Marx says that primitive accumulation is the way for people to exit from the cycle of subsistence farming to a more complex economic, and (inevitably) social, model. He then recounts the history of how land was consolidated by kings and conquerors and other models of oppression, which I believe are modernly represented by international corporate associations. These conglomerates, well, conglomerated by the primitive accumulation of the means of capital contained in their structure and established role in markets, etc., forming sufficient partnerships to maintain a delicate balance of power and obscurity. One of these 'obscure' corporations, itself within a larger entity, is the modern agricultural equivalent of... nothing. There are no equivalents based in modern history so I will refer to go to the and say Monsanto is like the flood Noah had to escape, but with lawyers.
Monsanto is an organization which is mostly involved in the development of genetically-modified plants (GMO's) and gets a lot of criticism from the misinformed public for this rather than their true crime within the sale of the seeds containing those genetic alterations. GMOs allow world food production to have the yield it does and are now essential to keeping the estimated 1 billion starving people in the world at only 1 billion. The problem here is that many of the GMOs do not produce viable seeds (by design) which makes the farmers dependent on purchasing seeds every year and thus on Monsanto. This challenges the implementation of sustainable growing practices since prices will influence what species and varieties of plants are grown by the farmers and further dedicate those workers to Monsanto. However, this is all assuming that the farmers are private and not committed to an industrial farming organization. If so then it is doubtlessly utilizing Monsanto's products under contract or partnership and the decisions of those 'industrial' farmers are made for them.
I wonder if there is a moral method of primitive accumulation. Is that what communism is at some foundational level?
1 comments:
Good. Can you link us to more info about Monsanto in the news lately? There's certainly accumulation going on in what Monsanto does... both in terms of money for capital on one side, and the accumulation of landless workers on the other. One of the questions we'll need to pursue in class, though, is whether or not this sort of accumulation is "primitive" in Marx's sense, and how it may resemble primitive accumulation.
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