ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to unravel fundamental features of this capitalist development process in the Latin American context and in what David Harvey and others have described as the neoliberal era, and Samir Amin has termed the era of generalized monopolies. With reference to the systemic dynamics and forces at work in these conditions, the chapter has a dual focus on the capitalist development of agriculture, which has been the dominant force in the evolution of capitalism as we know it in different historical regional contexts across the world. That is, it is a system dominated by the expansion and interaction between the dynamics of industrial and financial capital. This system, as theorized so eloquently and forcefully by Marx in his momentous work Capital, is based on the exploitation of the ‘unlimited supply’ of surplus agricultural labour. This chapter analyzes the contemporary dynamics of this capitalist development process in the Latin American context.
