African peasantries: A theoretical framework∗

The paper seeks to contribute to a framework for the investigation of the specific historical conditions and contemporary manifestations of the agrarian question in sub‐Saharan Africa. The latter is distinguished, inter alia, by the timing and modes of incorporation of African social formations in the international economy, and by the forms of intervention of the colonial and post‐colonial states in the absence of features classically associated with the agrarian question elsewhere, such as large landed property, the political power of landlords, and the formation of an agrarian bourgeoisie. The forms and degrees of subsumption of peasant simple commodity production in the circuit of capital, a process in which the state plays a central role, are seen as moving towards a situation in which peasant producers are constituted as ‘wage‐labour equivalents’.     

Class relations and capitalist development: Subsumption in the Colombian coffee industry, 1928–92

The concept of subsumption had a short life within Marxist analysis of family farming because analysts using the concept failed to appreciate the centrality of class relations in Marx's analysis of capitalist development. I argue that the concept of subsumption is best understood as a theorisation of the subtle cultural and historical processes through which labour is incorporated into capitalist development projects. I reinforce this theoretical discussion with an analysis of capitalist development in the Colombian coffee industry. This case demonstrates that capitalist development is as much project as process, as much the reformation of cultural identity as the restructuring of relations of production.     

Obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture

This paper examines some of the reasons for the maintenance and persistence of family labour farms within agricultural sectors of advanced capitalist countries: some obstacles to the development of a capitalist agriculture are highlighted.

The survival of family farms has called into question Marx's theory of the transitional nature of petty commodity production; hence, Marxism is generally regarded as being unable to account for the viability of family farms. Two theories commonly advanced to explain this phenomenon are examined and found to be inadequate.

This paper suggests that a closer examination of Marx's writings reveals how the peculiar nature of the productive process in certain spheres of agriculture is incompatible with the requirements of capitalist production and, therefore, makes these spheres unattractive for capitalist penetration. Here the implications of Marx's distinction between production time and labour time for the development of a capitalist agriculture are discussed. Specifically, the non‐identity of production time and labour time characteristic of certain agricultural commodities is shown to have an adverse effect on the rate of profit, the efficient use of constant and variable capital, and the smooth functioning of the circulation and realisation process. It is concluded that the reason for the persistence of family farms is not to be found in the capacity of family labour for self‐exploitation, nor in the application of technology per se; rather the secret of this ‘anomaly’ lies in the logic and nature of capitalism itself.     

Frontier expansion and settlement in lowland Bolivia

This article examines the expansion of cash crop production into the lowland Bolivian frontier and explores the dynamics of class formation that shaped peasant political consciousness. It discusses the factors that moulded local‐level response to the conditions created by capitalist development: the process of social differentiation that affected settlers and the relationship between subsistence agriculture and wage labour; the tensions between settlers and large‐scale entrepreneurs; and changing state policies and economic conditions. It concludes that rigid analytic distinctions between peasants and proletarians ignore the historical development of production relations in Bolivia.     

The dynamics of rural poverty in Latin America

The development and perpetuation of a functional dualism between the subsistence sector and the commodity‐producing sector is an objective outcome of the laws of capital accumulation in the periphery of the world capitalist system. The necessity for this dualism derives from the drive of capitalists to maximise profits and thus maintain low wages. Its possibility arises from social disarticulation whereby labour's income does not participate in expanding the market for the modern sector. Through dualism, surplus value is increased not only by the orthodox means of central economies—principally increasing the productivity of work to reduce necessary labour embodied in wage goods—but, in addition, and dramatically more effectively, by collapsing the price of agricultural labour by an amount equal to the production of use‐values by the worker's family in the subsistence plot. In this way, subsistence agriculture supplies cheap labour to commercial agriculture which, in turn, supplies cheap food to the urban sector where it sustains low wages. Socially disarticulated accumulation and functional dualism between capitalist and precapitalist modes perpetuate primitive accumulation in the modern sector based on surplus extraction from the peasant sector fundamentally via the labour market. This specific form of overexploitation of rural labour implies a particular dynamic in the use of labour and natural resources in subsistence agriculture. The pattern of rural poverty and the subjective contradictions of peripheral capitalism can thus largely be understood by identifying the antagonistic contradictions to which the subsistence economy is subject in adjusting to domination.     

Simple commodity production and wage labour in the American plains∗

Households which exclusively produce a single commodity have a dual character as enterprises and as families. Competition establishes a constant requirement for labour, while demographic variation prevents its continuous supply within the household. Using data from a county in the heart of the American wheat plains to illustrate the analysis, this paper applies a modified version of Marx's theory to the circuits of reproduction of simple commodity production, focusing on their intersection with markets in labour power. The analysis requires elaboration of the Marxist definition of class, in order to differentiate members of specialized commodity production households who work for wages as a temporary phase in the life‐cycle, from a permanent class of wage labourers. It concludes that simple commodity production, although it differs from capitalist production as well as from peasant households, requires for its reproduction a well‐developed market in labour‐power and thus an essentially capitalist economy.     

Did agrarian capitalism exist?

Lack of clarity about key concepts of Marxian political economy and a penchant to apply such concepts too directly to history seriously weakens Brenner's analysis of ‘agrarian capitalism’. It is argued that even as late as 1700 English agriculture is not capitalist to any appreciable extent, when one considers that the corn‐modification of labour power is crucial to considering agriculture to be capitalist, and when one closely examines the actual degree to which labour power is commodified. Further it is argued that English agriculture only becomes substantially capitalist in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.     

Modernising subordination? A South Asian perspective on the World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development

The World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development argues that the solution to rural poverty in South Asia is through commercial smallholder farming, rural waged labour in farm and non-farm activities, or outmigration. Critically evaluating the Report from a South Asian perspective on the basis of agrarian structure, market-led agrarian transformation, the power of monopoly capital, and the option of off-farm livelihoods, it is argued that the Report has a deeply flawed understanding of the process of capitalist development in rural South Asia. Its path-dependent vision of the future of agriculture is rooted in modernisation theory, and predicated on the continued subordination of the majority of those who live in the South Asian countryside.     

Sugar and unfree labour: Reflections on labour control in the dominican republic, 1870–1935

This article takes issue with theories which suppose an essential contradiction between capitalist production and unfree labour relations. Using the history of sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic as a case study, it is argued that capitalist entrepreneurs tried very hard to restrict free wage labour relations. On the Dominican sugar plantations this goal was reached by a system of differential mechanisation which brought about a rigid separation between the mass of unskilled field workers and the restricted number of (semi‐) skilled workers. This labour division could be reproduced over a long period of time because the field workers were migrant labourers from Haiti liable to strong racial discrimination within Dominican society.     

Gunder frank in retreat?

World Accumulation, 1492–1789, by Andre Gunder Frank. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978. Pp. 303, index. £3.95, paper.

In this review article, Andre Gunder Frank's latest book, World Accumulation, is given extended critical treatment. It is argued that, in generalising his earlier arguments (which were formulated with respect to Chile and Brazil) across space and time, and in responding to a decade of criticism of his work, Frank has moved closer to the position of one of his best‐known critics, Laclau. Frank is taken to task for his ‘world market abstractionism’ and it is posited that the incorporation model which he espouses does not transcend the limits of petty‐bourgeois theory and downgrades the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat. The article falls into two parts. In the first, issues relating to Frank's historical framework are taken up—basically with regard to (i) Frank's ‘cycles of accumulation’ and (ii) Frank's interpretation of the second serfdom in eastern Europe; and in the second certain theoretical issues, around the theme of'wage‐labour’, are discussed. Both Frank's historical framework and his theoretical formulations are shown to be seriously defective.     

Wage labour and capitalism: a comparative and historical analysis of Eritrea and Kenya

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the development of capitalism in Eritrea and Kenya from a labour history perspective. Indeed, the assumption in this research is that capitalism can only be explained by taking into consideration free wage labour as one of the sine qua non conditions for the existence of the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, the article looks at the paradigmatic socio-economic shifts: from unfree to free labour, from free to precarious labour and from unfree to precarious labour. These are the result of the complicated relationship that exists between capital and labour. The point of departure of the analysis is the Nieboer-Domar hypothesis on the structural origins of slavery, which despite severe criticism, it has been largely remained unchallenged until the present. In Eritrea, colonised by Italy, and Kenya, colonised by England, free wage labour fully developed between the nineteenth and twentieth century. This could be considered the era of the advent of capitalism, with the advent, for a fraction of the working population, of labour relations based on wages. The precarisation of life of free wage workers is also partially analysed in this article.     

The case for Agrarian capitalism: A response to albritton

Albritton finds Brenner's designation ‘agrarian capitalism’ inappropriate for early English agriculture, as the law of value and the commodification of labour are undeveloped. But Brenner is not theorising a ‘full‐blown’ capitalism. His theory traces a process of transition, by which new rules for social reproduction and a new capitalist logic unfolded gradually. Albritton's evidence, moreover, actually supports Brenner's thesis. Charges of class reductionism misconstrue Brenner's efforts to overcome the tendency to dichotomise society into political and economic spheres. Brenner's theory provides what the bourgeois paradigm does not: a logical explanation of how market dependency and capitalist classes emerged.     

M.H. Khan,A.V. Chayanov and the family farms of the North‐West Frontier Province

Mahmood Hasan Khan has argued that the agrarian structure of Pakistan's North‐West Frontier Province resembles that described in Russia in the early twentieth century by Alexander Vasil'evich Chayanov. The purpose of this article is to examine the validity of such an argument. After identifying changes in the agrarian structure of the Frontier since 1947, Chayanov's theory of peasant economy is empirically tested. Despite an absence of wage labour, none of Chayanov's static hypotheses are supported. It is concluded that the rural research of Khan, while technically proficient, does not explain processes of economic change in Frontier agriculture.     

Is bonded labour a bound category? ‐Reconceptualising agrarian conflict in India

This article discusses the position of ‘agrarian struggle’ within agrarian labour relations in India. It is argued that local labour relations and conflicts should be understood within the context of a wider balance of power between the concerned groups, regionally as well as locally. When examining local relations from this perspective, a number of well‐established positions on agrarian conflict can be challenged. The interrelationship between patron‐client relations on the one hand, and (what is here labelled) class‐caste struggle on the other is reassessed, and it is found that they are not mutually opposed. The categories ‘unfree’ and ‘bonded’ labour relations are also reassessed. Such relations do not seem to necessarily entail the dominance normally expected. ‘Bonded’ labour relations may, in fact, not hamper collective initiative among the landless, whereas the ‘ general political dominance of the landed groups certainly may. The article is based on fieldwork data from Uttar Pradesh.     

‘Let's party’: State intervention,discursive traditionalism and the labour process of Highland rice cultivators in Central Sulawesi,Indonesia

The state has intruded in the labour process of the highland wet‐rice farmers of Central Sulawesi since the imposition of Dutch colonial rule in 1905. Capitalist development since that time has resulted in differentiation in the ownership of the means of production; however, class tensions have been countered by the New Order state's shrouding the work process in a ‘discursive traditionalism’ which transforms wage labour into a ‘work party’. The transformations in this work party over time and the resultant political ramafications are examined.     

Non‐capitalist relations of production in capitalist society: The khammessat in Southern Tunisia ∗

The khammessat is one of the most ancient social institutions regulating agricultural labour in the Magrheb. This article seeks to answer three questions: (1) What is the nature of the relationship between agricultural labour and landowner in a society dominated by a non‐capitalist mode of production? (2) What was the impact of capitalism on such labour relations? (3) Is there any possibility of the development, within the khammessat system, of a labour organisation and the demand for rights?     

Changes in peasant food production and food supply in relation to the historical development of commodity production in pre‐colonial and colonial Tanganyika∗

This paper explores the dynamic interaction between peasant food production and commodity production under conditions of the increasing penetration of capital and consequent erosion of pre‐capitalist modes of production in pre‐colonial and colonial Tanganyika (Tanzania). It is argued that while the law of value inherent in commodity production definitely served to effect more specialisation of labour in peasant production, nevertheless,it was bounded by the limits of labour productivity attainable in peasant household production units. Shortfalls in peasant food production appeared as the most glaring consequence of the labour productivity constraint. The role of the colonial state was critical, not merely in the sense of acting to increase peasant commodity production. The colonial state also intervened strategically to dispense famine relief in times of serious food shortfalls, which guaranteeing peasant subsistence, altered its character from that of unreliability to that of regularity. Since peasant subsistence formed the necessary base for peasant commodity production, state famine relief ensured the persistence of peasant commodity production but not its proliferation, the latter again being indicative of the labour productivity constraint.     

Migration in colonial India: The articulation of feudalism and capitalism by the Colonial State

In this article a particular factual model of the way in which imperialism worked with respect to the Indian economy, which is widely accepted, is contested. The model in question assumes that though imperialism acts to transform agriculture—disintegrating and dissolving the traditional village structure—because it also thwarted industrialisation, backwardness in agriculture and dependence were maintained: the transformation of agrarian relations of production is contrasted with the stagnation of industrial growth, and the latter is held to be the causal factor. Against this it is argued that an examination of colonial migration reveals both the specific characteristics of the colonial working class it produced and the continuing existence of feudal ties of dependence in agriculture. The situation is best conceptualised in terms of the existence within the Indian social formation of feudal (agrarian) and proto‐capitalist (mines, plantations, factories) modes of production, articulated in such a way that the main costs of reproduction of labour power that was sold in the capitalist sector were borne in the non‐capitalist agrarian sector. The article concentrates on the period from the 1880s to the 1930s.     

The Value of Relationships: Affective Scenes and Emotional Performances

Many theorists have charted for some time how capital extends its lines of flight into new spaces, creating new markets by harnessing affect and intervening in intimate, emotional and domestic relationships, and into bio-politics more generally. Feminists have known for a long time that women’s ‘domestic’ labour has been central to the reproduction of capital but that it has been made invisible, surplus and naturalised and is rarely taken into account in theories of value. Yet we are now in a bizarre historical moment wherein a format has emerged (reality television) in a major capitalist industry (the media) that is premised upon spectacularly visualising women’s labour in all its forms, especially through its focus on relationships, dispositions and emotional performance. Drawing on an ESRC research project, ‘Making Class and the Self through Mediated Ethical Scenarios’, this paper demonstrates how very different spheres of exchange—economy and affect—have come together, offering possibilities for fusing calculation and care. This process bears remarkable similarity to the legal adjudication of property and propriety in intimate relationships. Yet the paper shows how, as attempts are made to commodify affect, it is precisely affect that exposes and disrupts exchange and enables reality television as a technology of affect to visualise the different types of person-value that are constituted through class and gender relations.     

There is nothing simple about simple commodity production

This essay offers a theoretical rethinking of simple commodity production that avoids two extreme notions of capitalism: one which readily embraces all relations of production found in the pervasive world system, and another which produces a rigidly eroded model to which everything else is externally articulated. It is argued that some specific forms of SCP can be treated as variations of capitalism integral to its polymorphous logic, and therefore as subjected, under determinate conditions, to a flexibly defined process of labour's subordination (formal and real) to capital. Self‐employed labour is also re‐examined in the light of (a) the basic exigencies of capital accumulation, (b) the contradictions inherent to capitalism, especially those pertaining to the confrontation between intraverted and extroverted economies, and (c) the active struggle of all working classes against their total dispossession from commodified wealth.