Chapter 26, where Marx criticized Adam Smith’s rather naïve conception of ‘previous accumulation’, certainly backs up Brenner’s claims (he used it, very eloquently, in attacking Wallerstein). But then, in Chapter 31, Marx says something much more congruent with Wallerstein’s own line of analysis, famously writing that:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.
The chapter leaves no doubt about the intricate connection between violence waged in the name of forced transfer and the origins of capitalism. Marx couldn’t be more explicit here: ‘the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world.’