ABSTRACT
The development of the means of production has stimulated an increasing extraction and use of raw materials, and generated an increasing production and accumulation of waste. Waste is too important to be ignored in the sociology of the productive process. The dynamic of capital accumulation has been closely related to waste accumulation with all its environmentally destructive effects. The accumulation of surplus capital has been based upon the accumulation of surplus waste. The chain of production of commodities, hence accumulation of capital, and the chain of unpaid waste cost, hence accumulated environmental degradation, are linked together. The accumulation of capital on the basis of accumulated unpaid waste cost constitutes a process of empowerment of the companies involved. It makes society economically dependent on the companies for its supply of capital and gives to them the means to struggle politically against recoupling the accumulated unpaid waste cost they have generated with the capital they have accumulated.
