Rajeev[2] "Raj" Patel (born 1972) is a British academic, journalist, activist and writer[3] who has lived and worked in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the United States for extended periods.

"[4] Born to a mother from Kenya and a father from Fiji,[5][6][7] he grew up in Golders Green in north-west London where his family ran a corner shop.

[13][14] In 2017, he published, with co-author Jason W. Moore [de], A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet (University of California Press).

Patel is listed as a Research Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs of the University of Texas at Austin.

[7] Patel has written a number of criticisms of various aspects of the policies and research methods of the World Bank[17][18] and was a co-editor, with Christopher Brooke, of the online leftist webzine The Voice of the Turtle.

For capitalism, this means that the whole system thrives when powerful states and capitalists can reorganize global nature, invest as little as they can, and receive as much food, work, energy, and raw materials with as little disruption as possible.

"[27] This extrapolates a key formulation by Marx: “The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities.”[28] What we should be a little taken aback by is, not that corporations are miscreants, but that there are markets in food at all.