How Corporate Concentration Gives Rise to the Movement of Movements: Monsanto and La Via Campesina (1990–2011)

As of 2011 a revolutionary ‘movement of movements’ is emerging coterminous with environmental crises and various other crises including corporate globalization. This study sheds theoretical and empirical light on the origins of the movement of movements. Employing gendered, ethnicized class analysis, this study investigates Karl Marx’s (1867) central discovery in Capital volume one, chapter 32 that corporate concentration and organization impels workers to resist and become a revolutionary class for themselves. Data is derived from investigation into the social movement La Via Campesina’s (‘the peasant way’) struggle against Monsanto Corporation in India, the European Union and Brazil during two periods of Monsanto’s concentration (1996–1998 and 2007–2011). Findings indicate that, in the process of Monsanto’s concentration, there was a leap forward in the formation and actions of the movement of movements. This study concludes that corporate concentration and global organization significantly impels the formation of the movement of movements.