The Agrarian Question: Marx, Gender and Ecology

• In Event: 4342 - Marx, Ecology, and Gender

Abstract

This paper addresses the nineteenth century American agrarian question by focusing on the transition from frontier farming to commercialized agriculture in the Midwest, 1840s-1880s. The Midwest—specifically Illinois and later Iowa—was the epicenter of the first agricultural revolution in the United States, supplying cheap nature in the form of food and labor to an expanding world-economy. I argue that (what became) the Corn Belt was in a unique position to solidify regional specialization based on household labor, ecology, and markets. Drawing on the work of agrarian Marxists and Marxist feminists, the paper provides a historical reconstruction of household and market to recenter the American agrarian question. By providing a historically-grounded analysis of the transition from frontier production to petty commodity production in the Midwest, I specify its ecological, geographical, and household determinants and the economic contribution of regional specialization to nation building. The birth of the Corn Belt and industrial capitalism went hand-in-glove in constituting America’s cheap nature regime.

Author

• Ben Marley, Michigan State University