A crítica da economia política da fome

Abstract

This thesis employs a qualitative, exploratory-explanatory study design utilizing bibliographical and documentary techniques and sources. It presents an investigation into hunger and its relationship with agribusiness development based on the critique of political economy. It highlights the implications of the development of capitalism and its current regime of financialized accumulation, which began in the 1970s, and the consequences of this accumulation for the agrarian question. To conduct this investigation, we consider hunger an inherent consequence of capitalist social relations. This entails verifying the capture by capital of the fundamental and biological need of living beings to feed themselves. Furthermore, it involves comparing the Marxian-Marxist theory on the determinations and foundations that structure capitalist society, which is reflected in Marx's Theory of Value. In addition, it identifies specific characteristics of the Brazilian social formation that influence the social phenomenon of hunger, particularly the agrarian question, the country's status as a dependent capitalism nation within the global capitalist system, and the function of productive specialization on the supply of raw materials in the international division of labor and its implications for the working class. The findings indicate that the manifestation of hunger has acquired socially disruptive characteristics at the current stage of development due to the financialization and neoliberalization of capitalism. As these dynamics do not succeed in overcoming the impeded reproduction of value, it asserts its destructive impact on human life and nature in its compulsively growing movement. Ultimately, this thesis additionally identifies another area of investigation, namely the role of food-commodity as a way of understanding the underlying realities of value production in the Brazilian countryside. Considering that the international market's interests shape food production for domestic supply, this work reveals the socially destructive impact of agribusiness on both the act of eating and the quality of food by generating constraints on the fundamental need to eat for significant segments of the working class.