Capital Accumulation as Time-Space Appropriation

Presentation at International Conference on Environmental Conflicts and Justice

Barcelona, July 2, 2010

Alf Hornborg, Human Ecology Division, Lund University

Capital accumulation =

• A recursive relationship between some kind of technological infrastructure and a symbolic capacity to make claims on other people’s resources

• Presupposes rates of unequal exchange that ultimately rest on human evaluations and that guarantee a minimum net transfer of resources from one social sector to another

Landesque capital in ancient Peru

Toward a cross-cultural definition of capital accumulation

A formal comparison of the accumulation of productive infrastructure in 15th century Peru and 19th century England:

Productive infrastructure accumulated

Cultural mystification of unequal exchange

15th century Peru Agricultural terraces

Ceremonial redistribution of maize beer

18th century England

Textile factories Wages and market prices

Cross-cultural comparison as subversive science:

• Are ”wages” and ”market prices” cultural mystifications of unequal exchange in the modern world, just like the concept of minka and the ceremonial redistribution of maize beer were in the Inca empire?

Capital accumulation as appropriation

How do we quantify unequal exchange?

• In terms of ”exchange value” (price), all market transactions are by definition equal

• In order to establish the occurrence of unequal exchange, we need a different metric than money (but not to be confused with ”value”)

• Some options: embodied materials, energy, environmental damage, land requirements, labour time, etc.

The Industrial Revolution as time-space appropriation

Commodity Volume for £1000 in 1850

Embodied labor

Embodied land

Raw cotton

11.84 tons 32,619 h 58.6 ha

Cotton cloth

3.41 tons 4,092 h - 1 ha