The expansion of capitalist agricultural production and social reproduction of rural labour: contradictions within the logic of capital accumulation in Mozambique

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Mozambique, policy discourses supporting the expansion of large-scale capitalist agriculture have largely focused on its potential to increase agricultural production and productivity. In particular, they have highlighted the potential contribution to rural employment and income, and their impacts on poverty reduction. Yet in focusing narrowly on these dynamics, they have ignored the contradictions of social reproduction of labour often associated with the expansion of capitalist production. This paper explores these contradictions by considering primary and secondary evidence from two contexts of expansion of large-scale capitalist agriculture in Mozambique. It argues that these contradictions have manifested in diverse forms, reflecting the extent to which forms of expansion and (re)organisation of sectors of capitalist agricultural production, and the associated forms of labour exploitation, have affected different spheres of social reproduction of labour in these contexts. Moreover, the paper suggests, they have reproduced more broadly, as the expansion/intensification of the extractive logic of accumulation has compromised ‘alternative’ spaces of social reproduction.