Inequality of Food Security and the Aleination of Marginalized 

Populations in Brazil

The concept of alienation is derived from “commodity fetishism”, which means inanimate objects or commodities possess human powers. For example, values which gain the ability to govern humans through our over-valuing of commodities. Alienation was defined by Marx in 1844 in the Economic and Philosophical scripts. This idea was further developed as a tool which critiques “political economy in Capital (Marxism).” This concept describes the consequences of living in a stratified society with various social classes, particularly in the capitalist mode of production. I will use the concept of commodity fetishism to analyse the construction of the BM Dam and show how it is commodifying the environment at the expense of removing indigenous populations from their ancestral homes. This commodification is causing the displacement of indigenous peoples in order to provide electricity to the rest of the population of Brazil. In addition, this issue also brings up the problem of social stratification and whose rights are considered more valuable. Marx further contends:

A direct consequence of the alienation of man from the product of his labor, from his life activity and from his species life is that man is alienated from other men. When man confronts himself, he also confronts other men. What is true of man's relationship to his work, to the product of his work and to himself, is also true of his relationship to other men, to their labor and to the objects of their labor. In general, the statement that man is alienated from his species life means that each man is alienated from others, and that each of the others is likewise alienated from human life."

The alienated man is not only alienated from other men; he is alienated from the essence of humanity, from his "species-being," both in his natural and spiritual qualities. This alienation from the human essence leads to an existential egotism, described by Marx as man's human essence becoming "a means for his individual existence. It [alienated labor] alienates from man his own body, external nature, his mental life and his human life (Fromm)

The social relations of production are important and Marx emphasizes and critiques “the capitalistic reification of the social relations of production, the alienation of labour through reified mediations of Wage Private, private properly and exchange (Meszaros).” This leads to the alienation of particular bodies of individuals from society and dehumanisation. Through this alienation these indigenous populations and local riverine communities are not only being separated from their land and river, of which they dependent on for their livelihood, but are completely dispossessed of their entire means of existence. This is where these communities have resided for generations and the capitalist economic reification of the land in which the indigenous population live, further marginalizes an already alienated community.