Contradictions Of Capitalism In The Easter Tropical Pacific

In order to see the relevance of the first and second contradictions of capitalism on a political ecology analysis on regulating fishery economies like the Easter Tropical Pacific (ETP) yellowfin tuna, we must first define these contradictions.

The first contradiction of capitalism initiates when capitalists attempt to secure or reinstate profits by increasing labor productivity and speeding up work, while cutting workers’ wages. In doing so, either the capitalists end up overproducing products or the consumers end up underconsuming their products. Overproduction caused by technologies would not be a problem if the companies enable their workers to have the capacity to purchase these products. However, companies always go after a method where
they could maximize profit while spending less expenses— meaning, paying workers with insufficient incomes. Consequently, when their would-be-consumers (i.e. workers) are not able to buy products, underconsumption happens. If these crises happen on a substantial scale, and their structures breakdown, and they seek alternatives to earn other form of profit, then, the first contradiction of capitalism is the end-result (Robbins et. al., 2014, p. 105).
On the other hand, James O’ Connor describes the second contradiction as the crisis when the stress is drawn heavily not only on the workers but on natural resources too.
For capitalists to sustain surplus, they severely exploit either labor or nature without considering the consequential environmental conditions like drought, hurricane, or natural disasters that could cause crisis in their production system and their workforces’ health. Additionally, scarcity is not perceived because of great consumers’ demand but is produced by capitalism itself. Here, capitalism creates its own limitations not only by abusing human resources but also by heavily relying on the exploitation of nature as a resource (Robbins et. al., 2014, p.
106).

A political ecology approach analyzes the ways in which capitalist productions are embedded and interconnected within the environment. In the case of the ETP yellowfin tuna fishery, the second contradiction of capitalism is greatly evident. When fishing the yellowfin tunas, to maximize production and to win over their growing number of competitors in the market, fishers have upgraded their fishing methods by having bigger boats and using larger nylon purse-seine nets. In doing so, they have contributed greatly on the degradation of the environment by targeting the school of dolphins to catch the yellowfins which are known to swim underneath them. The contradiction is mainly evident in the way the decline of the dolphin’s population has backfired on their derailed production process. The lesser the dolphins they see, the harder it was to spot yellowfins. True to its words, the scarcity didn’t begin because of consumer’s demands but by capitalism itself—fueled by greed and competition. The tuna industry was unable to sustainably increase production without compromising the environment and harming its own production system. And though in this example, the second contradiction of capitalism is most prominent, we could also extract how the first contradiction is relevant too (Robbins et. al., 2014, p. 233).

Before enhancing the fishing methods to bigger boats and using the nylon purse-seine mega-nets, the traditional fishing method used was pole and line where fishermen manually fishes out fishes one by one on their small boats.
Amid transitioning from a labor-intensive (pole and line) to a capital-intensive (purse-seine) means of production, many fishers lost their jobs. And even before they have lost their jobs, fishers were paid with a very low wage. The first contradiction comes in in this picture. When capitalists pay lesser wage or take away jobs of workers (their potential buyers) who would buy their goods? And if there would be gaps between their capital and their supposed profits, they wouldn’t be able to invest back more to their tuna businesses to operate for another and would eventually still shut down (Robbins et. al., 2014, p.
234).

Nevertheless, if fishers had more sovereignty over the fishing production of their domestic market, their traditional ways of fishing are more adequate and sustainable towards the environment and to the people itself. They won’t have to trade their poles for larger purse-sein nets which can severely harm the dolphins; and they would be able to keep their jobs making it both economically and environmentally wise (Robbins et. al., 2014, p. 234).