sponsor of Marx) described as primitive communism enables us to study and perhaps even preserve these as a foundation for the future.

I'd really disagree with the characterization of Engels as a "social democrat," especially in the modern sense of the word. Just because he encouraged the development of socialist parties in Germany and elsewhere doesn't mean that he was only interested in "humanizing capitalism," which is the goal of most social democrats today. It's also true that both Marx and Engels made statements regarding the possibility of a peaceful/parliamentary road to socialism in certain countries (e.g. see Marx's comments on America and Britain in 1872), but they never restricted themselves to parliamentary means, nor argued that workers' tactics should be everywhere the same.

During Engels' time, the term "social democrat" itself also did not carry the same reformist connotations that it does today. It was basically synonymous with "socialist/communist," which is why revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg used it in works such as Social Reform or Revolution?.

The process of primitive accumulation is partly the process of creating free labour, i.e. freed of ties to the land that once sustained us. The acts of enclosure and the highland clearances are the most notables instances of primitive accumulation in England and Scotland respectively.

With respect to the creation of "free laborers" in the U.S., it's interesting to note that the creation of textile mills in places like New England was also accompanied by the undermining of farmers' and others' subsistence practices. The construction of dams and canals to help power the new textile mills disrupted the livelihoods of the lower classes who relied on such rivers as a food source (i.e. fishing) and in other ways. So in addition to workers' opposition to the emerging factory system from within the mills (e.g. the well-known opposition of the Factory Girls, as was captured in labor magazines like the Voice), there was also this resistance to the undermining of the lower classes' subsistence practices. Ted Steinberg discusses such developments in his book Down to Earth (see especially Ch. 4): "Long before water became a commodity for powering New England's factories, before the dams and canals produced energy, farmers relied on rivers and streams to provide food for the family economy" (58). I'm not sure to what extent such undermining of subsistence practices directly contributed to the creation of an American working class "freed" from any other means of surviving except working for a wage, but it certainly seems like the creation of textile mills in New England assisted that process.

To abbreviate Engels: this new social order will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production and institute a system with the participation of all members of society.

What could match the description of social-democracy Marx gave more than Engels' vision of a future society?

There’s nothing in Engels’ Principles of Communism, which was basically a preliminary version of the Communist Manifesto in catechism-form, that advocates for merely improving the condition of workers under capitalism, as is the goal of most social democrats today. In the quote above, Engels is saying that society as a whole should take control of industry, ending the isolated and chaotic production that characterizes capitalism, and conduct it according to a definite plan for meeting human needs (i.e. ending commodity production or production for exchange).

Engels also directly attacked bourgeois socialists (or modern-day social democrats) in the Principles of Communism (MECW Vol. 6, p. 355),

The second group [of socialists] consists of adherents of present society in whom the evils inseparable from it have awakened fears for its survival. They therefore endeavour to preserve present society but to remove the evils bound up with it. With this end in view, some of them propose measures of mere charity, and others grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretext of reorganising society, would retain the foundations of present society, and thus present society itself. These bourgeois socialists will also have to be continuously fought by the Communists, since they work for the enemies of the Communists and defend the society which it is the Communists’ aim to destroy.

You think that communism means "destroying society as whole"? What is that supposed to mean?

Engels, Marx, Luxemburg, Pannekoek etc were all Social Democrats and communists. It's just that word in its older meaning doesn't mean the same as it does now. The distinction between "social democracy" and "communism" comes with the Bolsheviks

Engels is saying that civil society as a whole should take control of industry. Precisely, there lies social-democracy. The communists, i.e. the proletariat, do not destroy society as a whole, just one element of it.

This discussion was intended to be about the destruction of primitive communism by means of primitive accumulation but has been derailed to a discussion whether Engels' petty bourgeois position within society led necessarily to his social-democracy or whether he is a true arbitrar of communism.

Your interpretation is off there mate. If not the economic order itself—the basis of class society and exploitation—then what other aspects of capitalist society do you think Engels was so eager to preserve? You also just quoted Engels saying that he was interested in destroying the whole of capitalist society, so it's unclear what you actually disagree with.

It's doubly strange that you're wanting to talk about Engels' account of primitive communism, as discussed in such works as the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, while you also (erroneously) describe him as nothing more than a "petty-bourgeois social democrat." If Engels' politics were no different from some modern-day social democrat's, then wouldn't that cast doubt on his description and praise of communistic societies (e.g. his description and praise of the Iroquois)? On the contrary, here's Engels praising the Iroquois for having mastery over their production in contrast to capitalist society, in which the whole of society is dominated by their own products/commodities (MECW Vol. 26, p. 216),

Engels wrote: The Iroquois were still far from controlling the forces of nature but within the limits set for them by nature they were masters of their production. Apart from poor harvests in their little gardens, the exhaustion of the fish stocks in their lakes and rivers, or of game in their forests, they knew what the outcome would be of their mode of gaining a livelihood. The outcome would be: means of sustenance, meagre or abundant; but it could never be unpremeditated social upheavals, the severing of gentile bonds, or the splitting of the members of gentes and tribes into antagonistic classes fighting each other. Production was carried on within the most restricted limits, but—the producers exercised control over their own product. This was the immense advantage of barbarian production that was lost with the advent of civilisation; and to win it back on the basis of the enormous control man now exercises over the forces of nature, and of the free association that is now possible, will be the task of the next generations.

The fact that remnants survive of the way of life that existed under forms of what Engels (social-democratic buddy/sponsor of Marx) described as primitive communism enables us to study and perhaps even preserve these as a foundation for the future.

The Eurocentric analysis of the periphery of primitive communism by Engels sits perfectly with his social-democracy.

So if Engels' account of primitive communism is so flawed and Euro-centric (as opposed to your favorite thinkers?), then I guess it doesn't actually enable us to learn all that much? You do also realize that "primitive communism" and "primitive/original accumulation" are not just generic terms and ideas, but rather terms and ideas coined and developed by Marx and Engels?

If you were to have also read Engels' Origin of the Family—the chief work that deals with primitive communism, which you're so eager to discuss—then you would know that he actually praises "barbarian" societies throughout the work. Engels' use of archaic terms like "barbarian" and "primitive" (which he adopted from Lewis H. Morgan, whose own anthropological writings greatly influenced Engels' work) does not signify any sort of negative appraisal of past societies or peoples. On the contrary, Engels regarded certain Indigenous peoples, such as the Iroquois, as models to emulate in terms of their mastery over production, as well as in terms of the higher social status accorded to women in such societies. He's far more critical of bourgeois "civilization" (naturally) and the modern bourgeois family, which he associates with the enslavement and degradation of women (MECW Vol. 26, p. 181),

Engels wrote: The modern individual family is based on the overt or covert domestic slavery of the woman; and modern society is a mass composed solely of individual families as its molecules. Today, in the great majority of cases, the man has to be the earner, the bread-winner of the family, at least among the propertied classes, and this gives him a dominating position which requires no special legal privileges. In the family, he is the bourgeois; the wife represents the proletariat.

I certainly wouldn't say that there is nothing to critique in Engels' Origin of the Family (e.g. we have better anthropological and historical evidence today as compared to 140 years ago), but you don't tell us what you actually disagree with.

Yet bourgeois man's control over the forces of nature transpires to be nothing of the sort. The dams that bourgeois man builds to expropriate energy are nothing but disasters waiting to happen when faced by inclement weather.

Where does Engels suggest that people can have "complete control over nature" (or that a communist society would simply continue using science and technology the same way as under capitalism)? It reminds me of a passage by Engels in the Dialectics of Nature, as quoted by John Bellamy Foster, which directly contradicts what you're saying,

Engels wrote: Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. When the Italians of the Alps used up the pine forests on the southern slopes, so carefully cherished on the northern slopes, they had no inkling that by doing so they were cutting at the roots of the dairy industry in their region; they had still less inkling that they were thereby depriving their mountain springs of water for the greater part of the year, and making it possible for them to pour still more furious torrents on the plains during the rainy seasons. . . . Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

If the ideas of Engels (co-author of the Communist Manifesto) were so antithetical to those of his life long collaborator Karl Marx it seems strange that Marx never noticed this nor commented on it.

The meaning of the word "social democracy", like all political terms, was always contentested, with its meaning changing over time.

The idea that Pannekoek and Luxemburg did not take proletarian self emancipation seriously is laughable. What evidence do you have for that?

I think your mistake is thinking that "social democracy" had some kind of fixed meaning - state ownership of means of production perhaps -when it didn't. Instead we have to look at what the people using the particular term at a particular time meant by it.

"I know that Engels is sometimes co-credited with authorship of the Manifesto but it does not ring true to me. I think that Jenny Marx probably had more input into its composition."

That's pamphlet had *always* been credited to them both. And nowhere has it been suggested otherwise. Why make stuff up? Weird.

Now you think someone was saying that Engels wanted to demolish all housing? Wow.

There's seems little point continuing this exchange.