1st Edition
Capitalist Dispossessions Redistribution and Capital Expansion in Contemporary Brazil
This book analyses contemporary dispossessions in Brazil, drawing on the Marxian concept of primitive accumulation to show how processes of proletarianization, capitalization, and commodification each relate in distinct ways to capitalist accumulation.
With an emphasis on the processes by which immediate producers are turned into wage-dependent producers, and the means of subsistence are transformed into the means of capitalist production or commodities, the book presents studies of the movements of capital—as well as those aimed at defending the commons— showing how contemporary dispossession is related to capitalist accumulation. Ranging through the 1964–1985 military dictatorship, the transition to neoliberalism in the 1990s, the legislative coup that ousted the Workers Party from federal office in 2016, and the Bolsonaro government and its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the book demonstrates the socioeconomic shifts that have occurred in Brazil in recent decades.
This book will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy, dispossession, contemporary commons, and Latin America.
Introduction
1 Primitive, Redistributive, and Capital-Expanding Dispossessions
2 Agricultural Dispossessions during the Military Rule
3 Dispossessing Neoliberal Economic Policy
4 Olympic Urban Dispossessions
5 A Dispossessing Legislative Coup d’État
6 Dispossessions during the Pandemic
7 Capital-Expanding and Capital-Exhausting Dispossession
Afterword
Biography
Daniel Bin is an associate professor at the Universidade de Brasília, Brazil. He is a former visiting scholar at Yale University, USA and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA. His research interests include economic policy and contemporary dispossessions and their implications for labor and class relations. He is the author of The Politics of Public Debt (2020) and currently serves as an associate editor at Critical Sociology.
“This is an excellent, timely, and compelling book. Focusing on Brazil, it scrutinizes the secret of capitalist accumulation as a violent process of dispossession and destruction. I urge you to read it.”
Werner Bonefeld, Professor Emeritus of Politics, University of York, UK, and Adjunct Professor at the Postgraduate School at ZRC SAZU, Slovenia
“This is a wonderful new look at capitalism, and in particular, how different types of dispossessions relate to accumulation. It shows how proletarianization, capitalization, and commodification all contribute to accumulation in different ways. This book thus draws together disparate lines of Marxist thought in a novel and important way.”
Rebecca Jean Emigh, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
“Primitive accumulation gave birth to capitalism and during neoliberalism we have observed various types of dispossessions that assure capital’s reproduction. Daniel Bin’s book analyses dispossession in Brazil between the military regime and the pandemic, distinguishing dispossessions that redistribute surpluses from those that expand capital. Both threaten capital with its exhaustion. Quite thought-provoking!”
Maria de Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo, Professor of Economics, University of Brasilia, Brazil
“Daniel Bin’s highly original work weaves together analyses of the specific forms of dispossession in a highly important country in the periphery, with the examination of a wide range of concrete processes of dispossession taking place over time. Bin shows that dispossession can not only enhance exploitation, but also generate new forms of inequality while, simultaneously, supporting the reproduction of the system of accumulation. This book offers an important set of contributions to scholarship, across development studies, value theory, uneven and combined development, and Latin American studies.”
Alfredo Saad Filho, Professor of Political Economy and International Development, King’s College London, UK, and Visiting Professor of Social Sciences at LUT University, Finland
