Primitive accumulation of capital

In Marxian economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour. Karl Marx rejected this explanation as 'childishness,' instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation 'entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation'. This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism. The concept was initially called in different ways, and the expression of an 'accumulation' which is at the origin of capitalism, began to appear with Adam Smith. Smith, in his English language The Wealth of Nations spoke of a previous accumulation, although he never actually refers to accumulation as previous accumulation in 'The Wealth of Nations'; Karl Marx, in the German language Das Kapital, reprised Smith's expression, by translating it to German as ursprünglich ('original, initial'); Marx's translators, in turn, rendered it into English as primitive. James Steuart, with his 1767 work, is considered by some scholars as the greatest classical theorist of primitive accumulation.