[lbo-talk] agricultural productivity

[brad bauerly]

Sean wrote:
>I think you're confusing industrial agriculture with capitalist
agriculture.  I am not with Brenner on seeing property relations as
the same thing as collective improvement of agricultural yields.  I
think it is a confusion of one for the other.  Commodity farming
certainly had some longstanding effects, but even the small scale
studies of enclosure of open fields in England asserted that, for the
most part, the apparently advanced yields were really only an upward
distribution of income from the workers to the rentiers. As even
people at the time realized, there were some efficiency gains to large
scale farms (this was part of the program of the Diggers), but there
is nothing about that system that necessitates a single owner and
multiple landless workers renting land.  (unless you want to say that
the thing that makes capitalism unique is its ability to discipline
labor, making workers work harder and produce more for the profit of
the owner--which seems an odd thing to celebrate on a leftist list.)
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I would not say that we should celebrate capitalist agriculture but we
should recognize its very real gains.  The thing that makes capitalism
unique is the manner in which it structures social relations to reward
productivity gains.  I am with Brenner and Ellen Wood on this.  The
technological innovations that occurred were the result of the shifts
in reward structures coming out of the changes in social relations.
Capitalist agricultural produces innovated because those innovations
meant increased rewards, and Wood is correct that there is a pressure
to innovate because of the increased competitive nature of the system
(innovate or die as a capitalist).  The improvements in yields came
out of these changes, which fueled the division of labor and led
further innovations that fed back into farming.  If the innovations
are not related to the changes in social relations then why the rapid
innovation?  Are you saying technological innovation is independent of
the social relations (capitalism)?

I think you are correct that the state played a bigger role than
either Brenner or Wood claim.  But this does not invalidate the
changes as coming out of the shifts in social relations. It just means
that the state is always involved in these changes.

Sean wrote:
>   In many ways the most perverse period has been the more recent turn to
a more pure, market oriented capitalism--where farmers can no longer
reuse the most productive seeds, or have to buy proprietary fertilizer
or pesticide in order to make it work; where GM seeds have
questionable effects on improved yields and unknowable effects on
future mutations (as well as problems of monoculture Alan has already
mentioned); and where "free trade" is really just a license to dump
agriculture abroad and destroy any local projects of improvement
before they could even be attempted.  This is where the chemical and
commodity qualities have been most clearly combined and it is clear
that the more naked the capitalist exploitation.  Conflating the two,
I think, will get you nowhere in explaining the current conjuncture.
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Sure there are problems with monoculture, but there are also gains.
Not really sure how we parcel out the two.  Farmers have not produced
the most productive seeds in quite some time.  Let's remember that F1
hybrid seeds produced plants whose seeds could not be resown too and
these have been the most common seeds in the most productive
agriculture for close to 100 years and they come from scientific
research.  Again, there are problems and benefits with this
technology.  Most of the problems arise not from the technology itself
but from the control of it.  I don't know if 'free trade' is just a
'license to dump agriculture abroad and destroy any local projects of
improvement'.  I see it more as an attempt to dump products to
transform the social relations of the receiving country, mostly into
low cost factory production or export capitalist agriculture.  I don't
think capitalists really care about local projects of improvement (and
exactly how would these local innovations not be influenced by
capitalist social relations), there drive is to compete with other
capitalists by expanding and subordinating more people to the wage
labor system.

Brad