![handle is hein.journals/crmlsc4 and id is 1 raw text is: Contemporary Crises 4 (1980) 1-26 1
© Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands
STATE, CAPITAL AND LEGITIMATION CRISIS:
LAND AND WATER IN CALIFORNIA'S IMPERIAL VALLEY
BILL BARCLAY
JANET SCHMIDT
DICK HILL
Agribusiness in California's Imperial Valley faces a legal challenge to its
very existence. For almost four decades the large growers in the Valley have
relied upon irrigation water from the All American Canal built by the federal
government as a part of the Boulder Canyon Project. Federal reclamation
law states clearly that no individual is to receive water from federal projects
for more than 160 acres of land. Yet average farm size in Imperial County
approaches 700 acres and more than 75 percent of county farmland is in
holdings of 1,000 acres or more [1]. Today court suits brought both by
Valley residents and by land reform groups elsewhere in California have
forced the Department of the Interior to take steps towards the enforcement
of reclamation law. Effective enforcement of the law would fundamentally
alter the social relations of agrarian production both in the Valley and
throughout much of the rest of western agriculture.
The roots of this crisis lie within the nature of capitalism as a mode of
production whose internal development is driven by the twin forces of
competition and class struggle. Politically these twin forces generate two
contradictory class imperatives, the need to reproduce the social relations
necessary for continued capital accumulation and the need to legitimate
capitalism as a form of social organization. Because the capitalist state, as a
crystallization of class relations [2], is structured by these societal contra-
dictions, state policy reflects the contradictory demands of accumulation
and legitimation [3].
On the one hand, then, social policy must aid capitalists in their search for
profits, for accumulation of capital is the basis of prosperity and growing
state tax revenues. On the other hand, social policy must also justify this aid
in the name of the public good. The legal challenge to the agricultural capi-
talists of the Valley has placed these imperatives in antagonism to each other
San Diego State University, San Diego, Cal., U.S.A.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/crmlsc4&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most