Affixing the Nomads: Revisiting Marx’s Theory of “So-Called Primitive Accumulation” with a Deleuzo-Guattarian-Inspired Theory of the Colonial State

Abstract

This essay tests Karl Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation on nomadic and seminomadic populations. Drawing on a comparative historical-sociological analysis of nomadic communities in North Africa and North America, it argues that in primitive accumulation, the control of mobility is as central as that of land enclosure. It theorizes the role of the colonial state as an apparatus of capture that operates not only through enclosure but through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. For the colonized, this historical and continuous process of primitive accumulation operates through a double enclosure: land and mobility. For the empire, this process consolidates imperialism and statehood. Primitive accumulation deployed by a colonial state is empire making. This essay thus agrees with indigenous and critical scholars about the race-making function of primitive accumulation and provides a theoretical foundation regarding the primitive accumulation of mobility relevant to—but occulted by—the field of the sociology of migration.

Key Words:

• Colonial State, Race, Gilles Deleuze
• Félix Guattari
• Nomads
• Primitive Accumulation

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Agustin Laó-Montes, Cedric de Leon, Millie Thayer, and Mwangi wa Gīthīnji for their comments and suggestions and the ASA Comparative Historical Sociology Section 2022 panel for a stimulating discussion on the first draft.

Notes

1 A seminomadic tribe refers to a situation in which pastoral nomads would cultivate land and/or care for date palms in an oasis. This was the case for my tribe, the Neffat, who were herders (camels and sheep) and used to cultivate and care for their own date palms in the Tozeur oasis in the south of Tunisia. There is no strict binary between sedentary and nomadic.

2 For the case of Algeria, see, e.g., concessions made to the Algerians in Setif, Constantine, and Batna at France’s Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer (ANOM) GGA série L 32.

3 I chose to use the Arabic term qabila as opposed to “tribe” as the latter concept has been charged with a colonial epistemic that racialized and inferiorized tribal communities.

4 On child labor in the cotton industry, see Humphries (2013).

5 See Luxemburg ([1913] 2003, 351): “Force is the only solution open to capital; the accumulation of capital, seen as an historical process, employs force as a permanent weapon, not only at its genesis, but further on down to the present day.”

6 See Luxemburg (351) about natives in the colonies: “Their means of production and their labour power no less than their demand for surplus products is necessary to capitalism.”

7 See Luxemburg ([1913] 2003, 434): “Later, it is employed to subject the modern colonies, to destroy the social organisations of primitive societies so that their means of production may be appropriated forcibly to introduce commodity trade in countries where the social structure had been unfavourable to it, and to turn the natives into a proletariat by compelling them to work for wages in the colonies.”

8 For example, Marx posits ([1867] 1976, 875) that “The capital relation presupposes a complete separation between the workers and the ownership of the conditions for the realization of their labour. As soon as capitalist production stands on its own feet, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a constantly extending scale.”

9 See also Murphy (2018).

10 When French colonization was instituted through the Treaty of Bardo, the qabilas immediately started organizing alliances to launch an anticolonial struggle that lasted until independence in the late 1950s. Ali Ben Khalifa, chief of the Neffat qabila and once a representative of the beylik, formed a large army composed from southern kinship-based qabilas. The initial phase of French occupation in Tunisia was concentrated on militarily crushing the native. This colonial violence, documented by the Tunisian Truth and Dignity Commission established by law in 2013, continued with torture, imprisonments, displacements, rapes, and murders as well as continuous imperial border making (Mullin and Rouabah 2018). The first postulate holds.

11 A haboos, sometimes called a waqf, provides a collective right of easement on domains that are managed by trusts. These land divisions were created to provide revenue to religious activities and the maintenance of mosques. Haboos can be public when managed by a trust or can be private when donated by a person to a religious charity. In that case, after their passing, the owner’s descendants continue getting the usufruct from the domain for one generation; thereafter, the haboos becomes public. Haboos domains aimed to provide religious entities with sustained finance. Therefore, these domains were ideally either rented out or used for productive activities. Fallow land was not profitable. The government therefore enacted several laws codifying the use of a haboos, regulating, for example, perpetuity rental contracts called enzel. Within this legal structure, enzelists were sure to work the land and maybe generate subsistence from it for perpetuity without owning it. On the other hand, religious foundations sustained sources of revenue from the land without having to care for it.

12 The khammessat, which means “one-fifth,” was a system widely dispersed in North Africa. The landlord provided the land, the machines, the seeds, and the animals, and the khammes provided the fifth element, their labor. For this reason, the khammes received a fifth of the harvest. However, if the harvest was bad, the landlord was supposed to cover this lack, feeding the khammes and their family. Commonly, a khammes was part of the landlord’s family.

13 In the Sahel region, where plantations of olive trees required intense labor, the landlord would use a megherssat contract, which means “plantation.” The contracting worker (meghasrsi) would plant and care for the olive trees. Since it takes between ten to twelve years to see the first yield, the landlord would provide advanced capital for the merghessi’s work. If, at the first harvest, the merghessi could show healthy and well-cared-for olives, they would become the owner of half of that land. This system was a successful incentive and enabled the plantation of the olive forest in the Sahel. The megharssa as a feudal system was unique in the way it provided the means of production to the laborer at the expiration of the contract. This was not the case with the khamassat system, which relied on an economic but mostly social relationship between the contractants.

14 Poor peasants who own land but not enough for their subsistence, which forces them to sell their labor to wealthier farmers.

15 Lanessan was a very important figure within the French political elite. Indeed, following his mission in Tunisia, he was first appointed governor of Indochina and then appointed Minister of the Navy. Based on the success of Enfidha, Lassenan developed a strategy of lasting colonization. He deplored the attitude of the French settlers who wished to expel the native population. Lassenan wished to replicate the Enfidha model. As a French politician, Lanessan condemned the exterminating logic of colonial settlerism, which he described as “inhuman, unintelligent and impractical,” but this wasn’t due to a high moral ground; extermination of natives was an antieconomic measure when there were not enough settlers or when slavery was not an option. His report further demonstrated the economic advantage of “affixing the natives onto the ground,” considering the lack of French settlers, as a Tunisian worker would cost much less than a French worker.

16 The French deputy explained his strategy as follows: “We must think about using their (the natives) labor force and, for that, we must fix them. However, for this purpose, two means could be attempted. The first would consist in granting land to nomadic kinship-based qabilas, on the condition that they establish residences there … it will be necessary to strip the current owners for the benefit of people who have nothing, that is to say, to cause the discontent of a significant fraction of the inhabitants … It remains only to fix the natives to the ground by the lure of a gain to be realized with the help of their work” (Lanessan 1887, 96).

17 Archives collected in Aix-en-Provence: files Setif, Constantine, and Batna in GGA série L 32.

18 Tunisia at the time was still providing agricultural products and some crafts from its protoindustry. Before and during the Ottoman Empire, trade was monopolized by a local yet Europe-interconnected merchant class (Wallerstein 1974; see also Hammami 2020). European traders, who had always kept a foothold in Tunisia, had their economic position strengthened by rapid industrialization in their home countries. After a series of treaties, Europeans could come to own land and estates in mid-nineteenth-century Tunisia (Mahjoubi 1977). Powerful financial institutions and companies enriched by mercantilism bought large estates. European nations were competing with one another through their national private companies. France encouraged its nationals and financial capitalists to buy land, and this is how, before colonization, the powerful Societé de Corail (Hammami 2020) bought massive assets in Tunisia and why French credit company La Société Marseillaise de Crédit acquired the Enfidha domain (the largest land estate in Tunisia, at 120,000 hectares, which is still disputed today).

19 National Archives of Tunisia: see the rebellion led by Ali Ben Ghadgahem (FA 1881-H-0185-1049 and FA 1881-H-0184-103).

20 Tunisia can be divided into three regions offering conditions favorable to various agricultures: cereal in the north (the High Tell and Marjarda Valley regions), olives in the Sahel and high steppes regions, and date palms in the southern oasis (the Sahara Desert and Arad regions). Tunisians of Amazigh origin were mostly sedentary while those of Arab filiation were nomads or seminomads, known to be more difficult to administer (Mahjoubi 1977). The Tuaregs in the south were nomadic and self-ruled, such as the Ouarghamma in the region of Matmata.

i Writing about Indochina, Jules Ferry explicitly stated the one goal of colonization as creating a national market for French industrial products. He thus advised French industrialists to adapt their product since the indigenous home market can represent a consequential profit source. Whole archives of documents relate the creation of markets by the colonial administration in even the most remote rural areas (Louis 1976), which contributed to the evolution of nomads’ needs and tastes extending to French bread and powdered milk. In the mountainous Amazigh settlements, marketplaces were isolated with remote fortifications called ksour. The colonial administration created new markets near Amazigh settlements to ensure access to French products, thus converting them to “modern” consumers.

ii See Duffy (2019).

iii See Kamara (1993) and Kamara and Leservoisier (2000).

iv See Moctar (2020).

v See Lévesque (2010).