Ever since the Corporate Form was “invented” – in its earliest avatar as the collective East India Companies – those who have ruled via corporation have found innovative “means” new to extract wealth from the earth and people, leaving both poorer in a zero-sum “game”.
During The Raj – Company Raj – extraction was carried out through Lagaan – taxation on land & agriculture. Between 1765 to 1815,the Company is recorded to have pirated £ 18 Million annually from India. 50 % of the produce was taken as Lagaan, creating famines like the Great Bengal Famine.
The Company destroyed the people’s circular, sustainable and just economies – in which 70% of the value of what rural areas produced circulated in the village economy – and replaced them with linear, extractive economies, where most wealth produced in India went to enrich England, bleeding India.
In recent years, the corporate empire has found new instruments of extraction, with patents and (what should be called) ‘capitalisation’, being two prominent ones. The Chemical/Biotech/Seed Industry “innovated” and “invented” patents on life and patents on seeds, as a means to extract profits from farmers.