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Grabbing land legally: A Marxist analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2019

Umut Özsu
Umut Özsu*
Affiliation:
Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Canada
*
Email: Umut.Ozsu@carleton.ca
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Abstract

This article lays the groundwork for a Marxist theory of the international law of land-grabbing. It argues that any comprehensive politico-economic analysis of land-grabbing must also be a politico-economic analysis of the law of land-grabbing. It argues further that Marx’s account of ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital – an account it presents as an historical explanation of the transition to capitalism as well as a general theory of ‘extra-economic’ force deployed through state power, including, crucially, the power of law – is helpful for developing an analytical framework for understanding the legal facets of land-grabbing. Political economists, rural sociologists, and social and political theorists have argued for and against the applicability of Marx’s theory of ‘primitive accumulation’ to the contemporary wave of global land grabbing. Intriguingly, though, no international lawyers have grappled with the question of whether a specifically Marxist approach to the phenomenon can or should be developed. This article does so, contending that contemporary land-grabbing is unintelligible absent a theory of capitalism, and that the processes whereby capitalism transforms land and labour are unintelligible absent a theory of the periodic waves of legally mediated ‘primitive accumulation’ that propel it forward. The article pays particular attention to the work produced by Olivier De Schutter during his tenure as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

Keywords

capitalisminternational lawland-grabbingMarxismprimitive accumulation
Type
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 215 - 233
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2019 

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Footnotes

*

Assistant Professor of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University. I thank Nate Holdren, Eva Nanopoulos, Paul O’Connell, Surabhi Ranganathan, Akbar Rasulov, William Clare Roberts, Ntina Tzouvala, and two anonymous reviewers for detailed comments. I also thank participants in the ‘International Law and Technologies of Land Grabbing’ workshop, held at King’s College, University of Cambridge on 18 July 2017, for observations. The usual caveats apply.

References

1 GRAIN, ‘Seized: The 2008 Landgrab for Food and Financial Security’, 24 October 2008, available at www.grain.org/article/entries/93-seized-the-2008-landgrab-for-food-and-financial-security.

2 GRAIN, ‘The Global Farmland Grab in 2016: How Big? How Bad?’, 14 June 2016, available at www.grain.org/article/entries/5492-the-global-farmland-grab-in-2016-how-big-how-bad. The statistical information is provided in full in two annexes to this report, both of which are available online. For larger (and regularly updated) estimates see Land Matrix, available at www.landmatrix.org/en/. Needless to say, all such estimates should be treated with great caution, as reliable numbers are difficult to ascertain. For the problems that beset data collection in this context see Oya, C., ‘Methodological Reflections on “Land Grab” Databases and the “Land Grab” Literature “Rush”’, (2013) 40 Journal of Peasant Studies 503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Cotula, Land Deals in Africa: What Is in the Contracts? (2011), 12–15; Cotula, L., ‘“Land Grabbing” and International Investment Law: Toward a Global Reconfiguration of Property?’, in Bjorklund, A.K. (ed.), Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy 2014–2015 (2016), 177Google Scholar, at 181–2.

3 GRAIN, supra note 2, at 2.

4 For a survey of some of the European cases see European Coordination Vía Campesina and Hands Off the Land Alliance, ‘Land Concentration, Land Grabbing and People’s Struggles in Europe’, 24 June 2013, available at www.tni.org/en/publication/land-concentration-land-grabbing-and-peoples-struggles-in-europe-0. See further GRAIN, supra note 2, at annex 1.

5 For a useful attempt to parse some of the available data see Borras, S.M. and Franco, J.C., ‘Global Land Grabbing and Political Reactions “From Below”’, (2013) 34 Third World Quarterly 1723CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 ‘Buying Farmland Abroad: Outsourcing’s Third Wave’, The Economist, 21 May 2009.

7 S. Sassen, Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy (2014).

8 For sustained scholarly statements of his thinking see especially De Schutter, O., ‘The Green Rush: The Global Race for Farmland and the Rights of Land Users’, (2011) 52 HILJ 503Google Scholar; De Schutter, O., ‘How Not To Think of Land-Grabbing: Three Critiques of Large-Scale Investments in Farmland’, (2011) 38 Journal of Peasant Studies 249CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See especially Cotula, ‘“Land Grabbing” and International Investment Law’, in Bjorklund (ed.), supra note 2; L. Cotula, The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System (2013), Ch. 4; Golay, C. and Biglino, I., ‘Human Rights Responses to Land Grabbing: A Right to Food Perspective’, (2013) 34 Third World Quarterly 1630CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Künnemann, R. and Suárez, S.M., ‘International Human Rights and Governing Land Grabbing: A View from Global Civil Society’, in Margulis, M.E., McKeon, N. and Borras, S.M. (eds.), Land Grabbing and Global Governance (2014), 123Google Scholar; C. Carter and A. Harding (eds.), Land Grabs in Asia: What Role for the Law? (2015); F.R. Jacur, A. Bonfanti and F. Seatzu (eds.), Natural Resources Grabbing: An International Law Perspective (2016); Lambek, N.C.S. and Debucquois, C., ‘The Right to Food Beyond Borders: The Extraterritorial Reach of the Right to Food in Africa’, in Chenwi, L. and Bulto, T.S. (eds.), Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations from an African Perspective (2018), 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zeffert, H., ‘The Lake Home: International Law and the Global Land Grab’, (2018) 8 Asian Journal of International Law 432CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.L. Vivero-Pol et al. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Food as a Commons (forthcoming). See also von Bernstorff, J., ‘The Global “Land-Grab”, Sovereignty and Human Rights’, (2013) 2 ESIL Reflections 1Google Scholar, available at www.esil-sedi.eu/node/426.

10 Note, though, that the literature is growing rapidly. Especially notable contributions include C. Miéville, Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law (2005) and B.S. Chimni, International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches (2017). See also Marks, S., ‘Exploitation as an International Legal Concept’, in Marks, S. (ed.), International Law on the Left: Re-examining Marxist Legacies (2008), 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rasulov, A., ‘“The Nameless Rapture of the Struggle”: Towards a Marxist Class-Theoretic Approach to International Law’, (2008) 19 Finnish Yearbook of International Law 243Google Scholar; Knox, R., ‘Valuing Race? Stretched Marxism and the Logic of Imperialism’, (2016) 4 London Review of International Law 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baars, G., ‘“It’s not me, it’s the corporation”: The Value of Corporate Accountability in the Global Political Economy’, (2016) 4 London Review of International Law 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. O’Connell, ‘On the Human Rights Question’, (2018) 40 Human Rights Quarterly 962; U. Özsu, ‘Neoliberalism and Human Rights: The Brandt Commission and the Struggle to Make a New World’, (2018) 81 Law and Contemporary Problems 139.

11 See D. Harvey, The New Imperialism (2003), Ch. 4; Harvey, D., ‘The “New” Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession’, (2004) 40 Socialist Register 63Google Scholar; D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), Chs. 6–7; D. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital (2010), Chs. 2, 8.

12 Neocleous, M., ‘International Law as Primitive Accumulation; Or, the Secret of Systematic Colonization’, (2012) 23 EJIL 941CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 957. For an application of this argument to early modern conceptions of the laws of war see further Neocleous, M., ‘War on Waste: Law, Original Accumulation and the Violence of Capital’, (2011) 75 Science and Society 506CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Part 8 of the first volume of Capital bears the title ‘So-Called Primitive Accumulation’: K. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. I (1990), 871.

14 A. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Books I-III (1997), 372. Marx makes express reference to Smith’s ‘previous accumulation’; see Marx, supra note 13, at 873.

15 Ibid., at 881.

16 Ibid., at 899.

17 Ibid., at 875.

18 Ibid., at 896. Marx employs the expression ‘free and rightless [vogelfrei]’ several times; see also ibid., at 885, 905. He also employs the expression ‘“free” and unattached’; see ibid., at 878.

19 Ibid., at 889.

20 Ibid., at 910–13, 915.

21 Ibid., at 890–3.

22 ‘The history of this expropriation assumes different aspects in different countries, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different historical epochs.’ Ibid., at 876. See also ibid., at 915: ‘The different moments of primitive accumulation can be assigned in particular to Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England, in more or less chronological order. These different moments are systematically combined together at the end of the seventeenth century in England; the combination embraces the colonies, the national debt, the modern tax system, and the system of protection.’

23 In order to catalyze capitalist production in the colonies, Wakefield suggested setting a high price for land, so that each settler would need to work for a long period of time in return for a wage before earning enough money to purchase the land outright and retire to a life of independent production. The fund generated through the sale of such land would then be used to import new settlers from the metropolis, which in turn would replenish the wage labour market. Ibid., at Ch. 33. For recent reconstruction and analysis see O.U. Ince, Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism (2018), Ch. 4.

24 Marx, supra note 13, at 915–16.

25 Ibid., at 932 (original emphases).

26 See especially M. Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000), Ch. 2; S. Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (2004), 12–13; De Angelis, M., ‘Separating the Doing and the Deed: Capital and the Continuous Character of Enclosures’, (2004) 12 Historical Materialism 57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 59–61, 68–71; Glassman, J., ‘Primitive Accumulation, Accumulation by Dispossession, Accumulation by “Extra-Economic” Means’, (2006) 30 Progress in Human Geography 608CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 611–12, 622; Bonefeld, W., ‘Primitive Accumulation and Capitalist Accumulation: Notes on Social Constitution and Expropriation’, (2011) 75 Science and Society 379CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 380–1; Ince, O.U., ‘Primitive Accumulation, New Enclosures, and Global Land Grabs: A Theoretical Intervention’, (2014) 79 Rural Sociology 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 107ff; Nichols, R., ‘Disaggregating Primitive Accumulation’, (2015) 194 Radical Philosophy 18Google Scholar, at 18–21.

27 Marx, supra note 13, at 905.

28 Ibid., at 873, 875, 927, 928.

29 Ibid., at 915.

30 Ibid., at 931.

31 Ibid., at 876.

32 Additional support for this interpretation comes from the Grundrisse, where Marx claims that ‘[t]he condition that the capitalist, in order to posit himself as capital, must bring values into circulation which he created with his own labour – or by some other means, excepting only already available, previous wage labour – belongs among the antediluvian conditions of capital, belongs to its historic presuppositions, which, precisely as such historic presuppositions, are past and gone, and hence belong to the history of its formation, but in no way to its contemporary history, i.e., not to the real system of the mode of production ruled by it’. K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (1993), 459 (original emphases).

33 Consider, as illustrative, A. Chakrabarti and A. Dhar, Dislocation and Resettlement in Development: From Third World to the World of the Third (2010), 151: ‘Put bluntly, the theory of primitive accumulation remains starkly underdeveloped and Eurocentric. Notwithstanding the desperate attempts to resituate it in a non-teleological domain, primitive accumulation remains turned to the perspective of capital and the West; in that sense, the theorization of primitive accumulation remains orientalist.’

34 Marx, supra note 13, at 876.

35 ‘During original accumulation, i.e., during the historical emergence of capitalism in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, the dispossession of the peasants in the U.K. and on the continent represented the most tremendous means for transforming the means of production and labor-power into capital on a massive scale. Since then, however, and to the present day, this same task has been accomplished under the rule of capital through an equally tremendous, although completely different, means: modern colonial policy … From the standpoint of capitalism … the violent appropriation of the colonial countries’ most important means of production is a question of life or death for it.’ Luxemburg, R., ‘The Accumulation of Capital: A Contribution to the Economic Theory of Imperialism’, in Hudis, P. and Le Blanc, P. (eds.), The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, vol. II: Economic Writings 2 (2015), 1Google Scholar, at 266–7.

36 K. Marx to Otechestvenniye Zapiski [November 1877], in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, vol. XXIV (1989), 196, at 200–1. For recent discussion see Perelman, supra note 26, at 26–7; Nichols, supra note 26, at 20; G.S. Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014), 186.

37 K. Marx to V. Zasulich [8 March 1881], in Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, vol. XXIV (1989), 370, at 370–1 (original emphases); Marx, supra note 13, at 928. See further T. Shanin (ed.), Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and ‘the Peripheries of Capitalism’ (1983); K.B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010), 224–36, 243. It is partly on the basis of passages of this kind that many Marxists explicitly repudiate the idea of a universal model for transitions to capitalism, as well as the related notion of a stark distinction between capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production. For a nuanced argument to the effect that ‘the accumulation of capital, that is, capitalist relations of production, can be based on forms of exploitation that are typically precapitalist’, and that there is therefore ‘not one ostensibly unique configuration of capital but a series of distinct configurations’, see J. Banaji, Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation (2010), Chs. 1–2 (quotations at 9, original emphases).

38 Marx, supra note 13, at 925–6.

39 See especially Harvey, New Imperialism, supra note 11, at 145–52; Harvey, ‘The “New” Imperialism’, supra note 11, at 75–6. To be fair, Marx himself is at times quite expansive; see, e.g., Marx, supra note 13, at 895 (‘The spoliation of the Church’s property, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of ruthless terrorism, all these things were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation’).

40 See Ince, supra note 26, at 106; Nichols, supra note 26, at 20; Das, R., ‘David Harvey’s Theory of Accumulation by Dispossession: A Marxist Critique’, (2017) 8 World Review of Political Economy 590Google Scholar.

41 For the argument that contemporary ‘food insecurity’ is best understood as a by-product of imperialism, a central feature of which is income deflation, deindustrialization, and the creation of large reserve armies of labour in the predominantly ‘tropical’ and ‘subtropical’ periphery with a view to ensuring the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs to advanced capitalist countries, see U. Patnaik and P. Patnaik, A Theory of Imperialism (2017), 33–9, 45–6, 50–1, 142–5, 175–8, 184–94. For empirical analysis of India and elsewhere, see ibid., Ch. 7.

42 Among early and influential criticisms see especially Chambers, J.D., ‘Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution’, (1953) 5 Economic History Review 319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J.D. Chambers and G.E. Mingay, The Agricultural Revolution, 1750–1880 (1966); Collins, K., ‘Marx on the English Agricultural Revolution: Theory and Evidence’, (1967) 6 History and Theory 351CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a subtle empirical response see Saville, J., ‘Primitive Accumulation and Early Industrialization in Britain’, (1969) 6 Socialist Register 247Google Scholar. For an intriguing methodological reaction see Magdoff, H., ‘Primitive Accumulation and Imperialism’, (2013) 65 Monthly Review 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 17–20.

43 For similar arguments see, e.g., De Angelis, supra note 26; Glassman, supra note 26, at 615–17, 621–2; W. Bonefeld, supra note 26; sources cited in note 11; essays in (2001) 2 The Commoner, available at www.commoner.org.uk/?p=5; Batou, J., ‘Accumulation by Dispossession and Anti-Capitalist Struggles: A Long Historical Perspective’, (2015) 79 Science and Society 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 12, 18–20, 31–2. For a related attempt to demonstrate that commodity exchange is shot through with extra-economic coercion, notably in the production of racial categories and the appropriation of women’s unpaid work see Singh, N.P., ‘On Race, Violence, and So-Called Primitive Accumulation’, (2016) 128 Social Text 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 40–1. In this vein see also Goldstein, A., ‘On the Reproduction of Race, Capitalism, and Settler Colonialism’, in Roy, A. (ed.), Race and Capitalism: Global Territories, Transnational Histories (2017), 42Google Scholar, at 44–5.

44 Marx, supra note 32, at 462; Marx, supra note 13, vol. III (1991), 354–5.

45 Cf. E.M. Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (2002), 36–7.

46 Marx, supra note 13, at 885.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., at 896. Marx argues that such unemployment was integral to the logic of ‘primitive accumulation’, as the availability of a large surplus population of desperate wage-labourers had the effect of suppressing wages, which, in turn, strengthened the hand of industrial capitalists.Ibid., at 899–904.

49 Ibid., at 900–4.

50 Ibid., at 886.

51 Marx deals extensively with the first two of these three developments in Ch. 10 of the first volume of Capital, famous for its extensive discussion of the Factory Acts but under-appreciated as an analysis of law as a key site of class struggle. Ibid., at 340–416. Trade unions make an appearance in the appendix; see ibid., at 1066–71.

52 Ibid., at 928.

53 Ibid., at 899.

54 Ibid.

55 See, e.g., Baird, I.G., ‘Turning Land into Capital, Turning People into Labour: Primitive Accumulation and the Arrival of Large-Scale Economic Land Concessions in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic’, (2011) 5 New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 10Google Scholar; Moyo, S., ‘Primitive Accumulation and the Destruction of African Peasantries’, in Patnaik, U. and Moyo, S. (eds.), The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry (2011), 61Google Scholar; Hall, D., ‘Primitive Accumulation, Accumulation by Dispossession and the Global Land Grab’, (2013) 34 Third World Quarterly 1582CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adnan, S., ‘Land Grabs and Primitive Accumulation in Deltaic Bangladesh: Interactions Between Neoliberal Globalization, State Interventions, Power Relations and Peasant Resistance’, (2013) 40 Journal of Peasant Studies 87Google Scholar; Levien, M., ‘From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of Dispossession: Six Theses on India’s Land Question’, (2015) 50 Economic and Political Weekly 146Google Scholar; Adnan, S., ‘Land Grabs, Primitive Accumulation, and Resistance in Neoliberal India: Persistence of the Self-Employed and Divergence from the “Transition to Capitalism”?’, in D’Costa, A.P. and Chakraborty, A. (eds.), The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession, and Capitalist Transition (2017), 76Google Scholar.

56 Marx, supra note 13, at 928.

57 Ince, supra note 26, at 106.

58 Ibid., at 110, 122, 127.

59 W.C. Roberts, ‘What Was Primitive Accumulation? Reconstructing the Origin of a Critical Concept’, (2018) 17 European Journal of Political Theory 1, at 5, 15 (original emphases), available at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1474885117735961. Elsewhere Roberts has argued that Marx’s account of ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital presupposes a model of the state as the ‘dependent agent of capital’, ‘bound to the fortunes of capital’ but distinguished by ‘relative independence from the actually existing class of capitalists’. See W.C. Roberts, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (2017), 214, 216 (emphasis removed). The strongest articulation of such a model of the state remains the one articulated by Nicos Poulantzas in State, Power, Socialism (1980).

60 Roberts, ‘What Was Primitive Accumulation?’, supra note 59, at 5.

61 See especially Cotula’s work: Land Deals in Africa, supra note 2, at 43–5; ‘“Land Grabbing” and International Investment Law’, in Bjorklund (ed.), supra note 2; Great African Land Grab?, supra note 9; Land Rights and Investment Treaties: Exploring the Interface (2015).

62 ‘Land Rent Contractual Agreement Made Between Ministry of Agriculture and Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc’, 25 October 2010. A copy of this agreement, and detailed information regarding the deal, is available at landmatrix.org/en/get-the-detail/by-target-region/eastern-africa/1244/.

63 See ‘Saudi Star’ at www.sheikhmohammedalamoudi.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66:saudi-star-agribusiness&catid=9:general-pages&Itemid=128.

64 ‘Land Rent Contractual Agreement’, supra note 62, at 7–8, arts. 12, 17.

65 Ibid., at 5, art. 6.

66 Ibid.

67 For various assessments, see Human Rights Watch, ‘Waiting Here for Death’: Forced Displacement and ‘Villagization’ in Ethiopia’s Gambella Region, 16 January 2012, available at www.hrw.org/report/2012/01/16/waiting-here-death/forced-displacement-and-villagization-ethiopias-gambella-region; Oakland Institute, We Say the Land is Not Yours: Breaking the Silence Against Forced Displacement in Ethiopia, 2015, available at www.oaklandinstitute.org/we-say-land-not-yours-breaking-silence-against-forced-displacement-ethiopia. See further W. Davison, ‘Saudi Billionaire To Invest $100 Million in Ethiopian Farm’, Bloomberg, 2 December 2014, available at www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-02/saudi-billionaire-to-invest-100-million-in-ethiopian-rice-farm; W. Davison, ‘Local Ethiopians Miss Out as Big Agriculture Firms Struggle in Gambella’, The Guardian, 1 January 2015; T. Burgis, ‘The Great Land Rush–Ethiopia: The Billionaire’s Farm’, Financial Times, 1 March 2016.

68 ‘An Act to Ratify the Amended and Restated Concession Agreement Between the Republic of Liberia and Sime Darby Plantation (Liberia) Inc.’, 23 July 2009. A copy of this agreement, and detailed information regarding the deal, is available at landmatrix.org/en/get-the-detail/by-target-region/western-africa/1388/.

69 Ibid., at 1–2, preamble.

70 Ibid., at 24–5, art. 9.

71 Ibid., at 11–12, art. 4.

72 Ibid., at 47, art. 28.

73 See ‘Liberia’ at www.simedarbyplantation.com/our-businesses/upstream/liberia.

74 For details and evaluations, see Basta! and Les amis de la terre, Live or Drive, A Choice Has To Be Made: A Case Study of Sime Darby Operations in Liberia, 2012, available at www.sdiliberia.org/node/224; G. York, ‘Land Rush Leaves Liberia’s Farmers in the Dust’, The Globe and Mail, 26 September 2012; ‘Fire Destroys 200 Hectares of Sime Darby’s Liberia Plantation’, Reuters, 19 March 2014, available at www.reuters.com/article/liberia-simedarby-fire/fire-destroys-200-hectares-of-sime-darbys-liberia-plantation-idUSL6N0MG3O020140319; S. Siakor, ‘Palm Oil, Poverty and “Imperialism”: A Reality Check from Liberia’, farmlandgrab.org, 10 September 2014, available at www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/23929-palm-oil-poverty-and-imperialism-a-reality-check-from-liberia; ‘Sime Darby in Unfair Labor Practice Saga–Lawyers Buy Time’, Front Page Africa, 6 February 2018, available at frontpageafricaonline.com/business/sime-darby-in-unfair-labor-practice-saga-lawyers-buy-time/.

75 See especially 1952 Integrated Economic Development and Commercial Agreements, GA Res. 523 (VI), UN Doc. A/2119; 1952 Right to Exploit Freely Natural Wealth and Resources, GA Res. 626 (VII), UN Doc. A/2361; 1962 Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, GA Res. 1803 (XVII), UN Doc. A/5217; 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Art. 1, 993 UNTS 3; 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Art. 1, 999 UNTS 171; 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, para. 4, GA Res. 3201 (S-VI), UN Doc. A/Res/S-6/3201; 1974 Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, GA Res. 3202 (S-VI), UN Doc. A/Res/S-6/3202; 1974 Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, Arts. 2–3, GA Res. 3281 (XXIX), UN Doc. A/Res/29/3281. For discussion see especially N.J. Schrijver, Sovereignty Over Natural Resources: Balancing Rights and Duties (1997); A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (2005), 211–20; S. Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (2011), Ch. 4. On some of the implications for the law of state succession to treaties see M. Craven, The Decolonization of International Law: State Succession and the Law of Treaties (2007), 195ff.

76 But see Desta, M.G., ‘Competition for Natural Resources and International Investment Law: Analysis from the Perspective of Africa’, (2016) 1 Ethiopian Yearbook of International Law 117Google Scholar, at 127–8, 134–5.

77 von Bernstorff, J., ‘Who Is Entitled to Cultivate the Land? Sovereignty, Land Resources and Foreign Investments in Agriculture in International Law’, in Jacur, F.R., Bonfanti, A. and Seatzu, F. (eds.), Natural Resources Grabbing: An International Law Perspective (2016), 55Google Scholar, at 61–71, 73.

78 As Anna Chadwick has noted, ‘the blameworthy international is notably absent’ in De Schutter’s UN reports: ‘Mistakes of the past are acknowledged, but it is uncommon to find mention of who made them. When such mention is made, the governments of food insecure states are more typically put in the spotlight than the governments of wealthier states in the North.’ Chadwick, A., ‘World Hunger, the “Global” Food Crisis and (International) Law’, (2017) 14 Manchester Journal of International Economic Law 92Google Scholar, at 110.

79 Cotula comes closest when he leverages Polanyi’s account of the ‘double movement’ between market fundamentalism, marked by the ‘fictitious’ commodification of land, labour, and money, and its dialectical ‘counter-movement’, the move to marshal non-market mechanisms of social regulation in order to counter such ‘disembeddedness’ of ‘the economy’. Tellingly, though, even Cotula – one of the very few legal scholars concerned with land-grabbing to hazard a theory of capitalism – does so in support of an argument to the effect that international investment law may ‘hold promise for reflecting the continued social embeddedness of land’ even as it is ‘an enabler of land commodification and a protector of accrued transitions towards commodification’. See Cotula, L., ‘The New Enclosures? Polanyi, International Investment Law and the Global Land Rush’, (2013) 34 Third World Quarterly 1605CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 1607. For Polanyi’s own account of this ‘double movement’ see K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944).

80 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 506.

81 Ibid., at 529, 531. See also De Schutter, ‘How Not To Think of Land-Grabbing’, supra note 8, at 269–70. For de Soto’s argument about formalization of individual property rights, and the legal ‘inclusion’ they were supposed to bring about see H. de Soto, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (1989) and H. de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000). As De Schutter notes, the World Bank and other international financial institutions have supported this approach.

82 This process is propelled in no small part by increased financialization of land. See Visser, O., ‘Finance and the Global Land Rush: Understanding the Growing Role of Investment Funds in Land Deals and Large-Scale Farming’, (2015) 2 Canadian Food Studies 278Google Scholar; T. Ferrando, ‘The Financialization of Land and Agriculture: Mechanisms, Implications, and Responses’, draft available at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2916112. For a related argument about food prices see Chadwick, A., ‘Regulating Excessive Speculation: Commodity Derivatives and the Global Food Crisis’, (2017) 66 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 This is a point of some importance to scholars who underscore corruption, ‘democratic deficits’, and related issues in the context of large land deals. See, e.g., Brilmayer, L. and Moon, W.J., ‘Regulating Land Grabs: Third Party States, Social Activism and International Law’, in Lambek, N.C.S. et al. (eds.), Rethinking Food Systems: Structural Challenges, New Strategies and the Law (2014), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 125, 130–4.

84 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 527–31. See also De Schutter, ‘How Not To Think of Land-Grabbing’, supra note 8, at 271.

85 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 533.

86 Ibid., at 535–6. See 1966 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Art. 5, 660 UNTS 195.

87 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 538.

88 Ibid., at 536–7.

89 Ibid., at 557.

90 Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, Final Report: The Transformative Potential of the Right to Food, UN Doc. A /HRC/25/57 (2014), at 14–15 and 21, para. 35 and annex.

91 See, e.g., 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art. 25, GA Res. 217A (III), UN Doc. A/810; 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Art. 11, 993 UNTS 3; 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Art. 12, 1249 UNTS 13; 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, Arts. 24, 27, 1577 UNTS 3; 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Arts. 25, 28, 2515 UNTS 3. See also CESCR, General Comment No. 12: The Right to Adequate Food, UN Doc. E/C.12/1999/5 (1999); FAO, Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security, 2004, available at www.fao.org/docrep/009/y7937e/y7937e00.htm.

92 Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, UN Doc. A/68/288 (2013), at 5 and 18–20, paras. 8 and 47–56.

93 Ibid., at 6 and 10, paras. 9 and 23.

94 Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter, Large-Scale Land Acquisitions and Leases: A Set of Minimum Principles and Measures to Address the Human Rights Challenge, UN Doc. A /HRC/13/33/Add.2 (2009), at 3, para. 4. For the argument that most forms of human rights advocacy have proven unwilling to address socio-economic inequality see especially S. Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018).

95 FAO, IFAD, UNCTAD, and World Bank, Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that Respects Rights, Livelihoods, and Resources, 2010, available at documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/748861468194955010/Principles-for-responsible-agricultural-investment-that-respects-rights-livelihoods-and-resources-extended-version.

96 CFS, Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems, 2014, available at www.fao.org/cfs/home/activities/rai/en/.

97 See especially Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food, supra note 91; FAO, Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, 2012, available at www.fao.org/tenure/voluntary-guidelines/en/.

98 Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa, Assembly/AU/Decl.1(XIII) Rev.1 (2009), available at www.uneca.org/publications/declaration-land-issues-and-challenges-africa.

99 P. Stephens, ‘The Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment’, (2013) 10 Globalizations 187, at 188.

100 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 505–6. See, e.g., La Vía Campesina, FIAN, Land Research Action Network, and GRAIN, ‘Stop Land Grabbing Now! Say No to the Principles of “Responsible” Agro-Enterprise Investment Promoted by the World Bank’, 2010, available at focusweb.org/content/stop-land-grabbing-now; Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, ‘Why We Oppose the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI)’, 2010, available at www.fian.org/library/publication/why_we_oppose_the_principles_for_responsible_agricultural_investment/. See further the International Land Coalition’s 2011 Tirana Declaration, available at www.landcoalition.org/en/resources/tirana-declaration.

101 De Schutter, ‘The Green Rush’, supra note 8, at 506.

102 De Schutter, ‘How Not To Think of Land-Grabbing’, supra note 8, at 274.

103 Ibid., at 275. See also O. De Schutter, ‘Responsibly Destroying the World’s Peasantry’, Project Syndicate, 4 June 2010, available at www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/responsibly-destroying-the-world-s-peasantry?barrier=accessreg.

104 Special Rapporteur, Large-Scale Land Acquisitions and Leases, supra note 94, at 16–17, annex.

105 World Bank, Rising Global Interest in Farmland: Can It Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits?, 2011, xliv, available at documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/998581468184149953/Rising-global-interest-in-farmland-can-it-yield-sustainable-and-equitable-benefits. See also ibid., at 133.

106 Such rights may, for instance, be inferred from the 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Arts. 8, 10, 25–30, 32, GA Res. 61/295, UN Doc. A/Res/61/295.

107 Borras, S. and Franco, J., ‘From Threat to Opportunity? Problems with the Idea of a “Code of Conduct” for Land-Grabbing’, (2010) 13 Yale Human Rights and Development Journal 507Google Scholar, at 510, 512–13.

108 Federici, supra note 26, at 12–13.

109 Marx, supra note 13, at 895.