[lbo-talk] agricultural productivity

[Alan Rudy]

Brad, you really should read Marx, Harvey, Lappe and Schurman and others.
Food feeds people who are alive, true.  Biologically, this makes it possible
for more people to be born.
Socially, culturally, politically and economically, however, the driving
force behind growing populations is not food supplies.
You have it completely backwards, however dialectical it all is.
A

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 8:44 AM, brad bauerly <bbauerly at gmail.com> wrote:


> Alan wrote:
> >Wait a minute, you are saying that capitalist increases in agricultural
> productivity led to population growth because of all the extra food that
> was
> suddenly and then sustainably around?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, capitalist agricultural productivity led to population growth
> because of the 'extra' food that it created.  Also, because of this
> increased productivity it increased the division of labor and
> decreased the socially necessary labor time required for the
> reproduction of workers.  I am not arguing that it didn't also
> restructure social relations and require wage labor to purchase food,
> if you can afford it.  This is what makes capitalism different from
> everything prior to it, which is the source of the historically
> unprecedented rise in population.  What is the source of this
> population growth if not in the changes in social relations?
>
>