The Tragedy of the Commodity
本文批判了常用于解释渔业衰退的“公地悲剧”理论，提出“商品悲剧”作为替代框架，通过地中海蓝鳍金枪鱼渔业的案例，运用马克思的资本理论分析资本主义商品生产如何导致资源过度开发与环境退化。
This article develops a critique of the tragedy of the commons theory that is frequently applied to explain fisheries decline. In its place the authors offer the tragedy of the commodity as an alternative framework that better explains resource overexploitation and environmental degradation. They use a political economic analysis to discuss the social and ecological transformations that have occurred in the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery, with an emphasis on the Sicilian traditional trap fishery. Examining this case, the authors argue that Marx’s explanation of capitalist private property, commodity production, and the general formula for capital provide powerful theoretical guides for clarifying the social relations of production that have driven the overexploitation of fisheries in the recent past. Relying on historical and qualitative data, the case study illustrates the ways in which the social imperative of capitalist commodity production toward accumulating surplus-value directs production, reorganizes social relations, and transforms nature into an instrumental input that can more easily serve the needs of capital. The resulting ecological problems demonstrate the tragedy of the commodity.