Accumulation By Agricultural Dispossession

Twenty-first-century land grabs: Accumulation by agricultural dispossession
By Fred Magdoff, professor emeritus of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont. This article is based on notes from a presentation to the annual meeting of the Rural Sociology Society, in New York City on August 7, 2013.


Land grabs—whether initiated by multinational corporations and private investment firms emanating from the capitalist core, sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, or state entities such as China and India—are now in the news constantly.1 For example, in July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land. This land was supposed to be used for agricultural production, but there is also land being grabbed for other purposes—such as mining or to construct roads, buildings, and dams. In human terms, land grabs mean real people and families are dispossessed. When people lose access to their land, they also lose their means to obtain food, their communities, and their cultures.

What is going on today must be placed in the historical context of the continuous development of capitalism. This is not meant to be a history of the last three centuries, but rather an overview in more or less chronological order. Specific examples of the dispossession of people from the land will emphasize the various techniques used by capital (or nascent capital) that have resulted in a continuous stream of people moving to the cities. The examples discussed below are but a small sampling of the dispossessions that have occurred, and are occurring, around the world.

The commodification of land—that most basic of resources, the source of terrestrial life, and the foundation of human civilization—was essential for the development of capitalism. And from the early modern capitalist era until the present, it is the commodification of nature—with land bought (or obtained by other means) and sold, speculated upon, and used to produce human food, animal feed, fiber, or fuel and with crops selected based on climate and soil type but also on what would bring the greatest returns—that is the underlying basis of the dispossession of people from their lands.

As we discuss these events let us remember the lines from Woody Guthrie’s song about the outlaw Pretty Boy Floyd: “Some will rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.”2 Dispossession of people from the land over the last three centuries has formed an important pathway for the accumulation of capital—or, as some have put it, capital accumulation by dispossession. There have been many variations of means used, including both force (the “six gun”) and swindling by using a variety of laws and agreements or outright chicanery (the “fountain pen”). Sometimes the two are used together. And at other times, farmers and peasants lose their lands as a result of capitalist economic relations—usually through not being able to compete in a cutthroat marketplace, or to afford the rents that the larger more highly capitalized farmers can pay.

Read the whole article at:
 http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/22761#sthash.0tqJh3tE.dpuf

SOYMB has often posted information about 'land grabs' from a number of sources. This one, from Fred Magdoff, is also an excellent introduction to the history and workings of capitalism over the last few centuries. With sections specifically targeting primary accumulation, dispossession by force, various forms of economic dispossession, rural dispossession by land grabs and China as a special case within capitalism's overall agenda he contextualises the many different aspects of this complex subject into a more readily understandable whole.
JS