The Free Trade Area of the Americas in the Long Crisis of Brazilian Labour

Settler-Colonialism and the New Afrikan Liberation Struggle

“…By way of example, the essay turns to examine the resurgence of super-exploitation in one of the most dynamic and globally integrated sectors of the so-called new 'Brazilian Miracle': the sugar/ethanol industry. Here, despite recent improvements in real wages and job formalisation, higher rates of profit were in fact made possible by the general lowering of labour costs a decade earlier, following trade liberalisation and neo-liberal restructuring of the labour process, job markets and regional production; what I would identify as the neoliberal crisis of labour (Latimer 2014).…”

“…Adding to the effort of those attempting to revive Marini's contribution in analyses of this latest phase of imperialism (e.g. Almeida Filho 2013; Amaral and Carcanholo 2009;Bueno andSeabra 2010, 2012;Duarte 2013;Higginbottom 2012;Marini 2008;Martins 2011;Osorio Urbina 2004;Sader et al 2009;Sotelo Valencia 2009, I suggest that labour segmentation has became one of the key challenges to Brazilian class struggle over the past generation, in the context of the restructuring of production, of labour processes, and of labour markets; in other words, in the context of the neo-liberal crisis of labour (Latimer 2014;cf. Duarte 2013).…”

“…130-131). Since Marx's time, various authors have highlighted the ways in which such circumstances were created by imperialism, including the welfare legislation established in the post-Second World War period in core nations (initially paid for with colonial revenue) to offset the potential for social instability in times of long-term hardship (Mattick 1983, p. 97); the leveraging of the rate of profit in manufacturing following its collapse in the 1970s by the internationalisation of production and increased competition between regional workforces (Latimer 2014;Marini 2008, pp. 253-254;Sotelo 2009Sotelo : ch.…”

“…It is in this discussion of the general law of accumulation where Marx best captures contradictions between social layers of the working class (in this context, within a single social formation) that actually facilitate capitalist reproduction from one cycle to the next (Latimer 2014). The various layers of the reserve army in Chapter 25 are not, I would argue, significant in and of themselves; nor were they intended to be understood as something extraneous to exploitation and productivity in the formal labour process following capitalist expansion.…”

‘Meet the New Boss … Same as the Old boss?’ Technology, toil and tension in the agrofuel frontier

“…The number employed in agriculture in Pernambuco, in Brazil's northeast, was carved in half between 1987 and 2002 (240,000–120,000) (Hirsch et al ., ), 1.5 million left the state in just 5 years as plant closures and rural exodus further concentrated land ownership (Santos, ). Brazilian unemployment doubled during this period of deregulation, favelas swelled and 25 million rural workers relied on temporary and informal work (Latimer, ), leaving poorer states for the fields and factories in and around São Paulo state. By 1998, 66% of the rural working population lived in city peripheries or slums and provided a pool of labour suited to the more technically advanced companies in São Paulo state that had the economies of scale sufficient to buffer the crisis in the sector as consumers reverted to competitively priced petroleum fuel.…”