“Wonder Value”: Metamorphoses of Capitalist Accumulation in the Rio de Janeiro Port Region

Abstract

Several authors have promoted a renewal of the Marxist theory of capitalist expansion by bringing back the notion of repetition of primitive capital accumu-lation. The idea that the development of capitalism always needs to resort to a non-capitalist “exterior” is recurrent, that is, capitalism must extend the process of accumulation to spaces not yet integrated into the value production chains. In this process, it makes use of explicit non-economic violence, such as colonial or imperial politics, spoliation, bloodthirsty laws, etc. In the present article, we study the different dimensions of this process in light of the history of the port region of Rio de Janeiro. From the theoretical point of view, this makes it possible to rethink the categories of this debate starting from the concept of intertwined accumulation, coined in the article. From the empirical point of view, we argue that the Rio de Janeiro port region represents a kind of synthesis space, within which the various historical stages of capitalist accumulation appear materiali-zed in the form of a movement of incorporation and decoupling of such region into the processes of transforming socially constructed spaces into commodities.