Krise der Entwicklung - Entwicklung der Krise, Teil 1 | Brasilien: Landgrabbing und die Neue Rechte - exit!-Lesekreis in Hamburg
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Krise der Entwicklung – Entwicklung der
Krise, Teil 1 | Brasilien: Landgrabbing und die
Neue Rechte
Fábio Teixeira Pitta
Post-Doc in Geography, University of São Paulo /
and Economics, Lateinamerika-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Exit! Lesekreis Hamburg: Do, den 06. Juni
Map 1. Brazilian Cerrado Area and MATOPIBA Region
Communities and Geomorphology: Plateaus and Low Lands
Communities and Geomorphology: High Lands, Flat Plateaus /
Native Cerrado and SoyBean Production
Communities and Geomorphology: Low Land Community
Photo: Irrigated Soybean Production over the Plateau
Photo: Mechanized Soybean Production over one Plateau –
South Piauí - Brazil
Table – SugarCane Agroindustry Production (expansion)
in Brazil, on the XXIst Century
Map 2: 21st Century SugarCane Agroindustry Expansion
From São Paulo, SouthEast - BrazilPhoto: Sugarcane Manual Cutter (São Paulo)
Mechanic Sugarcane Harvest – São Paulo/Brazil
Table: OverExploitation of Labor in Sugarcane Manual Cutting (São Paulo – Brazil: 1980 – 2012)
Production Payment Cutting Productivity Dairy Earnings
Years Reais Per Tons of SugarCane Tons / Men / Day SugarCane Cutters
1980 2,29 3,97 9,09
1982 2,17 4,50 9,77
1985 1,92 5,00 9,60
1988 1,25 5,00 6,25
1990 0.96 6,10 5,86
1992 0,84 6,30 5,29
1994 0,83 7,00 5,81
1996 1,05 7,00 7,35
1998 1,06 7,00 7,42
2000 0,88 8,00 7,04
2002 0,88 8,00 7,04
2004 0,86 (v.c.:R$ 2,93) 8,00 6,88
2005 0,86 (v.c.:R$ 3,11) 8,11 6,97
2006 0,85 (v.c.:R$ 3,11) 8,48 7,21
2007 0,85 (v. c.:R$ 3,27) 8,74 7,42
2008 0,79 (v. c.:R$ 3,45) 8,61 6,80
2009 0,84 (v. c.:R$ 3,65) 8,79 7,38
2010 0,85 (v. c.:R$ 3,93) 8,67 7,37
2011 0,89 (v. c.:R$ 4,46) 8,93 7,95
2012 0,89 (v. c.:R$ 4,80) 8,71 7,75Number of Workers Employment and
the Mechanization Process
• Until 1970 there was 2 million workers in São Paulo in agriculture.
• Until the 1990s, there was 500 Thousand workers (manual sugarcane
cutters / harvesters)
• Until 2014 there was 90 Thousand workers in sugarcane production in
Bundesland São Paulo.
There are current cases of workers in situation analogous to
enslavement in mechanized sugarcane cutting / harvest.Patriarchy and Racism
Migration: afro-descendants / indigenous-descendants (Northeast)
• Men used to migrate to cut sugar cane (1960 – nowadays).
• Women took care of families and production of the means of life on the origin place.
After mechanization process:
- Many men unemployed and injured – much less migration, more drug dealing.
- Women: take care of what is left of production; search for work in urban centers –
precarious (care / prostitution) labor conditions.
- In general, small farmers: no more access to work/wage labor at all.
- No access to enough land to produce for themselves.
General Consequence: after the prices fell, around 1/4 of bankruptcy in sugarcane
agroindustry. Also sugarcane area is decreasing since 2018.
This trend was generalized in Brazilian
economy, since 2008Table: SoyBean in Brazil, yield, production and area – safras 1996/97 a 2015/16
Produção Produção Área Plantada Área
Ano-Safra Produtividade (kg/ha) Produtividade %
(mil toneladas) % (mil ha) %
1996/97 26.160,0 12,8 11.381,3 6,7 2.299 5,7
1997/98 31.369,9 19,9 13.157,9 15,6 2.384 3,7
1998/99 30.765,0 -1,9 12.995,2 - 1,2 2.367 -0,7
1999/00 32.890,0 6,9 13.622,9 4,8 2.414 2,0
2000/01 38.431,8 16,8 13.969,8 2,5 2.751 14,0
2001/02 42.230,0 9,9 16.386,2 17,3 2.577 -6,3
2002/03 52.017,5 23,2 18.474,8 12,7 2.816 9,3
2003/04 49.792,7 -4,3 21.375,8 15,7 2.329 -17,3
2004/05 52.304,6 5,0 23.301,1 9,0 2.245 -3,6
2005/06 55.027,1 5,2 22.749,4 -2,4 2.419 7,8
2006/07 58.391,8 6,1 20.686,8 -9,1 2.823 16,7
2007/08 60.017,7 2,8 21.313,1 3,0 2.816 -0,2
2008/09 57.165,5 -4,8 21.743,1 2,0 2.629 -7
2009/10 68.688,2 20,2 23.467,9 7,9 2.927 11
2010/11 75.324,3 9,7 24.181,0 3,0 3.115 6
2011/12 66.383,0 -11,9 25.042,2 3,6 2.651 -15
2012/13 81.499,4 22,8 27.736,1 10,8 2.938 11
2013/14 86.120,8 5,7 30.173,1 8,8 2.854 -2,9
2014/15 96.228,0 11,7 32.092,9 6,4 2.998 5,1
2015/16 95.434,6 -0,8 33.251,9 3,6 2.870 -4,3
Fonte: CONAB (Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento). Para os dados consultar: .
Org.: Cecilia VecinaSoyBean Territorialization in Brazilian Cerrado
Farmland Prices Brazil, 2006 - 2016
Chart: Land Prices in MATOPIBA (2003 – 2016)
Preços de terras de alta produtividade - MATOPIBA (R$/ha)
Pedro Afonso (TO)
Bom Jesus (PI)
Uruçuí (PI)
Balsas (MA)
25000 Luís Eduardo Magalhães (BA)
20000
15000
10000
5000
0
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Fonte: FNP.
Org.: Débora Lima. Preços corrigidos pelo IGP-M (índice Geral de Preços do Mercado) de abril de 2015.Chart: Income SLC Agrícola/LandCo, in R$ Millions (2011-2016), SoyBean (Blue) x
FarmLand (Orange)
Net income from soy and land
250,0
200,0
150,0
100,0
50,0
-
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016Chart: Indebtedness SLC Agrícola/LandCo em R$ mil (2011-2016)
Loans current and non-current
2000000
1800000
1600000
1400000
1200000
1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0Transnational Rural Real Estate Companies in
MATOPIBA Region:
• Radar S/A: joint venture between Cosan S/A (Sugar Cane) e TIAA-CREF (Professors Pension
Fund USA) = Climax! Cosan speculated with land and sold its shares to TIAA – CREF, second
semester of 2016.
• SLC Land Co.: joint venture between SLC (soybean) and Valiance investment fund = Land as
an asset to be used as collateral to inflate prices in stock markets and speculative soy bean
production.
• Tiba Agro – ( Vision Brasil Investment Fund) – ABP (Netherlands Pension Fund) + Fazendas
Reunidas Boi Gordo = financial Ponzi scheme/ Pyramid and money laundry (2004).
• Insolo = Harvard Endowment (Collin Butterfield – former Radar CEO).
• BrasilAgro – Real Estate capital from Argentina + Cyrella Brasil = Land as the main asset of its
stock market shares.Radar S/A and its Financial Scheme to Grab Land in the
MATOPIBA Region in BrazilPhoto: Big Chain used to deforestation in Brazilian
Cerrado - MATOPIBAPhoto: Farm From TIAA (EUA) in South Piauí/BR Partially
DeforestedDeforestation – South Maranhão / South Piauí – Brazil (2000)
Deforestation – South Maranhão / South Piauí – Brazil (2008)
Deforestation – South Maranhão / South Piauí – Brazil (2016)
Photo: Dried up River on the Cerrado Region
Current Land Grabbing Phenomenon in MATOPIBA:
• Land as a global financial asset class in current capital crisis (2008 – 2019)
❖ Detachment between value and commodity prices – future markets;
❖ Detachment between commodity inflated prices and land inflated prices;
❖ Land Grabbing as an important business – Formation of land very cheap and inflation of land prices = as
a financial asset (fictitious capital simulation of reproduction).
❖ Fictitious Production of Space
• Nas áreas de Chapada / Over the High Plateaus
❖ Direct Deforestation, with no accumulation over past labor in opening the “new” frontiers;
❖ Big Chains deforesting;
❖ Original accumulation reproduction? Landnahme Theorien?
❖ Sassen, 2014 = “Expulsions” – No wage labor. Roswitha Scholz, 2016: Überflüssigkeit – “superfluity”.
• Nos Baixões / In the Low Lands (Communities inhabit these places).
❖ Communities keep very small pieces of land – racism against afro-descendants, indigenous, women;
❖ No labor on the cities neither in Agroindustries..;
❖ Communities could improve consumption with State distribution. It was able to do that with
commodities boom = Merchandise as the social mediation and contradiction. Distribution was
determined by commodities boom: overexploited, evicted and expulsed people = Patriarchy and
RacismHow can financial / Fictitious Capital be possible?
We would have to comprehend:
• How can capital accumulate if it is expulsing labor from the process of production?
• How can production of space (accumulation by dispossession / original accumulation /
Landnahme) happen after that – land as a global financial asset class? Green grabbing, water
grabbing?
• What changed concerning the so called “peasants” social reproduction (historically in Brazil) in
relation with the changes in
the historical contradictory process of the merchandise (Financialization and Global
Entanglement)?
• How does the category of fictitious capital can help to explain such theorical issues?
What changed after financialization of capitalism?
3 different approaches (Keynesianism or traditional Marxism)
• How does capitalism simulates reproduction nowadays since its so called
financialization process?Financial Crises and Fictitious Capital???
• There is a difference between Financial capital and Fictitious capital:
- Fictitious is the capital that earns interest without having exploited enough labor
to pay profits and interests:
= There is not enough surplus value to pay for the interest rates.
• Three examples of money autonomization (Verselbständigung) in “Das Kapital”:
1) The commerce between England and India on the 21st Century –
Overproduction Crisis
(while producing commodities to rollover indebtedness is the main goal )
2) Capacity of bank system to create new money = leverage
3) Stock markets as a sort of secondary market (detachment between production
and financial system - CRISES)How did historically Financial Capital become
determinant for the Capitalist Society?
Three Main Different Explanations:
• 1) Deregulation and financialization of capital: Monthly Review / Chesnais;
- Michel Hudson’s New-Keynesianism and neoliberalism critique = against
composed interest
(interests are always higher than “productive” surplus value)
• 2) Socialist explanation – David Harvey and neoliberal class struggle:
overaccumulation + overexploitation + financialization = 2008 crisis.
• Or Andrew Kliman explanation – Current Tendency of the Profit Rate to
Fall (after the 70s).
• 3) Fictitious capital determinations and the critique of value
The crisis of capital and labor = Robert Kurz1) State Deregulation (F. Chesnais) and Financial
Capital after the 70s (Michel Hudson - The Boom
and Beyond, 2012, p. XVII and XXI)
• But Money doesn’t work in the sense that labor or tangible capital
expends effort to produce commodities. Credit is debt and debt
extracts interest. [...] The effect is to turn the economic surplus into a
flow of interest payments, diverting revenue from tangible capital
investment. As the economy’s reproductive powers are dried up, the
financialization process is kept going by easing credit terms and
lending – to bid up prices for financial assets.
• Economic Policies should regulate finance (interest rates, leverage) to
be able to support commodity production, what would stop financial
detachment and fictitious capital and would bring back economic
wealth to capitalism.2) Class Struggle and Financial capital after the 70s
(David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, 2011, p. 16,
22 and 100)
• My opinion is that neoliberalism is a class Project that began with capital crisis of
the 70s. Masked with a discourse about individual liberty, personal responsibility
and privatization process, it legitimated policies to rescue and consolidate the
power of capitalist class after Fordist boom and Welfare State post Second World
War.
• A synthetic way to understand 2008 capital crisis would assume that: the issue
was excessive capitalist power in relation to labor and consequent labor earnings
repression, what conducted to issues with demand and consumption. That
problem was partially solved with personal indebtedness, what did not solve
demand problem for capital, but postponed it until real state bubble burst.
• The gap between what labor was earning and what it could spend was fulfilled
with personal credit and family's indebtedness. Financial institutions had lots of
credit and started to finance the income of the poor families. If not, whom would
had bought all the new houses that real state enterprises were constructing and
financing? [...]. Financial institutions were controlling either offer either the
demand in real state industry in the center of capitalism.3) How did historically Fictitious Capital become
capital Society determinant?
• Automatization (robotics and microelectronics – Third Industrial Revolution) –
Expulsion of productive workers from Labor Processes – Tendency of the Profit
Rate to Fall (1970) / Labor Crisis (1970 until nowadays – Revolution 4.0)
• With no labor to explore: Capitalist society reaches its fundamental crisis period
• Peripheries can also achieve central capitalism patterns of production, but also
expulsing labor from the productive process.
• People need to work, to buy commodities and there are no jobs.
• Capital needs to explore labor, and there is no labor places to be productively
exploited.
• Money migrates to financial system – capital market.
• End of Gold Standard – Dollar Standard – Creation of currencies future markets
and speculation with currencies as a sort of financial derivative.
• Peripheries over indebtedness and Debt Crises = 1983 (México) – 1986 (Brazil).Consequences of Fictitious Capital Determination
Of Capitalism
• There was a change in prices formation: from the production moment = value as
the labor time socially (average) necessary to produce a commodity;
To financial markets moment defining prices and production.
Main Current Capitalist logic = Economic bubbles – Boom and Burst =
Faster and Faster (Subprime, Commodities, Land, Chinese Stock Markets in 2016)
Everything functions as a financial asset = to buy cheap and to sell expensive
For example – Land as financial asset
= Inflation over the price of property titles (Marx)Kurz, Weltkapital, S. 241 – “Von der Aktien- zur
Immobilienblase und zurück: Das Recycling des »fiktiven
Kapitals« in die Realwirtschaft”
Das Weltkapital als Krisenkapital der dritten industriellen Revolution
ist also im wesentlichen »fiktives Kapital«; und daran anschließend oder
davon generiert in zweiter Linie »fiktives Realkapital«, wie man es paradox
ausdrücken könnte. Denn es handelt sich dabei nicht mehr um eigenständig
akkumulierendes Realkapital, aus dessen fordistischer Überakkumulation die
neue Finanzblasenökonomie ursprünglich hervorging, sondern um einzig von
Kaufkraft aus aufgeblasenem »fiktivem Kapital« hervorgetriebene reale
Warenproduktion; also eben um ein Recycling des Blasenkapitals in die
Realökonomie. Das Verhältnis von Portfolio- und Direktinvestitionen
entspricht diesen Bedingungen. Der Ausgangspunkt der
Wertschöpfungsketten ist zunehmend irreal, und das läßt nach wie vor auf
die Unausweichlichkeit eine Entwertungskettenreaktion im globalen Ausmaß
schließen.Kurz, Weltkapital, S. 243 – “Von der Aktien- zur
Immobilienblase und zurück: Das Recycling des »fiktiven
Kapitals« in die Realwirtschaft”
Kunststück, geht es doch Kreditgebern wie Kreditnehmern weder um
die Seriosität der Ausgangslage noch überhaupt um eine private oder
kommerzielle Realinvestition und deren Erträge, sondern allein um die
erwartete spekulative Wertsteigerung der Eigentumstitel - eine
kapitalistische creatio ex nihilo. Zum Schluß ist mehr Geld da, als der
Investor ursprünglich nicht hatte. Indem so aus den Finanzblasen in
bestimmten Weltregionen Liquidität für Konsum und Investitionen geschöpft
und eine Scheinkonjunktur angekurbelt wird, regt diese wiederum Importe
von Waren und Dienstleistungen an. So verschränkt und verfilzt sich der
spekulative Gesamtprozeß immer mehr mit der transnationalen
Betriebswirtschaft des produzierenden Gewerbes und der Dienstleistungen.
Und diese Verschränkung läßt dann ihrerseits neues spekulatives,
transnationales Geldkapital in die gerade boomenden Sektoren der
»Finanzindustrie« strömen, wo es mit den entsprechenden Instrumenten auf
die nationale Ebene heruntertransformiert und teilweise wieder auf die
realwirtschaftlichen Binnenmärkte geschleust wird als Nachfrage. Dieser
Kumulationseffekt macht lüstern.From Rolling Over indebtedness to Asset Prices Inflation
(transformations in Fictitious Capital reproduction on the 90s)
• Brazil’s over indebtedness and Bankruptcy (1986) as an example.
• Brady’s Plan (1994 and Brazilian Reais and Brazilian neoliberalism):
- Creation of securitization of debts (1980 / 1990)
- And of Secondary markets (1980/1990): Brazilian Bonds
• Brazil’s internal (against previous external) new cycle of indebtedness
(21st Century) - The commodities boom and its burst (2008 – 2017)
= Creation of Money Within Financial Markets on the 1990s
Nasdaq Crisis = Subprime Crisis (The Big Short) +
Commodities Boom (2002) = Brazil as a financial asset
Land Speculation Globally – Wertabspaltungskritik (no Landnahme
Explanation) = Fictitious Production of Space (Kurz, 2005).Agroindustry Commodities Prices (Index for 2000–2015)
Brazil’s Federal Public Debt, Billions of Reais
(2002 – 2009)Selic Rate and Average Cost of Domestic (DFPD) and Federal Public Debt (FPD), Brazil (2005 – 2015)
Business Cycle: Fixed Investment and GDP Growth
Brazil - (1996 – 2014)Brazilian Industry (2002 – 2016)
Brazilian Profit Rate (2000 – 2016)
Brazilian Official Interest Rate (SELIC) - 2004-2015
Brazilian Inflation: 2000 – 2016 (red line)
Government Balance % Of GDP (12 months) –
Brazil (2002 – 2015)Brazil, Unemployment (2012 – 2017)
Different Explanations for Brazilian Crisis (2008 –2015)
• Bresser–Pereira – New Developmentalism and the Dutch Disease = reprimarization
• Guilherme Delgado / Ricardo Carneiro – Bubble and financial overappreciation of Brazilian
Currency with losses of international competition (indebtedness) = reprimarization
• Ladislau Dowbor: Rentism and Fiscal Adjustment (only in 2015) = underconsumption (Marxist)
• Marquetti: Class Struggle Marxists / Kalecki explanation = Profit Squeeze - Fall in Profit Rate
• Felipe Batista – Marxism = The Tendency of the Profit Rate to Fall because Brazil is backwards
regarding the center of capitalism and Fictitious Capital
• Felipe Rezende – Hyman Minsky Keynesian theory of financial cycle:
▪ Bubble bust; Falling world trade; rolling over debts; Ponzi scheme; Deficit in Brazilian Current Account (since
2007); Deficit in Brazilian Fiscal Balance; Indebtedness; Inflation = Excess of optimism (Keynes / Minsky)Society Structural Changes – Brazilian Society
(2002 – 2015)Up to date Trends and Current Capitalist Society
Crisis (After 2008)
• Robots and trends in financial system nowadays
• High Frequency Trading = insider trading and reproduction of frauds after
2008.
War as financial asset (the case of MOAB in Afghanistan and Raytheon =
Predator Drones) – Social Credit in China – Capitalist Society Crisis and trend
towards barbarism – Right wing Populism nowadays = Trump, Brexit,
Bolsonaro (Brazil)
• Saskia Sassen – “Expulsions”
• Scholz Wertabspaultungskritik and refugees' crisis
Crisis of labor and necessity of the critique of commodity form as a social
mediation; Labor and of Dissociation in the moment of fundamental
Kapital crisis.References: • DELGADO, Guilherme. Capital Financeiro e Agricultura: 1965-1985. São Paulo, Ícone, 1985. • ____________. Do capital financeiro na agricultura à economia do agronegócio - mudanças cíclicas em meio século. Porto Alegre, Editora UFRGS, 2015. • ALVES, Vicente Eudes. “O mercado de terras nos cerrados piauienses: modernização e exclusão”. Em: Revista AGRÁRIA, São Paulo, números 10/11, pp. 73-98, 2009. Disponível em: http://www.revistas.usp.br/agraria/article/view/154, p. 95 – 96. • HARVEY, David. O Enigma do Capital e as crises do capitalismo. São Paulo, Boitempo Editorial, 2011. • Hudson, Michael. The Bubble and Beyond. Islet Verlag, Dresden, Deutschland, 2012. • KURZ, Robert. WeltKapital, 2005. • KURZ, Robert. World Power and World Money: The Economic Function of the U.S. Military Machine within Global Capitalism and the Background of the New Financial Crisis (Robert Kurz, 2008): Website: https://orca.cf.ac.uk/59445/1/Marxism-and-the-Critique- of-Value.pdf • MARX, Karl. O Capital – Crítica da Economia Política. Livro I, Tomo I. São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1983 (Série “Os Economistas”). • PITTA, Fábio T. – As transformações na reprodução fictícia do capital na agroindústria canavieira paulista: do Proálcool à crise de 2008. Tese de Doutorado em Geografia, FFLCCH, USP, 2016. Disponível em: . • PITTA, Fábio T. - Finanzkapital und illegale Landnahme nach der Krise von 2008: Land als neue Finanzanlage in der MATOPIBA- Region in Brasilien. . • SASSEN, Saskia. Expulsions, 2014. • SCHOLZ, Roswitha. GESELLSCHAFTLICHE FORM UND KONKRETE TOTALITÄT. Zur Dringlichkeit eines dialektischen Realismus heute in revista EXIT! Krise und Kritik der Warengesellschaft, 6 (2009). • SCHOLZ, Roswitha. Christoph Kolumbus Forever, 2016. http://www.obeco-online.org/roswitha_scholz24.htm • Valor Econômico – Cresce o número de falências entre as usinas sucroalcooleiras. 25 de outubro de 2017. http://www.valor.com.br/agro/5131622/cresce-o-numero-de-falencias-entre-usinas-sucroalcooleiras
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