Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted

Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: At the Heart and the Frontier of Capitalism
Suhas Paranjape
The following is a slightly edited excerpt from a draft of my forthcoming essay On Capitalism that deals with red and green issues that I wrote during my visiting fellowship at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development (CISED), Bangalore with their support. It is being circulated for discussion purposes only.

1. Capitalisation of nature: a fruitful concept

The concept of `capitalisation of nature put forward by Martin OConnor1 is a fruitful concept that brings together many red and green concerns into a single abstract concept. The term resonates across bio-physical, economic and semiotic aspects. By a redefinition of nature inclusive of human nature as capital and what Martin OConnor calls a `semiotic expansion of capital,
[w]hat formerly was treated as an external and exploitable domain is now redefined as itself a stock of capital. Correspondingly, the primary dynamic of capitalism changes form, from accumulation and growth feeding on an external domain, to ostensible self-management and conservation of the system of capitalised nature closed back on itself.2

This expansion, he argues, leads to a mutation in the form of capital,

The important theoretical point is that, through this process of capialization of all domains of raw materials and services, and through the internalization via the extension of the price system as susceptible to giving account of everything and to directing all processes,3 capital undergoes a qualitative change in form. No longer does it simply exploit better and more intensively a nature (and human nature) external to itself. In what we might call the ecological phase of capital, the relevant image is no longer of man acting on nature to produce value, henceforth appropriated by the capitalist class. Rather, the image is of nature (and human nature) codified as capital incarnate, regenerating itself through time by controlled regimes of investment around the globe, all integrated in a rational calculus of production and exchange4 through the miracle of a price system extending across space and time.5

While Martin OConnor contrasts the predation and cost shifting of unvalorised/uncapitalised nature with this new form of capitalised nature,
1 2

(O'Connor 1994b) (O'Connor 1994b) p. 126. Emphasis in original. 3 (Baudrillard 1981) p. 192 as cited in (O'Connor 1994b) p. 131 4 (Baudrillard 1981) p. 188 as cited in (O'Connor 1994b) p. 131 5 (O'Connor 1994b) p. 131. Emphasis in original. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape

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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted he also emphasises that in fact, capitalism continues to operate in both modes. But a consequence of this, as he notes, is that if nature is now capital incarnate, sustainability now means the preservation of this capital in its form as capital, adding another sense to the already overaccumulated meanings and senses of the term sustainability as the conservation of `the system of capitalised nature itself as an abstract social form6. And he goes on to point out that such a sustainability requires different natural and social sectors to be potentially compatible and also must be actually maintained in that relationship. But such harmonious relationships evoking the notion of an equilibrium also incorporate assumptions about control that may be true of industrial sectors, but not natural sectors, something that he calls `natures resistance to capitalisation and control. Simultaneously the capitalisation of nature involves dispossession of those who are living in/with that nature in favour of private property in commodified and capitalised forms, and in many ways the whole purported exercise of taking all costs into account is tantamount to similar processes of dispossession.

The system of capitalisation of nature: beyond the `second contradiction?

`Capitalisation of nature is a fruitful concept with tremendous potential. It is admittedly at a very high level of abstraction, as Martin OConnor himself admits, but it connects with many other issues and processes in a way that brings them all into a single overarching process. In some ways, it is even more significant than James OConnors concept of conditions of production, and it has the same if not more explanatory power without some of its disadvantages.7 In its widest sense, capitalisation of nature may be seen as a process of conceptual as well as actual appropriation of nature (including human nature) by capitalism, an ongoing process of the imposition of historical, social form on the transhistorical process that human appropriation of nature represents. Here by human nature we do not mean the nature of human beings or nature as transformed by human beings but rather human beings as part of nature.8 In its transhistorical sense, and at the highest level of abstraction, the process by which humans fulfil their needs in nature is a process of interaction between nature and human nature. At this level of abstraction, nature itself, in its entirety, is a condition of production for human nature. Capitalism, then is simultaneously a process of capitalisation of this interaction in two senses:
6 7

(O'Connor 1994b) p. 133. Emphasis in original. In this and later sections I explore this potential, though it admittedly involves somewhat of an extension of the concept, an extension that I should be held responsible for, and could perhaps have been quite unintended and may even be seen as an unwarranted extension of Martin OConnors usage of the concept. In fact, throughout the rest of the essay I shall be using this concept with a clear debt to Martin OConnor, but without any responsibility for my particular usage. One example of such a usage is my suggestion that a theory of capitalist production as capitalised nature allows us to do away with the need for the hypothesis of a `second contradiction as distinct from and counterposed to a first contradiction; in contrast, Martin OConnor takes support of the `second contradiction formulations in a number of places. 8 It is proposed to engage with these concepts in a companion essay. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 2/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted one, it is a process that maintains, reproduces capitalised nature (simple reproduction) and two, also a process of expanding, extending this process (extended reproduction). It therefore carries with itself a moving frontier of capitalisation of nature, a frontier where non-capitalised nature (including human nature) meets capitalism and is a potential site of being capitalised and incorporated into capitalism. First, it may then be asserted that capitalisation of nature is necessarily incomplete. And incomplete in two senses: firstly, in the sense that capitalism can never incorporate all of nature, and secondly, in the sense that reproduction of capitalised nature is itself incomplete9. This is in a sense a restatement of the theory of natural limits. Secondly, what happens at the frontier is then determined by the nature of the noncapitalist site and how it interfaces with capitalism in a given historical conjuncture. This theoretical construction of capitalism does not set up a dichotomy between conditions of production and the other elements of production. Some of the difficulties with that dichotomy have already been touched upon in the earlier section. However, there are other difficulties with that dichotomy that the reconstruction based on capitalisation of nature avoids. If we go by the common sense connotation of conditions of production, the means of production are as much conditions of production as any other element. And in capitalism, so is capital. Moreover, while Marx does use conditions of production in the way that James OConnor defines them, notably in the chapter on the labour process in Capital and in other places that refer to the labour process, he uses the term in its simple connotation in many more places. In fact, if we search for the term in Marxs writings as a whole, in an overwhelming majority of instances, Marx uses it in a sense that includes means of production as well as capital rather than excludes them.10 A more appropriate term would be external conditions of production, that is, those conditions of production that stand outside the circuit of individual productive capitals. However, that does not end the difficulties with the term. The additional problem is that of how one sees reproduction. In James OConnors distinction the distinction is also supposed to be coterminous with the distinction between those conditions
9

Martin OConnors analyses of the issue of control, indeterminacy and coevolution are all relevant here. 10 `It is certainly true that Marx used the phrasein fact he used it on many more occasions than those highlighted by OConnor. But much more important than his mere use of the phrase is the fact that he invested it with a variety of different meanings. In The German Ideology (Marx, 1998a: 66), The Communist Manifesto (Marx, 1998b: 16), and Capital Volume III (Marx, K., 1998c: XV-341) he used it roughly as a synonym for the social relations of production. In The Eighteenth Brumaire... (Marx, K., 1998d: 19), and the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, K., 1998e: 8) it carries a meaning closer to the forces of production. In the Critique of the Gotha Programmein the very same passage referred to by OConnor the phrase is used to refer to the means or instruments of production (Marx, 1998f: 21). And in Value Price and Profit (Marx, 1998g: 35) Marx uses it to refer to a mode of production, capitalist or otherwise. The only sensible conclusion that can be drawn from this is that in the course of his work Marx used the phrase conditions of production to carry a variety of meanings, dependent on context. There is no evidence that he used it as an analytical category with the precision of meaning that OConnor now ascribes to it. (Spence 2000) p. 88-89 Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 3/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted having to be reproduced and those having to be produced. However, this distinction is not very clearly made. There is a need, for example, to distinguish between those conditions of production that have to be genuinely reproduced (and may often not stand outside the circuit of capital in the same way) and goods and services that have to provided in common. An example of the former is the productivity of soil in a farm which genuinely needs to be reproduced, but does not truly stand outside the means of production. An example of the latter is roads, which have to be supplied in common but do not need to be reproduced in the same manner. In much of the `second contradiction literature both of these tend to be conflated, mainly because conditions of production tends to become a catch all category with very little operational content. What is important here is that by not depending on the `conditions of production as a central founding concept, a theory of capitalisation of nature allows us to go beyond the `second contradiction.

Parallels with Marxs analysis

In the context of that theory, reproduction of capitalist nature may be taken to include the reproduction of the physical productive potential of that nature, and this reproduction extends right into the heart of capitalist production and capitalised nature and is not restricted to those elements that stand outside the production processes of individual capital. It is then possible to see capitalisation of nature as sapping that very productive potential even as it taps it on an extended scale and see that as a central tenet of a critique. It is then possible to see it in continuity with Marxs analysis that sees capitalism as a historical form limiting the productive forces even as it harnesses them on an ever increasing scale. This is part of the dialectic between the transhistorical dimensions (use value, concrete labour, nature) and the historical forms (value, abstract labour, capital) that capitalism imposes on them. Capitalised nature in this sense is coterminous with capitalism and represents its underbelly, not often visible even within Marxist analysis, so that the history of the development of capitalism is also simultaneously a history of the developing capitalisation of nature. And here one must also take account, not only, of its development, but of its emergence. Given capital and labour and commodity production, simple as well as extended reproduction of capitalism can be explained and related to the nature of capitalism and the logic of commodity production, but these elements are not given during its emergence. The emergence of capitalism is not a process that can be explained with the help of the logic of capitalism. The emergence of capitalism, its prehistory, the process of what Marx calls primitive accumulation is a process that has followed a different logic. It is a logic of violence, of violence as a means of dispossession and conversion to private property, commodity and capital, but in terms of the capitalisation of nature it is also a process of an equally violent disruption and attempted rearticulation of nature itself. It is possible to say that this process continues even today at the frontier of capitalised nature. There is
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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted a problem with using the term `primitive accumulation for this ongoing process. The primitive accumulation that Marx refers to is a once-in-time process that has taken place in history and has resulted in the emergence of capitalism. It may be better to use a more direct term `accumulation by dispossession on the lines of David Harveys usage of the term. It avoids the resonance of something primitive and outdated for a process that is contemporary and thoroughly modern. Martin OConnors `mutation of capital leading to what he calls the ecological phase of capital also has interesting parallels with the analysis of absolute and surplus value that has been described in the first section. The mutation can be roughly characterised as a transition from `cost shifting phase of capital to its ecological phase. Cost shifting and externalising of environmental costs is a euphemism that papers over the underlying, often violent, process of dispossession (from means of production or from fruits of labour or nature), a euphemism for accumulation by dispossession. This is analogous to the process of absolute surplus value that is the extra obtained by the simple lowering of wages and intensification of labour. The so called ecological phase that represents capitalised nature, brings those costs inside capitalism, internalises them. This is analogous to the extraction of relative surplus value that extracts surplus value without resorting to wage cuts and intensification of labour. If absolute surplus value represents the rapacious, conservative face of capitalism, relative surplus value represents, the progressive, liberal face of capitalism. In the same vein, cost shifting and externalisation of costs may be taken to represent the rapacious, conservative face of capitalism and the capitalisation of nature through internalisation may be taken to be its progressive, liberal face. In capitalism both absolute surplus and relative surplus value continue to be extracted, and the relative weight of both and indeed the shift to relative surplus is determined by how strongly workers defend their interests and oppose wage cuts and intensification of labour at the workplace. Similarly, it may be said that cost shifting as well as capitalisation are both processes that continue to take place, and an increase in the relative weight of the so called ecological phase would only be brought about to the extent that those being dispossessed fight and succeed in fighting their dispossession. And there is a price to be paid for it too. The fight over the working day has also to take the form of an argument of whether or not the capitalist is using a fair share of the commodity, labour power that he had contracted for. The price is the acceptance of the discourse, of the shift from dispossession to externalities and externalised costs.

Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape

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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted

2. Capitalisation of nature: at the frontier

From the heart of capitalism . . .
Before we move on, a brief summary may be in order. If the system of capitalised nature is seen as capitalism itself, then this situates nature at the heart of capitalist production, as the world of use values being capitalised and re-presented as the world of exchange values. This rehabilitates nature at the centre of a theory of capitalist production as capitalised nature, not as an external condition of production but at the heart of capitalist production, as processes and things non-human and human, living and non-living that have now become reified as different components of capital. Moreover, this process of capitalisation where nature is presented as and becomes capitalist production, is also a process that excludes and thereby externalises its non-capitalised counterpart as a necessary moment in its self positing. It compounds this externalisation of its conditions of production by its `arithmomorphic view of the world. This arithmomorphism is ingrained in the historical form of value that it imposes on all relations of production; a form that involves both a necessary quantification (reduction to a single quality) and the establishment of a definite ratio with money (and value as measure of that quality). In doing this it ignores non-arithmomorphic dimensions of nature and human nature. It is also then natural to assert the incompleteness of this capitalisation, incompleteness in both dimensions, quantitatively, in extent and qualitatively in degree of control11.Nature and the now externalised conditions of production now assert their existence in a tendency of capitals loss of control gradual, catastrophic or accidental over the larger process.12 This is because ecosystems have internal structure and internal processes that in the first instance are built to resist change and secondly are complex systems that bring about unintended effects. The `natural response towards exercising greater and greater control over capitalised nature, or attempts to do so, are not of much use since the problem lies with what lies beyond. To anticipate somewhat a subsequent discussion, coping and living with has given way to control over.13 Both imply control in some sense, but the former grants an autonomy notionally and practically that the other does not; an autonomy that then the other asserts and is experienced as loss of control whether the assertion is by capitalised `inanimate nature or capitalised human nature within and without the workplace. We see here an essential bond between the domination of non-human nature the environment and human nature the working class as aspects of the same process of capitalisation of nature and resistance to it.

11

I prefer here the notion of degree of control than indeterminacy as used by Martin OConnor. They are different concepts and one need not imply the other. Indeterminacy is at the heart of all quantum processes, that does not preclude close control over lasers. Similarly, that processes are determinate need not imply closer control. 12 `Attention needs to be focused not only on the way in which capital acts on its external conditions, that is, on the dynamics of capitals transformation and attempted control of conditions, but also on these conditions resistance to, suborning of, and subversion of this attempted control. (O'Connor 1994a) p. 68 13 Martin OConnor has suggested an ecological episteme to replace the dominant industrial episteme while Leff has suggested a different kind of rationality for a green production. (O'Connor 1994a), (Leff 2000) and (Leff 1995). These are discussed in a subsequent essay.. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 6/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted

. . . to the moving frontier

So far what we discussed was in a sense a view from right inside capitalised nature, at the heart of capitalist production. But there is also a moving frontier of capitalisation of nature, a frontier where non-capitalist nature in various forms meets capitalised nature and capitalist production meets non-capitalist production14. And this itself can be divided into two periods: the period corresponding to primitive accumulation, the prehistory of capitalism and a continuing process at its boundaries after it has established itself as a world order.

Primitive accumulation: the prehistory of capitalist nature

I do not intend to go into any great detail of the sordid prehistory of capitalism that has been well documented by Marx in his section on primitive accumulation in Capital15 and which he summarises in his now famous words
Tantae molis erat [Of such effort it took], to establish the eternal laws of Nature of the capitalist mode of production, to complete the process of separation between labourers and conditions of labour, to transform, at one pole, the social means of production and subsistence into capital, at the opposite pole, the mass of the population into wage-labourers, into free labouring poor, that artificial product of modern society. If money, According to Augier, comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek, capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.16

What I intend to do is only to point out that if Marx had uncovered and graphically described the violent separation of the labouring poor from their means of production and the accumulation through loot and plunder that went along with it and subsequent accounts have added to it there is now a parallel process of the violence done to ecosystems that is now being uncovered as well. Primitive accumulation can now be seen as a violent, prehistoric event of the emergence of capitalist nature, a violent disruption and rearticulation of nature, including human nature as incorporated into capital. The special violence of this period in its imagery of nature may also be seen as forming the other pole of the violence that capitalism wreaked on other peoples. It had to arrogate to itself the right to plunder and dominate nature as much as it had to arrogate to itself the right to rule over and subjugate the heathens. If capital comes ` dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt it also comes steeped in an ideology that sanctions violence against nature, the heathens and unbelievers, the poor and women. And just as the original tendency of capital is absolute surplus value to reduce effective wages and increase the intensity of labour a strategy it
14

Production here in the sense of appropriation: direct appropriation, nurtured appropriation or transformation as a continuum, as specified earlier. 15 Part VIII: The So-Called Primitive Accumulation, in (Marx 1959) p. 704-64 16 (Marx 1959) p. 747. References and footnotes have been omitted. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 7/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted returns to every time it gets into difficulty, the original form of the system of capitalisation of nature is not its ecological mutant, but free appropriation. And just as it is only to the extent that workers resist and are successful in resisting absolute surplus value that capital turns to forms of relative surplus value, it is only when free appropriation is resisted, by nature itself (difficulty of obtaining adequate materials) or by political resistance that capital will if at all turn to its ecological mutant forms. As Martin OConnor puts it,
Of course, violence in the sense of domination is the leitmotif of the capitalist project. For those pursuing capitalist accumulation, supply-side crisis takes on meaning only when resource extraction, the environmental side effects of production, or resistance by affected social groups reach sufficient crisis proportions to impair the availability of raw materials and services sought by capitals proprietors themselves. If ready substitutes for used up materials, labour, labour environmental services, and sites can be found, or if a shift to different commodity lines not requiring the same inputs can profitable be made, supply crises are readily resolved. Only when political opposition is overwhelming or substitution is not possible does the imperative arise that the environmental sites/sources be managed sustainably and conserved.17

But here we are still within capitalised nature. There is a somewhat different story unfolding at the frontiers of capitalist nature, a story that has links with its prehistory.

Production processes outside the capitalist production process

This frontier is the frontier between capitalist nature and non-capitalist nature. While one portion of non-capitalist nature does consist of pristine, or in the main pristine nature, untouched directly by humans, in what follows I shall confine myself to humanised nature, and within that to nature as a part of non-capitalist production processes in the sense of processes of appropriation of nature for the satisfaction of needs or wants.18 There is no claim here that these processes are not affected by capitalism; but only that they take place outside the sphere of capitalist production. They are production and labour processes that are not part of capitalist production but nevertheless are part of capitalist social formations.19
17

(O'Connor 1994b) p. 139. Emphasis in original. Martin OConnors version is more of a defensive version. On the other hand, if considerable gains are to be made, reservations about environmental damage may be thrown to the winds. Marx quotes Dunning in a footnote to the quote above, . . . Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated. (Dunning 1860) p. 35-6 as quoted in (Marx 1959) 18 Strictly speaking it may be preferable to speak of appropriation processes rather than production processes, but I am not sure that the advantage may be marginal and pedantic. I continue to use the term production processes, though as will turn out the absence of the more precise term of appropriation amy create somewhat strage combinations. 19 These classes relate back to Benton's third point, and though Benton raises this point mainly in the context of womens labour housework, child rearing, etc. it has a larger context. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 8/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted For the purposes of the discussion I classify them into three types. The classification is not meant to imply any kind of homogeneity. In fact contexuality and localisation turns out to be important elements of these processes and their diversity is far greater. The classification is mainly into three broad groups where capitalisation takes broadly different forms: a) the production processes that take place within the family (housework and child rearing, etc.) and which are mostly carried out by women; b) non-capitalist commodity production b; and c) subsistence production. There is a need to clarify this usage, especially the distinction between non-capitalist commodity production and subsistence production. Subsistence production is often taken to cover commodity production by self employed persons in order to fulfil their needs. I prefer a somewhat different classification, and the reasons for it will shortly become clear. I propose to reserve the term subsistence production for production directly consumed or needs satisfied without the intervention of the market. And I use the term non-capitalist commodity production to mean all commodity production that takes place outside of capitalist commodity production.20 I prefer to view non-capitalist commodity production undertaken with a view to satisfy minimum needs rather than accumulation as subsistencedriven non-capitalist commodity production rather than subsistence production itself, and still keep it separate from subsistence production. This is because the mechanisms of domination and incorporation of both and the attendant effects are quite different in the two cases. In practice all these forms may interpenetrate, in that there will be many households, especially in the rural areas in developing countries that may be engaged in subsistence production as well as non-capitalist commodity production, and housework or domestic labour being a given. In fact, there could even be prefigurative forms of non-capitalist commodity production in which networks attempting to work outside capitalism establish links between production and consumption by either bypassing the market or by subjecting it to network decisions so as to make them relatively autonomous from the larger markets. However these are likely to be miniscule and we shall not consider them in what follows.

Implications of their non-capitalist character

In capitalist production, especially as a system of generalised commodity production, specifying the distribution of the means of production into the hands of different classes, defining ownership relations in respect of them for different individuals, sections and classes, is sufficient to get production going. The relationships that are inscribed into value and surplus value also include the social connections and motivations that give social form to transhistorical requirements. Thus workers, who do not have access to commodities that they need will sell the only commodity they own, themselves in the form of labour power; the capitalist who owns the means of production will hire them, incorporate them into his capital and the juggernaut of capitalist production begins to roll.
20

Here again there is no presumption that they are not affected by capitalist production or that they are not part of capitalist social formations. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 9/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted However, a simple specification of distribution or ownership of the means of production will not be sufficient to do so for non-capitalist production. It will not do to say that human beings will commence production because they fulfil their needs, because that is to reduce those relations to their transhistorical aspect without a social form. It is the social form that provides the how and why of what humans produce. If I am a housewife who has bought wheat and must make chapatis of it, I must have reasons for making them and then having them consumed by others and for specifying who will comprise those others. In other words there must be the family that draws these boundaries, defines who will produce these chapatis for whom and by what right will the work and the chapatis get distributed. In capitalist production systems, specifying ownership of something need not in fact, `ought not specify what use shall be made of it and how. The owner is free to use it as he likes. That is the essence of capitalist private property and the essence of bourgeois freedom, of what capitalism drives towards and sees as ideal. This need not be the case for non-capitalist production. Ownership and access rights often come with accompanying injunctions and requirements; perhaps for example that I may hunt in the forest, but I must not kill the bear or the mongoose or the parrot, I must not fell the mahua tree, and what I hunt I must share freely with others. Moreover, none of these relations that specify who is to do what and get what need to be economic in form, nor need they be quantifications. In fact, the notion of economic relations forming the economic structure of all societies is itself questionable. It needs to be stood on its head. It is the sum total of the social relations of production that define what is to constitute the economic structure of a society. It is in capitalism that social relations of production are reduced to purely economic relations, and more, to quantitative relations between commodities. And it is the influence of capitalism that sees economic structures as universally constituted purely by economic relations and projects them back and forward in history on to other societies.21 And this projection has manifold implications. That capitalism reduces everything to a quantitative relationship lends it great power in universalising itself and driving towards homogenisation. It establishes its hegemony through numbers, through prices, through percentages, and numbers are after all just numbers. It is possible to talk of capital as a global phenomenon. Capital carries with it a social form of production that paradigmatically decontextualises social relations, renders them abstract. In contrast, all non-capitalist forms of production are contextual, local and comprise of social relations of production that are not confined to the purely economic. And so, understanding how they interact with nature and how in turn they interact with capitalised nature
21

As Marx says, `The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production. (Marx 1959). Unfortunately, it does not always automatically happen. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 10/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted and its impositions implies extricating them and returning them to their context. This is important to note especially because the broad grouping I have carried out places them, not in their respective contexts, but in their relationship to capital and what the process of capitalisation imposes on them. The description of broad trends that follows needs to be seen in this light, not as a reduction of their particular contexts.22

Non-capitalist commodity production

As said earlier I have distinguished between subsistence production and non-capitalist commodity production, though the two are of course closely related. Non-capitalist commodity production is often seen as subsistence production since it goes through the C-M-C cycle. However, as explained earlier, I use subsistence production for production for need that takes place outside and bypasses capitalist and commodity production. Noncapitalist commodity production may then be seen as subsistence-driven production (rather than as subsistence production). It emerges from pre-capitalist forms of production, especially in agriculture and carries with it the diverse contexts of these forms, concerning social relations as well as relations with nature that shape how production, mainly agriculture, is carried on. Agriculture remains its most important element because agricultural commodity production accounts for the largest share of non-capitalist commodity production and also because agriculture forms/ed the largest relationship of nurturing appropriation that we have with nature. However, in that earlier form it is self-centred and bypasses commodity production except for the small surpluses it may have sold for obtaining some non-agricultural products through the market (many non-agricultural products would be made available through non-market relationships like the jajmani or balutedari systems in India). It comprises an amazingly large set of rich and diverse traditions in respect of agriculture. In those traditions, self realisation of subsistence needs is a large component. The switch to commodity production in order to obtain means of subsistence through the market, disrupts and decentres the earlier mode of production. An increasing compulsion is that subsistence now has to be obtained through the market. The effects of concentration of capital and gradual dispossession of these commodity producers is a process that is well known. However, what is as important is the attendant changes that go hand in hand with it. This changes the mode of agriculture and paradoxically, this change is all the more severe for the small rather than the large farmers. While the rich farmers can afford to devote part of their farms for domestic and subsistence needs, it becomes more and more difficult for the small farmers to do so and they are compelled more and more to look for remunerative crops that will allow them to purchase means of subsistence. Self reliance and self-centredness is disrupted.
22

In this context, that is why it is so difficult to classify pre-capitalist societies into neat categories. THe problem perhaps lies in trying to evolve a global category for a phenomenon that essentially had to local, contextualised and diverse and had no inbuilt tendency towards globalisation. I Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 11/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted Secondly, the classic C-M-C thinking is now replaced more and more with an M-C-M+m drive. It continues to acquire an M-C-(M+m) cycle and its corresponding drive, without necessarily becoming capitalist production; in some sense it has the worst of both worlds. Already decentred and rearticulated with capitalist production, it is unable to go back to its earlier self-centred forms, because the context itself has radically changed and cannot go forward and become capitalist production. Barring a few exceptions, it stagnates, neither able to move forward nor back. Non-capitalist agricultural commodity production has today become a blind alley which forms the backdrop for the continuing farmer suicides in the country.

Subsistence production
Subsistence production as defined above is also generally rooted in and/or evolves from pre- or extra-capitalist relations of production. Subsistence production may be said to form a spectrum in its relation to non-capitalist commodity production. At one end of the spectrum, it is that portion of commodity production that goes directly into the consumption of its owner, and is mainly restricted to farming and forms a portion of the produce of the commodity producing, often rich, farmer that goes into household consumption without mediation of the market. At this end of the spectrum, it is subordinated to commodity production and its total dynamic differs little if at all from capitalist commodity production in its objectives and methods of production.23 However, outside of capitalist farming, there is very little scope for this kind of short circuit subsistence production within the circuit of capital. At the other end of the spectrum are communities who live in relative isolation and rely mainly on pre- or at least non-capitalist relations and forms of the labour process for their living. They do carry out exchange with capitalist commodity production but what they get from it serves as supplements to the non-capitalist forms of their productive activity; that is to say, their exchange with the capitalist economy forms a secondary portion of their livelihoods. These are mostly the adivasis, tribal communities who have succeeded in maintaining a relative autonomy from the capitalist economy in spite of the fact that it surrounds them and their habitats from all sides and indirectly influences and profoundly affects the context of their lives. There are very few such pockets, and their number and the degree of their autonomy is dwindling. Between them lies a vast middle portion of the spectrum that is occupied by the rural and the urban poor. They have some access to the means of subsistence within commodity production either through access to the means of production or through wage labour, but have to seek supplements by seeking and creating avenues of direct fulfilment of their needs. At one end of it are the relatively better off who need very few
23

Even here certain type of differences have often been observed different and better seed, more eco-friendly methods of production overall a much better attention to the product as use value and the process as nurture. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 12/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted supplements outside what they obtain through the exchange of commodities they produce and/or through selling their labour power. At the other end are poorer of the rural and the urban poor, for whom subsistence production is crucial to their livelihoods and cutting it off would threaten their very existence. Though they both occupy the lower end of this portion, the urban and the rural poor differ considerably in their production relationships. In fact, there is a form of subsistence production present right at the heart of capitalism, in its urban areas as underbelly to its flaunted affluence. The very poor and very marginalised in capitalist societies (the homeless, the vagrants, the beggars, the tramps and hobos) often simply live off the product of capitalism by intercepting it at points where its commodity status is ambiguous or suspended (by foraging waste, by frequenting public facilities, etc.) This is also subsistence production.24 They live by seizing what capitalism can provide them `as found. This is then a form of seizing back means of subsistence but from capitalised nature. In fact, the urban poor are more likely to be continually engaged in a struggle of seizing back portions of capitalist nature in the form of encroachments, `illegal possession of the interstices and ambiguities and suspensions of commodity status of nature and social product. Their interaction is likely to be with already capitalised nature and social product and their subsistence production is based on seizing back and retaining portions of it. In rural areas, in addition to the struggles for subsistence production based on portions of capitalised nature seized back and retained and struggles around them, there is also the additional problem of protecting and resisting the process of capitalisation of non-capitalised nature that is the basis of ongoing subsistence production.

Family and patriarchy: invisible production

Subsistence production and housework or domestic labour are intimately related. When a woman does not buy kerosene but goes out to fetch firewood is she engaged in subsistence production or in housework? As a matter of fact, it is both. Housework or domestic labour may be viewed, with some qualifications as subsistence production carried out within the family. I would emphasise again a point that has been made earlier, that in a transhistorical sense, housework comprises production and it needs to be first reclaimed as such. It is the process of capitalisation that then relegates it to the sphere of reproduction and renders its productive nature invisible. This transposition of form is itself a defining feature of housework under capitalism. Historically the family was as much a production unit as a consumption unit, and kinship in some tribal societies can be looked upon as regulating
24

It is difficult to see this as `production, but here we are using a rather broader concept of production as appropriation that we had outlined earlier (appropriation in various senses: direct appropriation, appropriation by nurture and appropriation by transformation) and that we owe to Bentons critique. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 13/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted production as well.25 It is only in capitalism that family presents itself as purely a consumption unit, pushing into the background and making invisible the entire process of production of use values that goes on under its aegis. Family is also the site that combines and interconnects the subsistence production, the production process continuing within the household and often non-capitalist and even some petty capitalist commodity production as well. I am tempted to use the word household instead of the family, since the household is in many ways the family as organised into a production unit. However, that would probably be pedantic, though I may switch over to the use of the term where appropriate. Let us now take a look at the process of production that continues inside the family. For the sake of brevity we call it family production and the work performed within the labour process embedded in it we shall call housework. Of interest here is the status of family production and housework under capitalism. In capitalism, the institution of family provides this production process as a service rendered `as found to capital. Patriarchy further provides it in the form of womens labour `as found. Since, under capitalism, the rejuvenation of workers lives, their life activity has come to be the reproduction of labour power (we may refer back here to the reduction of life activity to labour power) the family comes to be the institution that reproduces the commodity labour power26, this `as found nature means, firstly, that capital need not pay for it and secondly, since it contributes to the reproduction of labour power, it results in placing in the hands of capital the right to extract unpaid labour (surplus labour) from women.27 Here we should also take into account the link that family production and housework has with subsistence production as such. Both of them provide a portion of the labour and use value requirement of the reproduction of labour power; to the extent that there are family members selling their labour power. And in that sense both of them provide them `as found and hence capital again need not and does not pay for them. This also implies a lower wage rate for migrant labour power that the sphere of subsistence production often provides. It results in a double exploitation. Both are mechanisms that place in the hands of capital the right to extract unpaid labour, or rather the right to convert that labour to unpaid labour for capital, the bulk of it being womens labour.28 Visible here is also an outline of how capitalism has historically reconstituted the family, first as
25

Anthropologist Maurice Godelier, well known for his studies of the Baruya says that `kinship relations may directly function as relations of production in certain situations. (Godelier 1981) 26 Reproduction in both senses. In the short run, the process of rejuvenation of the workers human capacities now reduced to the reproduction of their labour power; in the long run, the birthing and nurturing of children now reduced to rearing additional labour power for capital. 27 This is by no means simple to establish. The largely inconclusive debate around domestic labour or housework in the seventies and the eighties between and within socialist feminists attempted to grapple with this problem. One at least of the reasons is that labour power is not a `natural commodity but a `fictitious one a point that Elson makes quite forcefully (Elson 1979) it is forcibly treated as a commodity, or as I say elsewhere, is reduced to a commodity. 28 That this surplus is extracted in the form of surplus labour rather than surplus value has tremendous implications of how it evolves in capitalism and to the process of its incorporation in capitalism. REF Appendix if you write it. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 14/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted an event that we can follow in its emergence and secondly in a continuing process at the frontier of capitalisation of nature. The following provides a brief sketch. As a historical event, firstly it disrupted the earlier productive unit that the non-capitalist household represented. Through a process of dispossession it first cut off its links with nature and denied it the access to nature that was the basis of its non-capitalist production. Thrown on the streets and delivered at the feet of capitalism bound and gagged, so to speak, in its early phases, the family was a source of labour power of all the family members. Everyone worked, and everyone worked long hours. In fact, it seemed as if the family was breaking up, and capitalism was itself responsible.29 This was the ugly face of capitalism, the rule of absolute surplus value. It is then later through working class struggles that we see the working class family being reconstituted. The working class struggles have a double edge to them. They are as much struggles for a living wage, where the wage of one breadwinner would suffice for the entire familys subsistence, as well as a trades union struggle to keep women out of jobs that men could claim. It is both push and pull in the reconstitution of the patriarchal working class family. It is through this reconstitution that the family (or the household) now becomes purely an instrument of the reproduction of labour power. Women are pushed out of capitalist production after all it is the only production that counts and are confined to `housework. This is not a simple passive acceptance of patriarchy but an active construction of the patriarchal family by the working class men. And while this assumes patriarchy as an integral component it also has to reconstitute patriarchy and patriarchal relations. Power is associated in the older versions of patriarchy with the eldest presiding male and age is as much a conduit of power as maleness. All that would now be an obstacle; now we have the breadwinner(s) in central position and all else must be subservient to his needs, others must be in relation of home maker to him, and similarly the next generation must accordingly be raised to become good bread winners and good home makers. In late capitalist affluent society that has developed in the West there seems to be a further development. All vestiges of autonomous nature and the direct relationship with nature that household subsistence
29

Thus the Manifesto at one point says, `[The bourgeois family] finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. (Marx and Engels 1969) emphasis added. But the clearest statement on this situation is in Engels, as the following excerpts, all from (Engels 1969), show: `In all directions the family is being dissolved by the labour of wife and children, or inverted by the husband's being thrown out of employment and made dependent upon them for bread.' . . . `The labour of women entails the same consequences as in the factories, dissolves the family, and makes the mother totally incapable of household work.' . . `The employment of women at once breaks up the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours every day in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or elsewhere, what becomes of the children?' Also of interest is the language in which they are couched, already prefiguring the reconstitution of the patriarchal working class family. Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 15/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted production afforded are now eliminated. Household labour now has no direct connection with non-capitalist nature. Household labour now works purely with capitalist nature, and is confined to further processing of means of subsistence received through wages or the market, further processing them for use and consumption within the family. The expropriation of the working classes from nature is complete. The family now has truly become a `consumption unit. Further, it now acquires a new importance as market, besides being an instrument of reproduction of labour power. If women work, all the better, for the family will now buy more. Single parenting is even better, because capitalism knows that women will put in the double shift, one of it free, whether they are single or whether they live with their spouses and the separated spouses will buy even more. This sketch may seem too broad brush, but that is what it is intended to be. The point here is simply to illustrate that reclamation of housework as production continued within the family allows us to reconstitute the history of family under capitalism in a more meaningful and grounded manner. Outside this heartland of capitalism, the continuing process of reconstitution of the family is much, much more complex, too complex even for something like the broad brush treatment above. That treatment was made possible because capitalism has itself established a much more uniform context in its heartland and because in some sense the family has virtually moved inside the frontier, especially so far as nature is concerned. Outside this heartland, non-capitalist nature is very much alive and the family has not yet moved inside the frontier, at least for the great majority of the population. All the elements described above are at play, but the contexts are immensely diverse and local. But the direction in them is clear. It is the terrain of a struggle for livelihood as much as a resistance to the capitalisation of nature because the capitalisation of nature means for them dispossession. And if women are in the forefront of these struggles, it is also because it is they, in spite of patriarchy, who are being dispossessed. They are caught up in an ongoing process that is taking place at the frontier between capitalist and non-capitalist nature, accumulation by dispossession.

3. Accumulation by dispossession: a continuing

phenomenon
The processes that Harvey calls `accumulation by dispossession are continuing processes akin to primitive accumulation and are relevant to what is happening at the frontier of capitalised nature and the shape it takes. These are `non-economic processes, in the sense that they are processes that occur outside and/or in addition to the processes that are subsumed by the value form, and hence the market.

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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted

The two aspects of accumulation

Harvey takes us to the concept through Luxemburgs description in her Accumulation of Capital:
[Regarded in the light of] the commodity market and the place where surplus value is produced - the factory, the mine, the agricultural estate . . . accumulation is a purely economic process, with its most important phase a transaction between the capitalist and the wage labourer. . . . Here, in form at any rate, peace, property and equality prevail, and the keen dialectics of scientific analysis were required to reveal how the right of ownership changes in the course of accumulation into appropriation of other people's property, how commodity exchange turns into exploitation and equality becomes class rule. The other aspect of the accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system - a policy of spheres of interest - and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process.30

These two aspects of accumulation, Luxemburg then argues, are "organically linked"31 and "the historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking them together"32. The importance of this formulation in all its implications is only now being realised in the form of a debate about the continuing relevance of the process of primitive accumulation. There seem to be two factors responsible for this. Firstly, Luxemburg makes this point in the course of a work that not only makes this a continuing process but she argues that it is the only process that can allow capitalism to avoid a crisis of overaccumulation/underconsumptionn. She bases her argument on the relations between Departments I and II, and concludes that that the demand will increasingly fall short of production. However, there are many ways of circumventing this, mainly by incorporating a Department III that produces non-wage goods or goods that exchange against surplus value. Secondly, primitive accumulation is supposed to be a process that precedes capitalism, and hence it is presumed, a process already over. In Capital Marx keeps this element out of consideration until the very last stage of analysis. There is a valid reason for it. He explores what would happen if capitalism sticks to what it itself proclaims to be rational the market and itself counterposes to force, fraud, oppression and looting. And it is for this reason that he succeeds in showing that even then, capitalism ends up as a system of deepening and relative dispossession of the majority. But this creates an impression that for Marx a true `model of capitalism excludes these processes. Secondly, under those assumptions of a capitalism true to its self image, there are comfortably
30 31

(Luxemburg 1968) p. 452-3 as quoted in (Harvey 2003b) (Luxemburg 1968) p. 452-3 as quoted in (Harvey 2003b) 32 (Luxemburg 1968) p. 452-3 as quoted in (Harvey 2003b) Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape

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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted quantified `stern laws of the economic process. As soon as we step out of them, we enter a sphere of indeterminacy and uncertainty. Accumulation by dispossession is one such sphere.

Primitive accumulation vs. Accumulation by dispossession

Harvey then goes on to describe the features of primitive accumulation.
A closer look at Marx's description of primitive accumulation reveals a wide range of processes. These include the commodification and privatization of land33 and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labor power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation (particularly of land); slave trade; and usury, the national debt and ultimately the credit system as radical means of primitive accumulation. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these processes and there is considerable evidence (which Marx suggests and Braudel confirms) that the transition to capitalist development was vitally contingent upon the stance of the state. . .

With the possible exception of the slave trade depending on whether we call trafficking and flesh trade in women and minors a slave trade or not all the other processes may be seen to be continuing, though in a geographically uneven pattern. After pointing out that `all the features which Marx mentions have remained powerfully present within capitalism's historical geography he also goes on to describe how the credit and finance system have created new avenues and opportunities for predation, fraud and thievery and also points out whole new mechanisms related to the new developments, ranging from IPRs, WTO negotiations and TRIPS to the dismantling and auction of public assets and utilities at a pittance. The potential role of this accumulation by dispossession in relieving crises is also clear; it brings in new resources, creates new markets by bringing to the market both, the dispossessed persons on the one hand and the newly possessed assets that they have been dispossessed of on the other, and also adds a sphere of low organic composition of capital to the capitalist economy. More and more studies are pointing out that there is a possibility that these processes have never really disappeared and have been present at all moments in the history of capitalist34 accumulation necessitating, according to Harvey, a `general re-evaluation of the continuous role and persistence of the predatory practices of "primitive" or "original" accumulation within the long historical geography of capital accumulation. Harvey renames the processes as accumulation by
33 34

And one may add, water, and increasingly, wind and sunlight. Harvey quotes (Perelman 2000) and an extensive debate around the issue in The Commoner (www.commoner.org). and a useful summary in (De-Angelis 1999) Capitalisation of Nature and Accumulation by Dispossession: Suhas Paranjape p. 18/21

Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted dispossession `since it seems peculiar to call an ongoing process "primitive" or "original", The phrase has now stuck. Also, primitive accumulation refers to a long historical event in which all the preconditions of capitalism came together. As such, we need to distinguish that event and its context from the process that is unfolding in front of us and Harveys term also may be used to make that distinction in a convenient manner. We would then have primitive accumulation as a particular historical event/process in which the preconditions of capitalism were brought together by a process of accumulation by dispossession, which could then continue side by side as accompanying the `mainstream process of accumulation.

The site of a different type of contradiction

Once again, just as we had with the spatio-temporal fix, and also because the spatio-temporal fix also involves a substantial dose of accumulation by dispossession, we have here the site of a different kind of contradiction. Here we would need to and should distinguish between subsistence systems being incorporated into capital through this process of accumulation by dispossession and the market induced dispossession of small commodity producers through competition. Both have a similar effect but differ greatly in their impact and their discourse. Subsistence systems imply a direct possession of nature by humans and a direct interaction with it to fulfil their needs. Dispossession here is synonymous with capitalisation of nature. Accumulation by dispossession is here called for precisely because markets by themselves cannot be relied upon to bring about the dispossession and bring these resources and that part of nature into the circuit of capital. Secondly, the discourse here is reminiscent of the `civilising missions of colonial powers yet distinct from them. Here we have the supplanting of backward forms with more advanced forms of production and economies in the interests of their own and the common good, and with due `compensation. In so far they open up a discourse of what constitutes common good they are cast differently from the early enclosures which were direct assertions of private interests and rights. Nonetheless at core we have the same monopoly of violence and the power to define legality that can be invoked whenever resistance spills its bounds. The great mass of the rural and the urban poor in countries like India try to meet their livelihood needs through a combination of selling their labour power, non-capitalist or petty commodity production, subsistence production and production continued within the family or household. The operations of the household are not neatly divided into these separate categories, but form a multifarious and unique network itself adumbrated into the circuits of capital. The household (in the sense of the family organised as an operational living unit) and the community that forms their context is riven by divisions of caste, class and gender, but nevertheless is the medium through which they hold access to the nature and the spaces around them. What is important is that the possession
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Draft for discussion: Not to be quoted that they have of the nature and the spaces around them, however precarious, is a vital component of their lives and supports a significant, not necessarily a major but certainly a critical, portion of their livelihoods. In a situation where this access now occupies virtually all of what lies outside already capitalised nature, any geographical expansion in the nature of a spatio-temporal fix will have to take the form of accumulation by dispossession: a dual process, a dispossession of the people who hold possession of non-capitalised nature and direct incorporation of that nature into the circuit of capital.

The expropriation of subsistence production

Expropriation of subsistence production is also the expropriation of any direct productive relationship that humans have with nature unmediated by capital. It is conquest of nature and humans by capital. However, this does not mean that subsistence production is unaffected by capitalism. In fact, it is likely to be a dismal halfway house. Capitalism is likely to have destroyed or utterly transformed its local ecological and social context so that the current subsistence production would be a pale replica of what it might have been in its own context. If this is not kept in mind, it is easy to liken this pale replica to a fully evolved ecologically sound production system, by superposing on it ones own notions and see in the struggles waged by subsistence producers against this capitalisation, not simply a defence of the natural environment they see as their natural possession, but an environmentalism. This environmentalism is then often seen to lie in the non-capitalist complex of ideas and practices regarding nature. Given the earlier pre-capitalist context, many of these ideas and ideas may be seen to blend into a whole that preserved and reproduced the ecological context in which they operated. However, in the context of an ongoing capitalisation of nature that surrounds them and modifies them, the context that made for the efficacy of the blend of ideas and practices is often found to be irreparably modified, especially for the rural and urban poor, who can no longer rely on their disrupted practices to ensure them a livelihood and must combine them with wage labour as well as commodity production. In such a situation it is important to realise that though the blend of their earlier ideas and practices served to reproduce their earlier ecological contexts in an efficient manner, it does not constitute an `ism that can be freely transported across time and context and though we may learn from it and incorporate that learning in future practice, we can neither return to them nor take them over unchanged in the name of their environmentalism.

References

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