"For capital, the primary purpose of production is not to meet specific human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to achieve any concrete ecological goals. Rather, the overriding objective is to maximize and accumulate profit. The result is that the capitalist world-system is characterized by perverse forms of production. Capital directs finance to highly profitable output, like sport utility vehicles, industrial meat, fast fashion, weapons, fossil fuels, and property speculation, while reproducing chronic shortages of necessary goods and services like public transit, public health care, nutritious food, renewable energy, and affordable housing. This dynamic occurs within national economies but also has clear imperialist dimensions. Land, labor, and productive capacities across the Global South are roped into supplying global commodity chains dominated by Northern firms—bananas for Chiquita, cotton for Zara, coffee for Starbucks, smartphones for Apple, and coltan for Tesla, all for the benefit of the core, all at artificially depressed prices—instead of producing food, housing, health care, education, and industrial goods to meet national needs. Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labor and resources from the periphery."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Jason Hickel, "The Double Objective of Democratic Ecosocialism." ' (September 1, 2023)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Capital accumulation
14 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Capital accumulation →
Related Quotes
"The accumulation of capital involves the expansion of value over time."
"The accumulation of capital and misery go hand in hand, concentrated in space."
"They lived in abysmal misery, yet they had no prospect of a better tomorrow. They existed under capitalism, yet there…"
"Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will …"
"We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly …"
"If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate ins…"
"It is more than a little ironic that "capital accumulation" once a rather tendentious Marxian view of a supposed capi…"
"The relationship of Israel with the Palestinian territories vividly illustrates how the capitalist wealth of develope…"
"The division of labour is a consequence of the previous accumulation of capital... As the accumulation of capital mus…"
"We owe to it almost everything that passes under the general name of civilization today. The extraordinary progress o…"