Intro How do you put a price on a resource that is essential for life??? Capital

Intro
How do you put a price on a resource that is essential for life???
Capitalism relies on constant growth to maintain its existence
Emphasize the question of how, mechanisms that promote commodification
End the paragraph/intro with the question of why
Primitive Accumulation/Accumulation by Dispossession
At its conception, Marx identified capitalist growth as being characterized by primitive accumulation, which specifically involved the separation of producers from ownership of the means of production.
We have reached a new understanding of primitive accumulation as accumulation by dispossession in the post-war era, since the concept applies to facets of social and economic life outside of purely labor relations
David Harvey, Roberts too
Discuss its application to social reproduction, a little bit of nature too
Primitive accumulation played a major historical role in colonialism and imperialism
Capitalism must constantly expand its geographical boundaries and search for cheapest means of production (labor and resources)
Expanding markets are essential to the extent that imperial powers have forced nations to open their markets if they initially refused
Case study/example of the Opium Wars
Mention consequences that follow if surpluses are not reinvested into new markets
Neoliberalism
Emergence of neoliberalism[citation needed]
Principles of neoliberalism
Washington Consensus
Necessity of free market principles globally, especially in developing countries
Understanding neoliberalism as an extension/mutation of capitalism
Conceptual restructuring of international monetary policy, state regulation, and the private sector under capitalism
Commodification of nature and other goods previously regarded as public
Main point: modern capitalist institutions require the continued dispersal of neoliberal values to maintain their legitimacy because neoliberalism opens new markets/avenues of reinvestment
Neoliberal Infrastructure, Development, and Financing
The integration of state and free market ideals is tangibly reflected in the decision making principles of a neoliberal institution
Heightened role of financial sector in public projects (PPPs)
“It will be argued here that the immediate cause of the financialization process of recent decades is found in neoliberal restructuring, rather than financialization explaining the rise of neoliberalism. However, financialization also has deeper roots that are unrelated to neoliberalism. This interpretation of the relation between financialization and neoliberalism clarifies what would otherwise be puzzling differences between the form of financial dominance that arose in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries and the financialization of the current neoliberal period,” (Kotz, 2008) https://people.umass.edu/dmkotz/Fin_and_NL_08_09.pdf
Hearne 2014 – provides an account of 30 years of neoliberal progression in Ireland and its effects on the management of public services, maybe something good in there
(Might be good to discuss this in plain terms [i.e., “this is what happened in Ireland,”] to act as a preliminary case study and save us a little work in the global examples section)
As it relates to water, neoliberal principles are reflected in the popularization of the market conservation paradigm since the 1980s
Market regulation of water services allows for more efficient decisionmaking free of the burden of social equity and accessibility
Market regulation also “promotes conservation” on the basis of paying a cost-per-unit-volume as opposed to unbounded public access (principle of Tragedy of the Commons)
Global Privatization