The primitive accumulation section, as I read it, is the “real” history – the contingent, messy history – of the development of capitalism, and so it makes sense in many ways to put it first. Marx thought, I guess, that this would be backward, since capitalism generates moments internally, which then “present themselves” as remnants of earlier social forms – so he’s got a whole metacritique happening of things that get taken to be “past”, but that are actually necessary moments of the contemporary reproduction of capital. He starts from that illusory history, showing how it’s generated in the present – and I think he doesn’t believe he can discuss what he thinks the “real” history is, until after he’s done that. (Of course, I think there’s an element to Marx’s presentational style that is sort of what you might expect if a committee sat down, wanting to know how best to confuse the readers of a work… I love the correspondence with Engels, where Engels is pointing to the Science of Logic as an example for Marx of a clearer form of written presentation. You know you’re in trouble with your writing style when… ;-P)

But yeah, I was idly thinking I might like to collect some images like this, to toss into the thesis periodically.