Accumulation by Displacement: Global Enclosures, Food Crisis, and the Ecological Contradictions of Capitalism

This article develops the concept of accumulation by displacement to denote (1) the global appropriation of imtfer-reproduced labor power (predicated upon dispossession of formerly self-reproducing peasantries) and (2) the accumulation of spaces of surplus nature. From the labor-in-nature perspective, the concept of surplus nature (as distinguished from necessary nature) is utilized to critique the developmentalist view of nature as an (external) object rather than a human relationship internal to the production of social life. This perspective helps to conceptualize the current crisis of global capitalism as a crisis of under-reproduction, of which the food crisis is only one expression. The long food crisis, as conceptualized in this article, expresses the limits of cheap ecology as supported by cheap food regimes and oil regimes. The end of cheap ecology will decisively rule out all externalizing solutions to capitalist crises.