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
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.
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.