“When capital has bumped up against limits to profit-growth in the past, it has found fixes in things like colonisation, structural adjustment programmes, wars, restrictive patent laws, nefarious debt instruments, land grabs, privatisation, and enclosing commons like water and seeds. Why would it be any different this time? Indeed, a study by the ecological economist Beth Stratford finds that when capital faces resource constraints, this is exactly what happens: it turns to aggressive rent-seeking behaviour. It seeks to grab existing value wherever it can, with clever mechanisms to suck income and wealth from the public domain into private hands, and from the poor to the rich, exacerbating inequality.” HistoryCapitalismEconomicsInequalityExploitationRentDegrowth Book:Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World Source: Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
“Economists have always recognised that some kind of initial accumulation was necessary for the rise of capitalism. Adam Smith called this ‘previous accumulation’, and claimed that it came about because a few people worked really hard and saved their earnings– an idyllic tale that still gets repeated in economics textbooks. But historians see it as naïve. This was no innocent process of saving. It was a process of plunder.” CapitalismExploitationEconomistPlunderOriginAdam Smith Book:Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World Source: Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World