'Increased agricultural productivity under capitalism has been exclusively subordinated to the production of surplus value, are you arguing otherwise?'
No. But capitalist development, as Marx said, leads not only to the growth of the productive forces, but also the all round development of the human being - however qualified. And this is a case in point. The four billion human beings alive today because of the greater productivity of human labour, have better lives that they would have had without it.
Alan is sarcastic about the long-term fall in the price of food, but I am not, and I don't suppose many people who do their own shopping are, either. Over the last fifty years (less in the US) the share of household spending going to food fell from around a third to just over a tenth - that is greater disposable income people would not have had otherwise.
Alan: 'The reason we have four billion people on the planet presently being fed the way they are is primarily because of the kinds of displacement and alientation tied to colonialism/capitalism (but especially capitalism of late)... suggested by someone I once read to be fairly problematic'
Well, of course, problematic, but I guess that the problem of two out of three of the world population's existence is a problem that it is better to have than not to.
Alan: 'we have not increased productivity per labor hour if one takes the time to look beyond the reductionist, asociological and anti-ecological realm of the firm/the farm'
I am sorry, but that is just daft. Productivity increased. No amount of typing will magic that away.
Alan says of me that 'unequivocally arguing that increased agricultural productivity under capitalism is an unalloyed good verges on farcical when advanced by someone who calls themsevels a Marxist.'
But what I said of agricultural labourers was not that their greater productivity was an unalloyed good, but that 'What we need is to ensure they get the whole output of their labour, not just the leftovers.'