Capitalism has proven most resourceful. Population growth ha no doubt aided in its growth. Yet there is also a geographical dimension to its sucess, as noted famously by Henry Lefebvre (1991) and David Harvey (1982). In other words, through the production of space (e.g., Harvey), as witnessed through decreases in transportation and communication costs and the instant exchange of information between nodes located all around the world. These expansionistic tendencies take both intensive (e.g., new infraestructure investments in cities already involved in capitalistic modes of production) and extensive (investments in areas not yet enveloped in the logic of capital) forms (Sewell 2008). Yetm as Marx and Engels (1967) noted so long ago, these tendencies produce contradictions, which must be resolved in some form so as not to derail the circulation of capital. And therein lays capitalism's transformational engine, in these contradictions/tensions that it then "resolves". This has allowed capitalism to continue on the tracks without (yet?) a major derailing of its logics.

Marx and Engels predicted that eventually such tensions would become too much for capitalism: "The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very fundation on which the burgeoisie produces and appropriates productions. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers" (Marx and Engels 1978: 483). The (first) contradiction is overproduction - that eventually there will simply be too much stuff and not enough people able to buy it all. More recently, James O'Connor (1998) has written about what he calls the second contradiction of capital. While the contradiction discussed by Marx and Engels centers on a crisis on the demand side, for O'Connor capitalism will, over time, witness a crisis on the supply side. This under-production will occur as industry and state - both which are directed by the logics of capital - fail to protect the conditions of production, namely, the environment. "Put simply", in the words of O'Connor (1998: 245), "the second contradiction states that when individual capitals attempt to defend or restore profits by cutting or externalizing costs, the unintended effect is to redue the 'productivity' of the conditions of production".

To be clear, I am not looking to rewrite Marx nor am I hoping to challenge or contradict others extensions of his thought. There is an impeccable logic embedded within these grave-digger arguments. But I cannot help wonder if there is something else 0 if you will, something "deeper" - that unites these contradictions into a single conceptual thread. It seems to m at least that capitalism would have painfully short existence were it not for our readiness to mistake its abstract "objects" for the concrete. The link between object-ification and O'Connor's argument is fairly easy to state. Breaking up the world into "decontextualized, dissociated and detached" commodities (Callon 1998: 19) reduces the productivity of the conditions of production because this process fragments something that fundamentally is not fragmented (see e.g., Levins and Lewontin 1994). And with each "object" new tensions arise (whereby the productivity of the conditions of production are threatened), which in turn brings about new objects (and new tensions), and so forth.

Capital has thus far acted with amazing speed at turning these tensions into sources of profits. William Sewell (2008: 525) describes this ability as follows:

"The occurrence of events in social life, of unexpected happenings of any sort, is for capital above all an opportunity for new sources of profit. As the profitability of existing investments declines or stagnates, there are always alert capitalists scanning the horizon for new, more profitable investments. It is this eternal alertness of capital for higher profit that drives both the business cycle (because the enthusiastic pursuit of new possibilities of gains results time and again in overinvestment) and capitalism's continual expansion (as new geographical, technological, social, and cultural patterns open the possibility for extending capitalist money-making practices into ever new sites)."

Decentering Biotechnology: Assemblages Built and Assemblages Masked By Professor Michael S Carolan

https://books.google.com.br/books?id=Yul6BgAAQBAJ&pg=PT97&lpg=PT97&dq=Antinutrients+and+capitalism&source=bl&ots=tmzgVa5nZO&sig=A4wkljZaUfEysWQ8my286NOSQHg&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYzeTXgZ7XAhUEiJAKHdNMCfcQ6AEIMzAC#v=onepage&q=Antinutrients%20and%20capitalism&f=false

Upper pages seems more porridge related and are also very interesting.