Abstract
Marxist economic theory accounts for the relationship between capitalism and violence by using the concept of primitive accumulation. This article proposes to show how this concept was constructed and developed by analysing three stages: first its initial elaboration by Karl Marx (primitive accumulation as the prehistory of capital), then a first extension by Rosa Luxemburg (primitive accumulation as a current movement of geographical extension of the logic of capital from the centre to the periphery), and finally a second extension by David Harvey (primitive accumulation as a movement of “internal” recolonisation and “accumulation by dispossession”). The article proposes to articulate these three stages on the basis of the dialectic between law and violence as problematized by the philosopher Walter Benjamin (2018).