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2. Science, agriculture, and social change
- University of Wisconsin Press
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2 Science, Agriculture, and Social Change But e.g. if agriculture rests on scientific activities - if it requires machinery, chemical fertilizer acquired through exchange, seeds from distant countries, etc., and if rural, patriarchal manufacture has already vanished - which is already implied in the presupposition - then the machine-making factory, external trade, crafts, etc. appear as needs for agriculture ... Agriculture no longer finds the natural conditions of its own production within itself, naturally, arisen, spontaneous , and ready to hand, but these exist as an industry separate from it ... This pulling-away of the natural ground from the foundations of every industry, and this transfer of the conditions of production outside itself, into a general context - hence the transformation of what was previously superfluous into what is necessary , as a historically created necessity is the tendency of capital. Karl Marx, Grundrisse (1973) Before moving on to the historical matter that constitutes the greater part of First the Seed, it is useful to treat a number of thematic elements more completely than was possible in Chapter I. This chapter provides an elaboration of the theoretical framework that informs my interpretation of the historical and contemporary records. I begin with an examination of Marx's writings on science as he saw it developing within the capitalist mode of production. This is followed by a section on that most basic building block ofcapitalism, the commodity-form. The next two sections link the development of science and the extension of the commodity-form to agriculture and explore the special characteristics of that sector of production. The problematic articulation of the seed itself to the circuits ofcapital is then described. There follows a critical evaluation of the true social significance of the distinction between "basic" and "applied " science. Finally, an examination of the nature of "plant genetic geography " provides a framework for understanding the role of global germplasm flows in the world economy. Science and capitalism Marx wrote eloquently of the technological dynamism that characterizes capitalism. In the Communist Maniftsto we find that 19 20 First the seed The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the means of production, and thereby the relations ofproduction, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. [Tucker 1978:476] Capitalist industry never views the existing form of a production process as definitive, but moves constantly toward technical transformation. In Marx's understanding, this tendency is not simply a function of the inherent potential of science and technology. Rather, it stems from the interaction of these forces of production with the social relations of production .' In part, the pace of technical innovation is quickened by competition between capitalists and by accumulation and investment. But principally, the bourgeoisie eschews repose and continually solicits what Joseph Schumpeter called "gales of creative destruction" because of what was, in Marx's view, an absolute contradiction between the potential of the forces of production and the social matrix within which they are utilized. Technological innovation is called forth in respon'se to the continuous struggle between competing capitalists, and between capital and other classes, as workers and petty commodity producers strive to gain a larger share of the social product and to maintain what control they have over the shape and duration of the labor process. As Marx notes in the Grundrisse (1973:706), "Capital is the moving contradiction ... it calls to life all the powers ofscience and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it." But science, as opposed to technology, was not quickly or easily called into the service ofa nascent bourgeoisie. The wedding ofscience to the useful arts of industry came only in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Braverman 1974; Noble 1977), long after the emergence of capitalism . Nathan Rosenberg (1974) suggests that Marx recognized at least two factors constraining the application of science to problems of production. First, production based on handicraft or manufacture absorbs only the simplest practical advances of science, because innovations must be limited to those that can be encompassed by the limited physical capacity of the individual worker who carries out each particular process with manual implements . In capitalist manufacture, the worker...