Food Regimes, Capital, State, and Class: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited

Abstract

Friedmann and McMichael's work, through their concept of the 'food regime', has been foundational to our thinking about the relation between capitalism, the state, and agriculture. Given the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of their seminal 1989 paper in this journal (Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present) it seems very appropriate to commemorate this event by undertaking a reassessment of that paper. This article undertakes such a reassessment by examining and critiquing: the theoretical assumptions underlying the paper, particularly in relation to capitalism, class, and the state. This directs attention particularly to: the authors' (implicit) definition of capitalism; the relation between capitalism and the modern state; their treatment of 'class' and 'class struggle'; and their periodisation of food regimes and the dynamics underlying them, these being premised on their theoretical assumptions. The second, third, and, fourth sections occupy the bulk of the paper. The second section develops a significantly revised theoretical foundation for thinking about the dynamics underlying food regimes, while the third section deploys this as the basis for a new periodisation of food regimes. This periodisation includes a proposed Fifth, or 'Post-Neoliberal' Food Regime, and the final section examines this in detail.determinism and linearity of 'structural Marxism' (the 'second school', see below), an impulse, as implied above, that has only increased, if not always been realised, since 1989 (see Campbell and Dixon 2009). Indeed, these authors suggest that 'it is only possible… to understand the significance of these new perspectives by understanding food regimes as a key historical and theoretical pivot that moved debates in rural sociology from a rather narrow, structural and orthodox political economy of agriculture to a more contingent, historically contextual understanding of the many configurations… of agri-food capitalisms' (Campbell and Dixon 2009, p. 261).We argue, however, and as implied above, that, in the case of McMichael, theoretical provision for such 'contingency' has not been realised other than 'outside' the regime (see Tilzey 2017), while, in the case of Friedmann, her theoretical shift to engage 'contingency' has been undertaken through her partial embrace of post-structural and post-modern frames. These do not, we suggest, afford a rigorous basis for conceptualising 'contingency', however. We argue that this unresolved tension between 'structure' and 'contingency' in FRT, as presented by Friedmann and McMichael, arises through a missed opportunity to embrace RT in its entirety, together with their apparent lack of awareness of other important and related developments in 'post-structuralist' (but not 'post-structural') Marxian theorynotably, 'Political Marxism', Poulantzian state-capital theory, and neo-Gramscian theory. Indeed, it may be argued that this unresolved tension and their omission to present a theoretical basis for con...

Digitalization and the third food regime

“…The third food regime is characterized by neoliberal, free market policies as the dominant mode of regulation and is driven by global market prices (McMichael 2009 ). However, the ongoing blockade of WTO negotiations, the recent collapse of its Appellate Body, as well as the return of “agro-security mercantilism” (McMichael 2012 ) in the form of land grabbing all show that neoliberal hegemony is fragmenting (Tilzey 2019 ). Nevertheless, WTO rules still apply and constitute a residual feature of the third food regime, while emerging developments include bi- and multilateral trade agreements as well as various corporate and financial deals and mergers with and across states (McMichael 2019 ).…”

“…This is particularly relevant since recent contributions on the third food regime (e.g. McMichael 2019 ; Tilzey 2019 ) point to the transition of some features of the regime, to which the rise of digital technologies might contribute. Our central research question is how digital technologies shape the organization of the third food regime.…”

From neoliberalism to national developmentalism? Contested agrarian imaginaries of a postneoliberal future for food and farming

“…For agrarian populism, however, its failure to problematize capitalism, as opposed to neoliberalism (a question of scale rather than relations of production), means that the ‘family farm’ road entails, not the subversion of capitalist relations of production, but rather the ‘embedding’ of the market within reterritorialized (localized and ecologized) networks of producers and consumers. It similarly lacks a class‐based analysis of the state, seeing it as an essentialized public domain juxtaposed to an essentialized private/market domain (see Tilzey, 2018a, 2019b, for discussion).…”

“…This postneoliberal regime is likely to comprise a type of reformist capitalism. Indeed, I suggest (Tilzey, 2019b) that more state interventionist and national popular trends over the last decade or more indicate that we are already in what I term a ‘postneoliberal food regime’ (the ‘fifth’ food regime) (see next section for discussion of food regimes).…”

“…These dynamics combine to create a qualitatively distinct regime of capital accumulation trends in agriculture and food; the regime finds its durability and consumption relations in accordance with global capital accumulation trends more broadly. (p. 35)Unfortunately, in common with Friedmann and McMichael, there is no mention of the equally important role of legitimation as a ‘mode of regulation’ in the constitution of food regimes (see Tilzey, 2019b, for detailed critique). Sadly, this renders Otero's treatment of food regimes, like Friedmann and McMichael's, more a question of structural determinants of accumulation in the agri‐food sector than of political contestation and compromise between class interests and between state interests.…”