Water Grabbing, Capitalist Accumulation and Resistance: Conceptualising the Multiple Dimensions of Class Struggle

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reflect on how we can conceptualise the multiple types of struggles over water. Through a historical materialist engagement with social reproduction theorists, post-colonial interventions and eco-socialism, we argue that capitalist reproduction not only depends on the exploitation of wage labour but also the expropriation of nature and people along different forms of oppression. By focusing on historical processes and the intertwined dynamics necessary for capitalist reproduction, we reveal the internal relations of these struggles to each other and to global capitalism. Moreover, by putting forward a conceptual and methodological guide for how to approach water struggles relationally, we can point to the anti-systemic potential of these struggles. We argue that the diversity of protesters apparent in struggles against water grabbing captures internally related and mediated forms of class struggle, where the terrain of class struggle is inclusive of the whole social factory. KEYWORDS: Class struggle; exploitation; expropriation; primitive accumulation; water grabbing; incorporated comparison