It's interesting to think that when a cyclone occurs in Florida,
there is a flurry of business activity -- construction of new houses
roads, etc. A lot of profit is made. When a cylcone occurs in a
poor country, that's not the case. In fact, quite often just the
opposite -- destruction is the main consequence. Destruction of
nature, of physical assets and of human bodies. Cyclones -- 'natural
hazards' as such -- are not good business opportunities in poor
countries.
It seems, natural hazards become a 'natural' means of 'creative
destruction' under capitalism, just as wars are. Of course, one
cannot argue that that is why natural hazards occur, but one can
perhaps make the functional (not functionalist) argument about wars:
wars being necessary as a means of creative destruction which in turn
creates business opportunities. Just exactly how (e.g. whose agency
is involved), when and where they occur is contingent.
To the extent that being in poverty and being under/unemployed leads
to the loss of human energy and capabilities (people just have to
sit idle and do nothing) and to the extent that capitalism is
necessarily dependent on poverty and under/unemployment (e.g. the
industrial reserve army argument), one can argue again that
capitalism is based on destruction.*
Therefore all these apparently different things -- natural
hazards, poverty, wars etc -- have something in common. This means
there is a 'dialectical difference', as Harvey would call it.
Or am I being too capital-deterministic. I don't mean to!
Raju
* Once one takes into account all these destructions and many others
(esp environmental destruction due to capitalism) over a long period
of time and calculate the productive efficiency (output over input),
I wonder if the efficiency argument would really hold, i.e. if
capitalist production would really be an efficient method. I really
think therefore that the definition of capitalist development in
Marx, Brenner, Roemer, etc (what to speak of the mainstrean people)
_must_ be considered inadequate (I'm not saying this is a
startling discovery, just a provisional thought!).
Raju J Das
Department of Geography
University of Dundee
Dundee DD1 4HN
United Kingdom
Phone 01382 348073 work
01382 737097 home
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