"Capitalism has been tied
from its birth to a savage repressiveness; it had its organization of
power and its state apparatus from the start. Did capitalism imply
a dissolution of the previous social codes and powers? Certainly.
But it had already established its wheels of power, including its
power of state, in the fissures of previous regimes. It is always like
that: things are not so progressive; even before a social formation is
established, its instruments of exploitation and repression are
already there, still turning in the vacuum, but ready to work at full
capacity. The first capitalists are like waiting birds of prey. They
wait for their meeting with the worker, the one who drops through
the cracks of the preceding system. It is even, in every sense, what
one calls primitive accumulation."