Perspectives in Development: An Exercise in Worldmaking

In the words of the 19TH century philosopher Karl Marx, “Capitalist production only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker” (Capital, Volume 1, quoted in Foster and Magdoff 1998:38). [...] The oo-sis and the hsinouq, the workers who use tamed elephants to assemble the timber at the camps depend on opium to reduce body pains due to the difficult nature of the work. [...] And it is evident from the excerpts taken from The Glass Palace and other sources that capitalism is ingrained in the idea of profiting making to the extent that it cares less about the welfare of the environment and humans. [...] 2 It is not within the purview of this essay to assess or explain the effects of the Mexican water reforms and/or to propose an alternative solution based on Marxist political economy (nor to defend the pre-reform water management regime), rather it is to highlight the analytical weaknesses and blind spots of NIE in the context of its engagement with, and the extent to which it informs, the water. [...] Again, the main justifications for the water law are based in a critique of the allocative inefficiency of the previous use of ‘increasingly scarce’ water and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ that arises with the ‘free-rider’ effects of public goods.