Metabolic Rift and Structural Crisis of Capital: The Productive Specialization Pattern Based on Commodities and the Progressive Elimination of Ecological and Natural Resources in Brazil

Abstract

In recent decades, Brazil has experienced a pattern of commodity-based productive specialization as part of the nation's subordinate entry into the global structure of capital. As a result, the accumulation process has been based primarily on the intensive and extensive exploitation of available natural and ecological resources. From a historical perspective, we apply the theory of the metabolic rift and the structural crisis of capital to analyze the contemporary processes of social degradation of nature resulting from Brazil's economic development. We focus on the cases of the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado regions to examine the trend towards the progressive elimination of the elementary conditions for the social reproduction of life in the current stage of development of the productive forces on a global scale.Nas ultimas decadas, o Brasil tem experimentado um padrao de especializacao produtiva baseado em commodities, na presenca de seu ingresso subordinado na estrutura global do capital. Com isso, o processo de acumulacao tem se apoiado, dominantemente, sobre a exploracao intensiva e extensiva dos recursos naturais e ecologicos disponiveis. Desde uma perspectiva historica, mobilizamos a teoria da fenda metabolica e da crise estrutural do capital para analisar os processos contemporaneos de degradacao social da natureza no curso do particular desenvolvimento economico brasileiro. Lancamos luz nos casos da Amazonia e do Cerrado brasileiros para examinar a tendencia a eliminacao progressiva das condicoes elementares da reproducao social da vida no atual estagio do desenvolvimento das forcas produtivas em escala global.