Migration & Primitive Accumulation (was delinking does not equal autarchy)

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Feb 7 13:51:04 PST 2001


Doug says:


>Hardt & Negri also talk a lot about migration - the positive value
>of people moving from one place to another, and mixing it up with
>those not like themselves. Of course, this should be voluntary, not
>the result of economic desperation or political persecution - but
>isn't there some value to this? I mean, look at Patrick himself -
>born in Belfast, educated in the U.S. and Britain, now in SA,
>talking to hundreds of us all over the place? Isn't there something
>appealing about that? Why should it just be the privilege of a
>relative elite, or the fate of the truly desperate?

If Hardt & Negri really think that the work of internationalist revolutionaries is to advocate increased migration, they might as well advocate a faster pace of primitive accumulation -- kicking off direct producers from their land -- and more wars (especially wars that result in the expulsion of a large number of people from their homes). It is said that "the 50-70 per cent of the world's population...is still agricultural" (at <http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/sector/techmeet/tmad00/tmadr.htm>), so there's a lot of primitive accumulation left to do!

Yoshie



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