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The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
A compelling and critical destruction of both the English agricultural revolution and the theory of comparative advantage, upon which unequal trade has been justified for three centuries, this account argues that these ideas have been used to disguise the fact that the North—from the time of colonialism to the present day—has used the much greater agricultural productivity of the South to feed and improve the living standards of its own people while impoverishing the South. At the same time, the imposition of neoliberal “reforms” in the African continent has led to greater unemployment, spiraling debt, land and livestock losses, reduced per capita food production, and decreased nutrition. Arguing that political stability hangs in the balance, this book calls for labor-intensive small-scale production, new thinking about which agricultural commodities are produced, the redistribution of the means of food production, and increased investment in rural development. The combined effort of African and Indian scholarly work, this account demands policies that defend the land rights of small producers and allow people to live with dignity.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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770 people want to read
About the author
Utsa Patnaik
19 books65 followersUtsa Patnaik is an Indian Marxist economist. She taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, from 1973 until her retirement in 2010. Her husband is the Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik.
Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the Somerville College, Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty.
Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the Somerville College, Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty.
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June 4, 2023
Economics of Imperialism 101
Preamble:
--2021 has been a year where I decided to check off as many intimidating-but-must-reads as possible, from Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 to Michael Hudson tomes (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance and The Bubble and Beyond). Along the way, there were several unexpected gems (ex. Jason Hickel's Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions).
...So, it is quite something that this 96-pager stood out.
--First, consider the lineage of (Western) “Economics”:
1) Classical trade theory was conveniently imperialist as capitalist industrialization was predicated on colonialism’s cheap (often tropical) inputs + labour.
2) Marx critiqued Classical economics, but never lived long enough to get to their trade theory, derailing many Western Marxists.
3) Mainstream economics (Neoclassical), horrified by Marx using Classical economics to critique capitalism, rejected Classical along with reality.
4) John Maynard Keynes, in critiquing Neoclassical fantasies during the Great Depression, still represented the British Empire.
…So, I’m not being a jackass when I give 2-stars to:
1) Your Western capitalism-reformer heroes: Paul Krugman, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty... at their best with Mariana Mazzucato's Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.
2) Global South reformists like Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism), Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom), etc.
...If it’s any consolation, I try to be just as critical of Western scholars I look up to when they make such omissions, ex. Michael Hudson's Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy and David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
--To be taken seriously, critical Global South economists trying to synthesize imperialism must work their way backwards through this mountain of biased, self-referential assumptions accumulating over centuries; this also means that success in this challenge completely flips “Economics” on its head!
--I was lucky to stumble across Vijay Prashad some 8 years ago, who flipped geopolitics/history on its head by opening the door to anti-imperialist Global South perspectives (https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74). Vijay mentioned Prabhat Patnaik as his favorite economist. No doubt Prabhat is a treasure, but his delivery is steeped in labyrinthian economic theory.
…I could not distinguish this in Prabhat’s co-authored books theorizing imperialism, but it turns out the other half of the Patnaik power couple is more decipherable in presentation; this makes Utsa Patnaik the dream radical economist! Have a listen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
Highlights:
1) Western Financial Crises or Imperialist Agrarian Crises?:
--First, note that we should avoid being crude/sectarian. I’m not setting up a bipolar “either or” scenario here, as clearly both factors are present and interact with each other. I am merely contrasting the two to demonstrate the overwhelming bias that one perspective enjoys in both mainstream and alternative economics.
--(Western) Economics’ conception of economic crises revolve around Western Finance:
a) Great Depression:
--Economics’ focus is on the 1929 Great Crash of Wall Street, as well as the preceding “Roaring Twenties” (1920s) of mass consumer industrial production and financial speculation.
--Utsa instead focuses on agricultural production, i.e. food and certain primary commodities (raw material inputs to industry; Utsa seems less focused on energy here). WWI disrupted European agriculture, resulting in an expansion of agricultural output outside Europe. By post-WWI recovery, there was agricultural overproduction relative to demand, resulting in a severe and prolonged fall in global agricultural prices starting in 1924-25. This disrupted the trade balances of exporters; the pre-Keynesian economic response was national austerity. The resulting global demand downward spiral hit late-industrializing Germany/Italy/Japan, who (typical for capitalist crises) reacted with fascism: military production to revive demand and expansionism to seize raw materials.
--Next steps: synthesize Michael Hudson’s geopolitical economy (mostly starting from Western perspectives, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt) with the Patnaiks' Global South version (for their magnum opus, see Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
b) Neoliberalism:
--Economics focuses on the Western stagflation crisis (unemployment + inflation) and generally blame this on labour unions and social welfare spending. Those who actually consider reality focus on the geopolitics of US’s post-WWII Bretton Woods global plan, and how it was disrupted by US genocidal war spendings in Korea and Vietnam (Hudson's aforementioned Super Imperialism and Varoufakis' The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy).
--The bridge to Global South perspectives starts with the 1973 and 1979 Oil Shocks. Note: Hudson contextualizes the Oil Shocks with a prior grain embargo by the US quadrupling grain prices (I’ll have to dig on this and how it relates with the mainstream rendition of the “Great Grain Robbery” of 1972 from USSR purchasing US grain).
--The broader Global South context is decolonization in the 1950-60s, thus de-linking of Global South developmental states away from global capitalism’s imperialist Finance/trade dependency in order to build national food sovereignty. Western “Leftists” with their heads in the clouds of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? cannot seem to empathize with this period of social change and imagination: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.
--This national de-linking and internationalist decolonization (symbolized by the push for the New International Economic Order, NIEO, to challenge colonial-era commodity pricing, finance, and technologies) was of course an existential threat to global capitalism, which responded by unleashing Finance (“Financialization”; Wall Street had been regulated after the Great Crash and during the post-WWII “Golden Age” after all) and reviving imperialist onslaughts (IMF/World Bank “Structural Adjustment Programs”). Note: Hudson stresses the US/World Bank global plan is for the US to control the global food supply (i.e. food staples) with its intensive industrial + heavily-subsidized agriculture, while the Global South exports cash crops.
c) Today’s Late-Neoliberalism:
--Since “Neoliberalism” unleashed Wall Street, there has been much to say on Financial crises (including 2008). Utsa considers the growing demand for Global South agriculture via air-freighting of perishable products alongside Neoliberalism’s destruction of postcolonial states’ food sovereignty policies. Ex. India’s infamous farmer suicides starting from Neoliberal onslaughts in the 1990s, where peasant farmers must now contend with volatile global food prices (including Financial speculation), multinational corporate expansion and financial rent-seeking, all without the developmental state’s protection.
2) Western Agricultural Revolution or Free Trade Imperialism?:
--Utsa challenges the nation-by-nation narratives (which conveniently obscures imperialism) where the West supposedly went through the Industrial Revolution thanks to first completing an Agricultural Revolution into capitalist agriculture, thus generating the surpluses required for industrial inputs and wage-income consumer demands.
--Utsa rejects W. Arthur Lewis’ narrative comparing Great Britain’s supposedly superior agricultural productivity by pointing out the time variable is omitted. Western Europe has 1 growing season vs. the tropical Global South’s 2-3 crops in a year. Medieval Europe was barren even for elites compared to tropical biodiversity. Indeed, the period of intense European industrialization was marked by domestic bread riots, demonstrating the lack of a successful “Agricultural Revolution” and the reliance on Ireland and tropical colonies.
--Utsa rejects Ricardo’s “Comparative Advantage” (where both countries can benefit from trade if they specialize on what is most cost-efficient for themselves, even if one country is more cost-efficient in producing both goods), the centerpiece of Classical trade theory (and adopted by Neoclassical); the material fallacy made is that both countries can produce all goods and simply chooses the most cost-efficient option. This is convenient for free trade imperialism in convincing the Global South (rich in biodiversity) that it is they who are poor and must specialize in exporting exotic cash crops to keep Global North supermarkets well-stocked for all seasons (not to mention crucial industrial inputs), giving up their food sovereignty and relying on the Global North’s heavily industrialized/subsidized agriculture for food staples (grain)!
--A final myth obscuring increased poverty in the Global South is the idea that a decline in cereal crop output is a good sign showing progress in the modernization of diets (more meat/dairy). Meat/dairy are actually a huge drain on food/energy inputs as they require significant cereal crop as livestock feed, diverting this from direct consumption.
Next Steps:
--Part of this book’s appeal is its concise (96 pages) presentation of systemic concepts. Thus, much is missing; I’ve tried to fill in some key contextual points above to demonstrate just how much contrast is created with this anti-imperialist paradigm.
--Note: Sam Moyo wrote the second (smaller) half of the book, with African examples to match Utsa’s economic framework (with more focus on land tenure property relations). Moyo’s style is a bit closer to a history textbook (more places/names rather than economic structures) reminiscent of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which I personally find less revelatory (esp. applied to an entire continent in 20 pages).
--Related topics that require many more pages to unpack:
1) Green Revolution: I know Vandana Shiva’s critiques are popular here, but I’m looking for more systems-level critiques. I believe Michael Perelman did his PhD on this: Farming For Profit In A Hungry World: Capital And The Crisis In Agriculture. The critique in A People’s Green New Deal is very compelling.
2) Famines: along with “gulags”, this is the popular fear-mongering against “socialism”. Here, Utsa is crucial as she both details the greatest famine conveniently ignored by the West (Bengal Famine of 1943), and challenges the famine research on communist China even beyond “Nobel” Economics Prize winner Amartya Sen and Drèze’s famous comparison of hunger in communist China vs. capitalist India in Hunger and Public Action (I review both Utsa’s critique and Sen/Drèze in this linked review).
3) Capitalism and Imperialism, mapping out the structural phases throughout history, where Utsa is joined by Prabhat Patnaik:
-overview: The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
-theory (+ debate with Harvey!): A Theory of Imperialism
-theory + history: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
Preamble:
--2021 has been a year where I decided to check off as many intimidating-but-must-reads as possible, from Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 to Michael Hudson tomes (Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance and The Bubble and Beyond). Along the way, there were several unexpected gems (ex. Jason Hickel's Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World and The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions).
...So, it is quite something that this 96-pager stood out.
--First, consider the lineage of (Western) “Economics”:
1) Classical trade theory was conveniently imperialist as capitalist industrialization was predicated on colonialism’s cheap (often tropical) inputs + labour.
2) Marx critiqued Classical economics, but never lived long enough to get to their trade theory, derailing many Western Marxists.
3) Mainstream economics (Neoclassical), horrified by Marx using Classical economics to critique capitalism, rejected Classical along with reality.
4) John Maynard Keynes, in critiquing Neoclassical fantasies during the Great Depression, still represented the British Empire.
…So, I’m not being a jackass when I give 2-stars to:
1) Your Western capitalism-reformer heroes: Paul Krugman, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty... at their best with Mariana Mazzucato's Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.
2) Global South reformists like Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism), Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom), etc.
...If it’s any consolation, I try to be just as critical of Western scholars I look up to when they make such omissions, ex. Michael Hudson's Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy and David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
--To be taken seriously, critical Global South economists trying to synthesize imperialism must work their way backwards through this mountain of biased, self-referential assumptions accumulating over centuries; this also means that success in this challenge completely flips “Economics” on its head!
--I was lucky to stumble across Vijay Prashad some 8 years ago, who flipped geopolitics/history on its head by opening the door to anti-imperialist Global South perspectives (https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74). Vijay mentioned Prabhat Patnaik as his favorite economist. No doubt Prabhat is a treasure, but his delivery is steeped in labyrinthian economic theory.
…I could not distinguish this in Prabhat’s co-authored books theorizing imperialism, but it turns out the other half of the Patnaik power couple is more decipherable in presentation; this makes Utsa Patnaik the dream radical economist! Have a listen: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS...
Highlights:
1) Western Financial Crises or Imperialist Agrarian Crises?:
--First, note that we should avoid being crude/sectarian. I’m not setting up a bipolar “either or” scenario here, as clearly both factors are present and interact with each other. I am merely contrasting the two to demonstrate the overwhelming bias that one perspective enjoys in both mainstream and alternative economics.
--(Western) Economics’ conception of economic crises revolve around Western Finance:
a) Great Depression:
--Economics’ focus is on the 1929 Great Crash of Wall Street, as well as the preceding “Roaring Twenties” (1920s) of mass consumer industrial production and financial speculation.
--Utsa instead focuses on agricultural production, i.e. food and certain primary commodities (raw material inputs to industry; Utsa seems less focused on energy here). WWI disrupted European agriculture, resulting in an expansion of agricultural output outside Europe. By post-WWI recovery, there was agricultural overproduction relative to demand, resulting in a severe and prolonged fall in global agricultural prices starting in 1924-25. This disrupted the trade balances of exporters; the pre-Keynesian economic response was national austerity. The resulting global demand downward spiral hit late-industrializing Germany/Italy/Japan, who (typical for capitalist crises) reacted with fascism: military production to revive demand and expansionism to seize raw materials.
--Next steps: synthesize Michael Hudson’s geopolitical economy (mostly starting from Western perspectives, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt) with the Patnaiks' Global South version (for their magnum opus, see Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present).
b) Neoliberalism:
--Economics focuses on the Western stagflation crisis (unemployment + inflation) and generally blame this on labour unions and social welfare spending. Those who actually consider reality focus on the geopolitics of US’s post-WWII Bretton Woods global plan, and how it was disrupted by US genocidal war spendings in Korea and Vietnam (Hudson's aforementioned Super Imperialism and Varoufakis' The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy).
--The bridge to Global South perspectives starts with the 1973 and 1979 Oil Shocks. Note: Hudson contextualizes the Oil Shocks with a prior grain embargo by the US quadrupling grain prices (I’ll have to dig on this and how it relates with the mainstream rendition of the “Great Grain Robbery” of 1972 from USSR purchasing US grain).
--The broader Global South context is decolonization in the 1950-60s, thus de-linking of Global South developmental states away from global capitalism’s imperialist Finance/trade dependency in order to build national food sovereignty. Western “Leftists” with their heads in the clouds of Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? cannot seem to empathize with this period of social change and imagination: The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.
--This national de-linking and internationalist decolonization (symbolized by the push for the New International Economic Order, NIEO, to challenge colonial-era commodity pricing, finance, and technologies) was of course an existential threat to global capitalism, which responded by unleashing Finance (“Financialization”; Wall Street had been regulated after the Great Crash and during the post-WWII “Golden Age” after all) and reviving imperialist onslaughts (IMF/World Bank “Structural Adjustment Programs”). Note: Hudson stresses the US/World Bank global plan is for the US to control the global food supply (i.e. food staples) with its intensive industrial + heavily-subsidized agriculture, while the Global South exports cash crops.
c) Today’s Late-Neoliberalism:
--Since “Neoliberalism” unleashed Wall Street, there has been much to say on Financial crises (including 2008). Utsa considers the growing demand for Global South agriculture via air-freighting of perishable products alongside Neoliberalism’s destruction of postcolonial states’ food sovereignty policies. Ex. India’s infamous farmer suicides starting from Neoliberal onslaughts in the 1990s, where peasant farmers must now contend with volatile global food prices (including Financial speculation), multinational corporate expansion and financial rent-seeking, all without the developmental state’s protection.
2) Western Agricultural Revolution or Free Trade Imperialism?:
--Utsa challenges the nation-by-nation narratives (which conveniently obscures imperialism) where the West supposedly went through the Industrial Revolution thanks to first completing an Agricultural Revolution into capitalist agriculture, thus generating the surpluses required for industrial inputs and wage-income consumer demands.
--Utsa rejects W. Arthur Lewis’ narrative comparing Great Britain’s supposedly superior agricultural productivity by pointing out the time variable is omitted. Western Europe has 1 growing season vs. the tropical Global South’s 2-3 crops in a year. Medieval Europe was barren even for elites compared to tropical biodiversity. Indeed, the period of intense European industrialization was marked by domestic bread riots, demonstrating the lack of a successful “Agricultural Revolution” and the reliance on Ireland and tropical colonies.
--Utsa rejects Ricardo’s “Comparative Advantage” (where both countries can benefit from trade if they specialize on what is most cost-efficient for themselves, even if one country is more cost-efficient in producing both goods), the centerpiece of Classical trade theory (and adopted by Neoclassical); the material fallacy made is that both countries can produce all goods and simply chooses the most cost-efficient option. This is convenient for free trade imperialism in convincing the Global South (rich in biodiversity) that it is they who are poor and must specialize in exporting exotic cash crops to keep Global North supermarkets well-stocked for all seasons (not to mention crucial industrial inputs), giving up their food sovereignty and relying on the Global North’s heavily industrialized/subsidized agriculture for food staples (grain)!
--A final myth obscuring increased poverty in the Global South is the idea that a decline in cereal crop output is a good sign showing progress in the modernization of diets (more meat/dairy). Meat/dairy are actually a huge drain on food/energy inputs as they require significant cereal crop as livestock feed, diverting this from direct consumption.
Next Steps:
--Part of this book’s appeal is its concise (96 pages) presentation of systemic concepts. Thus, much is missing; I’ve tried to fill in some key contextual points above to demonstrate just how much contrast is created with this anti-imperialist paradigm.
--Note: Sam Moyo wrote the second (smaller) half of the book, with African examples to match Utsa’s economic framework (with more focus on land tenure property relations). Moyo’s style is a bit closer to a history textbook (more places/names rather than economic structures) reminiscent of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, which I personally find less revelatory (esp. applied to an entire continent in 20 pages).
--Related topics that require many more pages to unpack:
1) Green Revolution: I know Vandana Shiva’s critiques are popular here, but I’m looking for more systems-level critiques. I believe Michael Perelman did his PhD on this: Farming For Profit In A Hungry World: Capital And The Crisis In Agriculture. The critique in A People’s Green New Deal is very compelling.
2) Famines: along with “gulags”, this is the popular fear-mongering against “socialism”. Here, Utsa is crucial as she both details the greatest famine conveniently ignored by the West (Bengal Famine of 1943), and challenges the famine research on communist China even beyond “Nobel” Economics Prize winner Amartya Sen and Drèze’s famous comparison of hunger in communist China vs. capitalist India in Hunger and Public Action (I review both Utsa’s critique and Sen/Drèze in this linked review).
3) Capitalism and Imperialism, mapping out the structural phases throughout history, where Utsa is joined by Prabhat Patnaik:
-overview: The Veins of the South Are Still Open: Debates Around the Imperialism of Our Time
-theory (+ debate with Harvey!): A Theory of Imperialism
-theory + history: Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
April 2, 2021
I thought I could make notes on crucial sections and ideas from this book in a Word document for later reference, but soon realized I was going to end up pasting the entire thing.
This is a fantastic read. It's surprisingly brief, but packed to the brim with ideas that have really impacted my thinking. I highly recommend it.
This is a fantastic read. It's surprisingly brief, but packed to the brim with ideas that have really impacted my thinking. I highly recommend it.
March 30, 2021
Phenomenal. Absolutely a book everyone should read.
March 6, 2021
extremely timely read.
Read
February 13, 2020Patnaik writes much more clearly than Moyo does. Overall, enjoyable and a quick easy read as one of my first forays into this topic.
December 11, 2020
A very timely book to read.
June 24, 2023
Short but dense book on rural development, the peasantry and macroeconomics. I liked the perspective of the authors, but would have loved more depth and explanation.
February 22, 2022
A short but clarifying and engaging book that will spur me to read a lot more on the topic. In particular, it argues that the Marxist concept of 'primitive accumulation' or 'accumulation by dispossession' cannot be consigned to the early period of capitalism alone. Rather, it is very much a central strategy of neoliberal capitalism in the the global South today.
Utsa Patnaik's essay provides an insightful analysis of how the global crisis in agriculture, and the relative poverty of the global South, is inextricably linked to the development of capitalism in its imperialist phase. It also includes the most compelling takedown of Ricardo's theory of 'competitive advantage' I've read.
Sam Moyo's essay gives an overview of agrarian policies in Africa since decolonisation in the 1960s. In the most recent phase, Western financial institutions, governments and multinational corporations have dramatically increased their land grabbing efforts twinned with policies that seek to 'deepen the incorporation of African peasantries into the world agricultural exports chain'.
“The trajectory of capitalist accumulation in the longue durée shows that primitive accumulation is not only a phase in, or original form of, accumulation, but rather lies at the very heart of the world system of capitalism.” - from the Preface, by Issa G Shivji
Utsa Patnaik's essay provides an insightful analysis of how the global crisis in agriculture, and the relative poverty of the global South, is inextricably linked to the development of capitalism in its imperialist phase. It also includes the most compelling takedown of Ricardo's theory of 'competitive advantage' I've read.
“Today, as the internal springs of capitalist expansion at the core dry up, we see another offensive to acquire the energy, mineral and other primary resources of the global South by the capitalist powers, which now include the East Asian late-industrialisers. The local corporate sector enters into collaboration with the giant transnational companies in this new process of primitive accumulation. This process has been variously called ‘accumulation though encroachment’ and ‘accumulation through displacement’. - Utsa Patnaik
Sam Moyo's essay gives an overview of agrarian policies in Africa since decolonisation in the 1960s. In the most recent phase, Western financial institutions, governments and multinational corporations have dramatically increased their land grabbing efforts twinned with policies that seek to 'deepen the incorporation of African peasantries into the world agricultural exports chain'.
“The continued marginalisation of African agrarian systems and the dispossession of the peasantry can only be reversed by national and regional policies that seek food sovereignty by protecting land rights and access to water and by controlling biodiversity resources in favour of the peasantry.” - Sam Moyo
July 16, 2020
Trata da questão agrária no agora. A questão tem uma nova cara e existe mas não na nossa frente, priveligiadissímos de termos um supermercado a cada esquina na região urbana. O problema é na zona rural e principalmente no sul global (que é tratada na primeira parte do livro), e atinge com mais ferocidade a África (tratada no segunda parte), onde a transição agrária segundo os autores foi falha.
O desenvolvimento capitalista da agricultura, impelido pela liberalização comercial, lá se expandiu através de uma nova acumulação primitiva baseada na desapropriação de terras que prejudicou e reprimiu a agricultura camponesa e também as comunidades tribais (Alô Brasil com as comunidades indígenas).
É tristíssimo porque quando os autores vão expondo os fatos e as consequências é impossível não pensar que o luxo que não cai de graça nas nossas bocas (meros trabalhadores da classe baixa e média), tal como carne, ovos, leite e etc., traz um peso bem maior para a África.
A produção desses alimentos em larga escala para alimentar o mundo pede uma quantidade enorme de grãos para ração animal. Onde é que as grandes empresas querem plantar? Isso mesmo! Que lugar no mundo é mais propício para ter colheita durante o ano todo do que um terra na zona tropical? Que local é politicamente vulnerável as aspirações capitalistas de hoje e facilmente cooptável pela sua triste trajetória histórica desde o primeiro contato com o homem branco?
Felizmente há resistência, há movimentos políticos ocorrendo. O livro diz que "o campesinato hoje está passando de formas passivas de resistência, como o suicídio, para a contestação ativa do exercício da hegemonia pelo capital global."Em estimativa mais de 60.000 camponeses na Índia somados com o resto do mundo cometeram suicídio por causa de dívidas. Isso desanima muito e ao mesmo tempo revolta.
Deixo aqui a frase de Issa G. Shiji que finalizou muito bem o prefácio do livro:
"A escolha diante da humanidade, portanto, não é tanto entre capitalismo e socialismo, mas entre socialismo e barbárie."
July 5, 2024
Somewhat dense rundown of left perspectives on the agrarian question. Obviously not exhaustive by any means Moyo’s section in particular is much too short and extremely brief in describing the various land arrangements in colonial and post colonial Africa as well as possible remedies. Patnaik sort of hits on her famous bugbears (I’m in the middle of Capital and Imperialism and she goes over the discussion of the myth of the British Agricultural Revolution there as well) but her perspective is appreciated (further elaboration never killed anyone)and oddly enough despite being familiar with Smith’s argument for the primacy of corn (she says grain I don’t know who’s being imprecise here) in the determination of prices/costs in the economy in general it never really clicked till I finished reading her essay.
December 4, 2024
Tropical and sub-tropical countries with two or more cropping seasons produce more food and livestock feed, but eat less, compared to temperate countries with a high-yield single cropping season. Land for biofuel crops and livestock feed are destined for the North and only after slave-labour-based and later indentured-labour-based plantation systems, did the consumption basket of northern populations started to diversify and improve dramatically.
January 21, 2023
I liked this but I’m not well enough versed with Patnaik’s nor her husband’s theoretical work on imperialism and therefore felt a little confused during this reading. Hoping to revisit again soon when I have a better grasp of the material at hand.
June 24, 2022
Some of the chapters had me like what, but otherwise mostly informative.
Read
November 19, 2022Okay not rating this one because it was definitely a bit over my head haha, but super interesting subject material that is very well sourced. Will return to this one later
October 29, 2025
Just felt this was really poorly explained, the economic relationship between the land, industry and global finance is a pertinent one but all this book seemed to offer was sweeping brush strokes
August 22, 2022
It was an okay book, mostly focused on inequality of the tribute economy to the global south.
Not worth archiving, as it has material already covered by Ploeg in better depth.
Not worth archiving, as it has material already covered by Ploeg in better depth.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews