In his section on primitive accumulation in volume one of Capital, Marx writes: "The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of pof primitive accumulation.... The destructive influence that it exercises on the condition of the wage-labourer concerns us less however, here, than the forcible expropriation, resulting from it, of peasants, artisans, and in a word, all elements of the lower middle-class." Somewhere, I have the recollection, that Marx linked the growth of public debt with wars (there is a passing reference in the above quoted section to "maritime trade and commercial wars" but nothing very substantive.) Does anyone recall if, and where, Marx links war with debt, with taxes transfering wealth from the workers and the middle-class to capital - i.e. as part of the process of primitive accumulation? Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
