A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

The second aspect is structural. Over the last few years there has been
an expansion of monoculture, resulting in the concentration of land-holdings
– in other words, a veritable reversal of land reform. Peasant and
family agriculture is being destroyed all over the world on the pretext of
its low productivity. It is true that monoculture can produce from 500
and even 1,000 times more than peasant agriculture in its present state.
Nevertheless, two factors should be taken into account: first, this kind
of production is leading to ecological destruction. It eliminates forests,
and contaminates the soil and the waters of oceans and rivers through
the massive use of chemical products. Over the next 50 to 75 years we
shall be creating the deserts of tomorrow. Second, peasants are being
thrown off their lands, and millions of them have to migrate to the cities,
to live in shanty towns, exacerbating the tasks of women and causing
urban crises, as well as increasing internal migratory pressure, as in
Brazil; or they are going to other countries (Mexico, Central America,
Colombia, Ecuador, Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Morocco, Algeria, West Africa).
Together with public services, agriculture is now one of the new frontiers
for capital (Samir Amin, 2004), especially in times when the profitability
of productive industrial capital is relatively reduced and there is
a considerable expansion of financial capital seeking new sources of
profit. Recently we have witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon:
the land grabbing by private and State capital, particularly in Africa, for
the production of food and agrofuels. The South Korean corporation Daewoo
obtained a concession of 1,200,000 hectares in Madagascar for a
period of 99 years, which provoked a serious political crisis in that country
and finally a revision of the contract. Countries like Libya and the Gulf
Emirates are doing likewise in Mali and various other African countries.
European and North American mining and agro-energy multinationals
are securing the opportunity to exploit tens of millions of hectares for
long periods, as Chinese State and private enterprises are also doing.
There is very little concern in these initiatives for the ecological and social
implications, which are considered as ‘externalities’, i.e. external to
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