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Which Is Likely to Consolidate More Wage Labour?

Bulldoze 1,000 ha. of rainforest for fun, directly displacing thousands of indigenous people?

OR

Establish monoculture rubber plantations on 1,000 ha. of grasslands, directly displacing no one?

Points for Further

Discussion?

Primitive Accumulation

Proletarianisation

  • The process whereby individuals move from being an employer, self-employed, or unemployed and instead become integrated into the wage labour system, which is a major hallmark of a capitalist society.

Economic Efforts in the

Global South

Primitive Accumulation

Capitalism

  • Economic growth, but...
  • High inequality
  • State corruption
  • Informal economy / crime
  • A system that is used to order society, focusing on private ownership and the accumulation of wealth and power, associated contemporarily with neoliberalism.
  • The process by which, what we would call less developed societal structures, like feudalism, make the transition into capitalism, by proletarianising the peasants and labourers, which results in them needing to work for capital to support themselves.

Neoliberalism

Key Terms

So...

  • An economic theory that arose after WWII, advocating the processes of government free markets and worldwide institutions that foster trade and cooperation.
  • Primitive Accumulation
  • Proletarianisation
  • Capitalism
  • Neoliberalism
  • Land clearing
  • Large monoculture farming replacing small mixed subsistence farming
  • Reliance on carbon-based industries
  • Removing indigenous land-based relationships

Is primitive accumulation a product of history, or is it bound to happen?

Effects of Primitive Accumulation

Economic Efforts in the Global North

Ecological Impacts

Contextualising Primitive Accumulation

  • Ecological
  • Socio-Cultural
  • Political
  • Economic

References

  • Initial economic growth
  • High standards of living
  • Military & Economic power, such as US & China
  • Economic Colonisation (Neo-Colonialism)

Jeremy Bentham

Who?

"Human beings are the most powerful instruments of production, and therefore, everyone becomes anxious to employ his fellows in the multiplication of his own comforts..."

Karl Marx

  • Removing land-based indigenous relationships
  • E.g. Indigenous burning practices & Sami Reindeer herders
  • Reinventing land-based relationships through land rights
  • Socio-economic disadvantage rather than increased standard of living
  • E.g. Rural-urban migration and development of slums
  • Practical shortcomings of 'internal resettlement'

"Despite high economic growth in the post reforms period... there has been barely any improvement in the working lives of the working class in the Indian labor market."

  • 1748 - 1832

"The expropriation of the direct producers was accomplished by the means of the most merciless barbarianism..."

Michel Foucault

Francis Hutcheson

Giri & Singh (2015)

  • 1818 - 1882

"The process by which the bourgeoisie became the politically dominant class... was marked by the establishment of an explicitly coded and formally egalitarian framework..."

"If a people have not acquired [a] habit of industry, the cheapness of all the necessaries of life encourages sloth... the best remedies is to raise the demand for all necessaries"

Changes to the

Cultural Landscape

  • 1926 - 1984
  • 1694 - 1746
  • Baird, IG 2011, 'Turning Land into Capital, Turning People into Labour: Primitive Accumulation and the Arrival of Large-Scale Economic Land Concessions in the Lao People's Democratic Republic', Journal of Marxism & Interdisciplinary Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 26.
  • Giri, AK & Singh, SP 2015, 'Primitive Accumulation, Informality and Precarious Work in Neoliberal India: A Review of Arguments and Evidences', Journal of Economic & Social Development, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 25-40.
  • Perelman, M 2000, 'The Enduring Importance of Primitive Accumulation', in M Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy & the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, Duke University Press, pp. 13-24.

Dylon Tomasi, Jake Thornton

& Hilton Penfold

  • Global South suffer from corruption of state officials
  • Broken promises
  • Economic surplus not being reinvested into mitigating the ecological and socio-cultural impacts
  • Distrust amongst Proletarians

Thank You!!

Political Problems

Britain's Need

  • Perelman (2000)

Would you rather be burned alive, or let 10 random people die?

  • They could be Trump supporters, they could be friends...

Success of the Wage-Driven Labour Market

Would you rather let 2,000 random people die, or all of your family & friends?

Would you rather drown to death, or let 5 random people die?

  • They could be war lords, they could be your neighbours...

Would you rather die in your sleep tonight, or let one random person die?

Primitive Accumulation & the Developing World

  • It could be a drug dealer, it could be your kindergarten teacher...

Informality & Precarious Work in Neoliberal India

Discussion:

  • Giri & Singh (2015)

Reasons for Primitive Accumulation

"Neoliberal theology asserts that unrestricted markets are the most efficient mechanism possible for allocating resources and optimising outcomes for national economies, organisations and individual workers" (p. 25)

If you were the leader of a developing country, with little resources to sell to the developed world, what do you do?

Would you rather be selfish and clever, or selfless

and naive?

Land Concessions in Laos

  • Baird (2011)
  • Simple Reproduction
  • Expanded Reproduction

Would you rather have just enough to get by, or have surplus to either sell for profit or keep for a rainy day?

India

  • Rural-Urban migration
  • Wage-dependence has allowed output increases
  • India's economy has grown to become the 7th largest in the world (IMF 2015)

Clean Drinking Water

Healthcare

Security

Technology

Because, why wouldn't you?

Is it worth it?

Human Rights

Property Rights

Agency

Social Security

Education

Laos

Looking to the Future...

  • The poor of Laos are "rapidly being propelled into wage-labour markets in ways that cannot be considered voluntary" (Baird, p. 11), in the same way that British peasants were compelled to enter wage relationships before the Industrial Revolution.
  • A necessary process?

Continued...

The 9th Political Report of the Central Committee of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party

"We accept that there will be some problems with villagers initially, but if we don't change today from local production to industrial production, when will we do it?"

  • The Lao government hoped to halt the "unproductive use of resources" (Baird 2011, p. 11)
  • Primitive Accumulation hasn't manifested out of malicious intentions
  • Pages 19-20
  • "sustainable use of land"
  • "focal development areas"
  • "creation of permanent jobs"

Indirect & Direct

Removal by Force?

OR

Removal by Coercion?

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