{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":320,"pdf_page":320,"physical_index":320,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"66f07da6b009ca31dcd944d30ffe2db02526aaaaad9096d786c32f296c41a504"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Food and capitalism\n\nThe years 2006-8 provided a hint that capitalism is creating another ecological barrier to itself-that of not being able to produce enough food for those who live within it. Soaring food prices raised questions as to whether it was beginning to exhaust its capacity to keep food production rising, as commentators pointed to rapidly declining rates of global food output growth.31\n\nThis was not the first time there have been such concerns. Malthus had argued in the early years of industrial capitalism that there was no point in raising the living standards of the mass of the population, since this would prompt them to have more children at a faster rate than food production would rise to feed them. Marx and Engels rejected this view that a natural barrier to human welfare existed as an apology for exploitation by a defender of the system. But they did hold, as we have seen in Chapter Three, that capitalism itself created obstacles to food provision once it had developed beyond a certain point. This was because capitalist agriculture removed the nutrients necessary for fertility from the soil more rapidly than it replaced them.32\n\nMarx and Engels did not put the issue at the centre of their analysis of capitalism for the simple reason that they could see that by the 1 860s and 1870s the system was capable of substituting for the depredations of agriculture in its old established lands by the production of foodstuffs in North America, with the opening up of the prairies to agriculture. The issue became of marginal concern to most Marxists after their death because the use of mineral fertilisers was able to compensate for the loss of natural nutrients. Worldwide food production kept ahead of population growth right through to the end of the 20th century. There were horrific famines and persistent long-term malnutrition for hundreds of millions of people, but these were a result not of under-production but of class-induced poverty. Signs of impending absolute food shortages in South and East Asia in the 1960s were overcome by the \"Green Revolution\"-the introduction of new grain types dependent on big inputs of fertiliser and increased irrigation. These were normally combined with the spread of various forms of capitalist agriculture in place of the subsistent peasant farmer.\n\n320\n\nThe Runaway System","previous_page":319,"next_page":321}