Alan:
>I know capitalism has done a great job
developing productive forces, while impoverishing production relations to
untold levels and crushing cooperation - both a force and relation, but it
strikes me as one of the most unbelievably ridiculous assertions I've ever
encountered to argue that the population growth resulting from enclosure,
the alienation of labor and the imposition of hegemonic wage labor relations
overproduction of agricultural commodities.
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You lost me. What was your last sentence?
Alan:
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>If you want to attribute the demographic consequences of all this to the
glorious increase in agricultural productivity capitalism generated, be my
guest, you and James can try but I don't think too many people are going to
join your revolution. By the way, be sure - you and James - to start your
efforts among the ever-expanding urban slums across the global south, I'm
sure people there won't be able to constrain their enthusiam when you tell
them how much they should celebrate the glories of capitalist agricultural
productivity.
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Is there not more food produced today than at any other time in
history? I see the problem not in the production of large amounts of
food, or surplus population, but in the social relations that prevent
that food from being consumed by those who need it. They are denied
the food they need not because they are not direct agricultural
producers- feudalism and every other social form also had mass
starvation, hence the slow population growth- but because they are
wage laborers. Yes, the growth of wage labor was the result of the
increased productivity of capitalist agriculture, so one could see
them as a surplus population. They are only surplus in capitalist
terms though (hence why Marx usually uses the term relative surplus
population). The problem is solved not by returning everyone to the
land, except for those that are surplus which James correctly
calculates at about 4 billion. It is solved by a transformation of
the social relations. I am not sure many will join your revolution
when you tell one in three of them that they need to go back to the
land, oh and the other two, well they are just surplus.
Brad