The historical organization of labour in the Brazilian Amazon basin under new forms of exploitation

Abstract

Weak participation in the spatial value flows of the Brazilian Amazon basin, both in the Portuguese colonial exploitation system and in the subsequent development of the national productive space of the Brazilian State, shaped the historically peripheral situation of this territory in the context of the geographical articulation of the capitalist world-system. This is reflected in many social and economic aspects; however, it is worth noting the historical organization of the workforce as a basic indicator of how the agents who have acted in this territory have exercised their power to appropriate the economic surplus resulting from the projected activity. The imposed relations of production stand out owing to the semi-proletarianization of local workers and other ways of non-commodification of labour throughout all of the Amazon’s history, far from the thesis of the expansion of capitalist relations of production as the process of extensive commodification of labour. In spite of the social transformations that have taken place in the Amazonian space, we consider that this process continues in force in this territorial area, as in most peripheral regions of the world-system, although it is presented through new techniques for articulating value flows and under new ideological cloaks, as exemplified by extractive cooperatives