During a class lecture, long time friend, Mike Oso, mentioned the term "latifundistas" to explain how land is captured by market forces. Mike showed how farmers in El Salvador don't live on the land they farm so that more land could be used for crop production. Kevin Carson explains the concept better so I'm reproducing it here.
The neoliberal model of large scale cash crop farming for export isn't exactly a product of the "free market."
The Enclosures have been reenacted in the Third World by latifundistas and other feudal landed oligarchs, in collusion with Western agribusiness.
The main cause of starvation, as you say, isn't underproduction. But it isn't too little "trade," either. It's mainly the lack of purchasing power. Land that was formerly was formerly used by peasant subsistence farmers to feed themselves is now used to grow cash crops for the export market, while those evicted peasants sit in shantytowns or hold begging bowls in the streets.
A free market libertarianism that takes the distribution of "factors" as given, without regard to issues of justice in acquisition, really isn't libertarian at all.
The Enclosures have been reenacted in the Third World by latifundistas and other feudal landed oligarchs, in collusion with Western agribusiness.
The main cause of starvation, as you say, isn't underproduction. But it isn't too little "trade," either. It's mainly the lack of purchasing power. Land that was formerly was formerly used by peasant subsistence farmers to feed themselves is now used to grow cash crops for the export market, while those evicted peasants sit in shantytowns or hold begging bowls in the streets.
A free market libertarianism that takes the distribution of "factors" as given, without regard to issues of justice in acquisition, really isn't libertarian at all.
A link at Wikipedia on related matter is here.
Thanks a lot for the link, Flad.
ReplyDeletehi kevin...there's so much to know about trade...i must keep learning how to look at data and the institutional forces that drive it...please keep in touch...flad
ReplyDeleteLatifundia is not the farmers living away from the crop land. it's the loss of ownership by small-holders, and consquent loss of control over crop choices...subsistence gives way to monoculture export cash crops.
ReplyDelete