ABSTRACT

Social scientists committed to anti-racism and anti-capitalism have long criticized the dominant Malthusian framework for understanding the unequal distribution of food. Following Marx’ critique, David Harvey (2001, chapter 3) observes that Malthusianism still drives powerful governments and international institutions. Malthus’ conception of the relationship between resources and population, conceived at the beginning of England’s industrial phase in colonialism, systematically neglects the historical debts Europe’s abundance owes to the rest of the world. This chapter joins the Marxist critiques, bringing into greater clarity the racializing repercussions of the utilitarian philosophy underpinning both Malthus and colonialism. Against Marx, however, I will conceive the expansion of food production and the transplanting of populations not as a rationally guided process at all, but with Georges Bataille, as soaked with ambiguous desires and outbursts of destructive and self-destructive animosity. The early Dutch efforts to monopolize the spice trade in the eastern Indonesian archipelago should be seen as the quintessential example of such irrational mercantile usurpation.