Send message to Author

Presentation short abstract

This presentation analyzes the capitalist metabolism through highway infrastructure. It argues that the state, acting as the 'ideal collective capitalist', secures a metabolic rift that causes chronic bodily wear and tear among truck drivers and ecological destruction.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation analyzes highway infrastructure as a central, state-guaranteed means of reproduction within the capitalist metabolism. Grounded theoretically in a Marxist critique and the metabolic rift concept, it is argued that the highway and the reuslting accelerated circulation mandate a metabolic rift manifesting in two structural ways: First, the chronic wear and tear of the human body (physical exhaustion and externalization of social reproduction costs) for mobile labor, and second, severe ecological destruction (land sealing, vector for zoonotic diseases).

The state acts as the "ideal collective capitalist", guaranteeing these conditions through planning mechanisms and security strategies, thereby enforcing its impersonal domination through infrastructure.

The study of political resistance (truck drivers and citizen initiatives) reveals further issues: While drivers address the social reproduction crisis and exploitation, they paradoxically confirm the infrastructure's material basis by demanding its expansion. Conversely, citizen initiatives explicitly critique the ecological rift, yet their planned protest is integrated by the State primarily as a legitimation mechanism.