Surplus yield and production structure: The case of small‐scale rural industries in West Bengal

Rural industries in West Bengal are characterized by a multiplicity of organizational forms, such as independent petty production, petty production under subcontracting relations with a master trader, modern small‐scale production, and medium‐sized capitalist production. On the basis of field data, we have estimated the amount of surplus generated by these different kinds of producer across a number of organizations and industries, using an alternative criterion: imputing wages to family labour. It was observed that a large number of petty producers generate negative or very low surpluses, and thus have to find supplementary sources of income. Further, the surpluses generated by petty producers attached to a master trader are generally higher than those of independent petty producers.This can be explained in one of two ways. Either the existence of mutual trust between attached petty producers and a master trader offers the former certain advantages over the independent ones, in terms of steady access to urban markets, cheaper sources of raw materials, and easy credit. Or, alternatively, the control such attachment licenses enables a master trader both to extract and to maintain continuous access to higher levels of surplus. For these reasons, this system, of organization lends viability to artisanal production.     

Socio‐economic differentiation and relations of production among rural‐based petty producers in central Peru, 1880 to 1970.

In an attempt to uncover the complexity of socio‐economic differentiation, detailed evidence is presented of the changing production relations among the Huasicanchinos of Central Peru over a period of ninety years.

It is argued that the process of differentiation can only be understood within the context of a quite specific system of production. An examination of the specificity of the relations of production in a particular period then reveals the complexity of this differentiation process and exposes some of the difficulties involved in a class analysis where capitalist relations have not been generalised throughout the social formation.

The study of this group of Central Peruvian petty producers over ninety years reveals that the differentiation process was a function of specific features of the relations of production in each of three periods; these relations were themselves emergent from the articulation of huasicanchino petty production with the changing form of dominant capitalism in Peru. As a function of differing relations to large capital, petty production units took on a variety of forms. Qualitative differences in the form of small production units in one period then gave rise to quantitative differences in control over resources in a subsequent period. Quantitative differences were in turn expressed in variations in relations of production between controllers and direct producers, and so on.

It is concluded that assumptions about inevitable polarisation should not obscure the complexity of a process which can only be understood by reference to the particular history of a social formation.     

Commercial Agriculture and Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire during the Nineteenth Century: A Comparison of Raw Cotton Production in Western Anatolia and Egypt

The complex historical relationship between commercial agriculture and capitalist transformation is examined here by looking critically at cotton production in two areas of the Ottoman empire during the nineteenth century. Cotton became important economically on large farms established to meet increasing foreign demand. In Egypt, which was a major region of the southern empire, a state monopoly was established under the control of a governor with the object of participating in the growing foreign trade in cotton-based products. These attempts did not, however, lead to a transformation of rural property relations in Ottoman agriculture. This process of commercialisation led much rather to the consolidation of petty commodity production, not least because of its economic role as a source of labour-power.     

Extreme but not exceptional: Towards an analysis of the agrarian question in Uganda

The article presents an analysis of the social relations of production and their contradictions in African peasant agriculture, which combine the ‘dull compulsion’ of market forces on petty commodity producers with various forms of extra‐economic coercion. Two paths of accumulation from below and from above are distinguished, the latter based in possession of, or access to, state power. Class formation and agrarian crisis are investigated through the mechanisms and effects of the two types of accumulation, illustrated by data on two villages in different areas of Uganda, which provide an extreme but not exceptional case of the agrarian question in contemporary African conditions. The analysis allows some strategic political conclusions to be suggested.     

Agricultural production,social participation and domination in late eighteenth‐century Bengal: Towards an alternative explanation

This article attempts an analysis of the problems of social participation by non‐peasants in agricultural production and of the pattern of domination they shaped over the peasants. The historical context of this analysis is the Indian province of Bengal in the late eighteenth century. The problematics of non‐peasant participation and domination are historically important in as much as they focus attention upon the wider class basis of agricultural production and the nature of commercialisation in the economy. This essay also seeks to provide a critique of some analytical models which seek to establish the existence of semi‐feudalism in Bengal. The critique is based on the re‐examination of the historical evidence available; it is not intended to be a theoretical exegesis alone. Arguing against the utility of semi‐feudalism as a category for the analysis of Bengal's social formation, this article suggests an alternative explanation in terms of commercial exploitation of small‐peasants under conditions of formal subsumption of labour to capital.     

Rural transformation on the East Black Sea coast of Turkey: A note on keyder

This article questions the interpretation of modern Turkish agrarian history advanced in this journal in 1983 by Çaglar Key der. The preeminence of petty commodity production does not entail class homogeneity, any more than Lenin's analysis of class differentiation in pre‐revolutionary Russia was invalidated by Chayanov's theory of the family‐labour farm. Sharecropping illustrates the structural inequalities which characterise the social relations of Turkish agriculture. These are often founded upon uneven regional development. The argument is supported by fieldwork experience in the tea‐producing region of the Black Sea coast.     

Rural industry and uneven development: The significance of gender in the Irish Linen industry

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the Irish linen industry grew on the basis of unequal relations of exchange between spinning and weaving households. This regional division of labour in turn depended on unequal relations of production between women and men within rural industrial households. The ‘proto‐industrialisation’ thesis has tended to obscure this process by focussing on the household as a bounded entity, and by failing to recognise the significance of inequalities within the household production unit. Once gender relations are made central to the thesis, it can be expanded to explain regional differences in rural industrialisation and deindustrialisation.     

The social composition of the Mau Mau movement in the white highlands

This article is an attempt to locate the social basis of the Mau Mau movement in the White Highlands. It is argued that the Mau Mau revolt was an outcome of a prolonged agrarian struggle between Kikuyu squatters and European settlers. In this agrarian struggle, the leading rôle was assumed by Kikuyu artisans and petty traders. This leadership provided the Mau Mau movement with the type of organisation and strategy that could unite the Kikuyu peasantry.     

Theories of the exploited peasantry: A critical review

The object of this article is to discuss the theoretical foundations of the Neo‐Marxist argument which states that by a process of unequal exchange, the existence of the peasant economy in the agricultural sector of capitalist, less developed countries (LDCs) means that rent payments are avoided. The article begins by presenting a summary of the implications for sectoral exchange of the transformation of labour values into prices of production. In Section II the modern versions of the theory of ground rent are discussed, and Section III is a critical review of the divergent propositions concerning the peasant economy's exchange relations in the product market. The article ends by proposing an empirical approach for the study of the exchange relations of the peasant economy and of a heterogeneous agricultural sector.     

The German agricultural worker, 1815–1914

This paper examines the history of the German agricultural worker from the early nineteenth‐century abolition of serfdom up to 1914. Initially, peasant labour services and the compulsory farm service of peasant youth on Junker farms were replaced by contractually hired farm servants and the cottager system. The latter involved the exchange of labour for an allocation of the land, whereby the worker become a petty commodity producer and also an employer of labour, in the form of the ancillary workers (Hofgänger) he was obliged to provide. Subsequently, from the middle decades of the century, this form of labour was increasingly replaced by confined labourers living in tied cottages, who were virtually landless and paid largely in kind; and were therefore effectively economic objects. At the same time, especially from the 1870s, conditions necessitated increasing reliance upon labourers receiving cash wages. However, this category remained relatively small, and largely impervious to socialist ideology, on account of a growing dependence of German agriculture on foreign (Polish) seasonal migrants.     

Migration and modes of exploitation: Social origins of immobility and mobility

Migration has been the subject of considerable research in recent years, much of it conducted by economists. This paper is an attempt to provide the basis of a general, materialist framework for research on population mobility. As such it pays particular attention to changing mechanisms of exploitation, which are typically ignored in conventional studies of migration. This article focuses on pre‐capitalist relations of production restricting population mobility, the factors that make those controls increasingly unstable and the different implications for migration of different forms of the transition to capitalist relations of production. Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence it then considers the various functions of migration in transitions to capitalist production.     

Plantations,outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change

Whether or not investments in African agriculture can generate quality employment at scale, avoid dispossessing local people of their land, promote diversified and sustainable livelihoods, and catalyse more vibrant local economies depends on what farming model is pursued. In this Forum, we build on recent scholarship by discussing the key findings of our recent studies in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We examined cases of three models of agricultural commercialisation, characterised by different sets of institutional arrangements that link land, labour and capital. The three models are: plantations or estates with on-farm processing; contract farming and outgrower schemes; and medium-scale commercial farming areas. Building on core debates in the critical agrarian studies literature, we identify commercial farming areas and contract farming as producing the most local economic linkages, and plantations/estates as producing more jobs, although these are of low quality and mostly casual. We point to the gender and generational dynamics emerging in the three models, which reflect the changing demand for family and wage labour. Models of agricultural commercialisation do not always deliver what is expected of them in part because local conditions play a critical role in the unfolding outcomes for land relations, labour regimes, livelihoods and local economies.     

Neo‐populism and Marxism: The Chayanovian view of the agrarian question and its fundamental fallacy

The neo‐populist viewpoint on the agrarian question, developed in Russia from the late 19th century against Marxist theory, enjoys a modified revival in India today. The theoretical core of the neo‐populist framework consists in the idea of an economically undifferentiated, virtually homogeneous peasantry, which shows extreme stability and viability vis a vis the competition of capitalist production; and is of superior efficiency with respect to yield. There is a basic logical fallacy underlying this view, consisting in the positing of identical conditions of production for units with differing objectives of production—’subsistence’ for peasant holdings and ‘profit’ for capitalist holdings—in a situation where they coexist and are linked through markets. In fact capitalist production cannot emerge at all unless it is accompanied by a rise in output and surplus per unit area compared to petty production, which presupposes technical change. The logical necessity of differing conditions of production, implies that all the neo‐populist propositions are invalid.     

Agricultural commercialisation models,agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana

The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate – plantation, contract farming and medium-scale commercial farming – contract farming has been identified as central to the future of Africa’s commercial agriculture. This paper provides empirical evidence from Ghana on the impacts of these three models on land, labour/employment, livelihoods and local economic linkages. Our findings show that the plantation and the commercial farming areas have highly commercialised land relations, land scarcity and high land prices, compared to the outgrower area where traditional systems of accessing land still dominate, enabling families to produce their own food crops while also diversifying into wage labour and other activities. Food insecurity was highest in the plantation area followed by the commercial area, but lowest in the outgrower area. Here, semi-proletarianised seasonal workers combine self-provisioning from their own farms with wages, and this results in better livelihood outcomes than for permanent workers in plantations and commercial farms. Due to the processing units in the plantation and the outgrower models, they provided more employment. However, the casualisation of labour and gender discrimination in employment and access to land occur in all three cases. All three models generated strong economic linkages mainly because they combined attributes such as processing, provided markets for nearby farmers, induced state infrastructural development and diffused technology in competitive ways. The effects of the models on household and local development are coproduced by their interaction with pre-existing conditions and wider national economic structures.     

The value of Peasant labour power in a prolonged transition to capitalism

Like peasant populations in many areas of the world, the Aymara of southern Peru have been subjected to a variety of social, political and economic pressures that have radically altered relations of production and exchange. However, in spite of being altered, precapitalist social relations persist in juxtaposition with increased participation in the expanding capitalist economy. By comparing the average return to labour power in subsistence production with the return associated with participation in the capitalist economy, this article highlights some of the relationships that exist between capitalist and pre‐capitalist production, and seeks to offer a partial explanation for an arrested transition to capitalism.     

A strategy for Marxist Bourgeois revolution: Lenin and the peasantry, 1907–1916

Between 1907–1916, Lenin developed a programme for the capitalist development of the Russian countryside which was intended 1) to prepare the material and social foundations for socialism, and 2) to provide an alternative to the tsarist regime's pro‐capitalist efforts. During this period, he hoped for a Marxist‐led bourgeois revolution. In his view, a petty bourgeois peasantry inspired by archaic fantasies of social justice and a realistic hatred of gentry privilege and liberal compromise, were crucial to any Marxist success.     

Value,price, and simple commodity production: The case of the Zapotec stoneworkers∗

The concepts of ‘commodity’ and of ‘simple commodity production’ in the work of Marx and his interpreters are examined as a necessary departure point for the analysis of value and price in a Mexican peasant‐artisan stoneworking industry. The labour theory of value, which posits a close relationship between market price and average embodied labour cost of commodities in a peasant‐artisan economy, is applied to the stone‐working industry and is shown to have explanatory power in both the qualitative and quantitative sense. This analysis leads to the conclusion that the labour theory is a necessary tool for discerning and approximating the fundamental role of the labour process, as well as the structure of production relations, in determining the nature and conduct of exchange activities in a peasant‐artisan commodity/market economy.     

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.     

德国告别标准劳动关系了吗？

20世纪末期,标准劳动关系中劳动者收入的降低成为德国劳动法的主要问题,这一问题直指标准劳动关系保障劳动者稳定生计的核心功能。与此同时,非典型用工呈现上升趋势,加之老龄化、全球化和数字化的新挑战,德国似有告别标准劳动关系及放弃劳动法与社会法规范之象。然而,无固定期限的标准劳动关系不仅是劳动者与雇主之间法律关系的命脉,同时也是德国社会法体系的逻辑起点。对德国而言,在面对各种挑战时,如若仍需要进一步发展劳动关系与巩固社会保障,不仅不应告别标准劳动关系,而且必须由劳动法与社会法保障的标准劳动关系继续发挥核心作用。     

Tenancy contracts during transition: A study based on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh (India)

This article attempts to situate the nature of and changes in tenancy contracts in the context of agrarian transition in developing countries such as India. Inter‐ and intra‐village variations in tenancy contracts are examined in detail for three contrasted villages in Uttar Pradesh (India), with the aim of bringing out the systematic basis of such variations. It is argued that Marxist analysis, based on the nature of class relations, offers a more credible explanation of the nature and unevenness of change, than neo‐classical analysis. Moreover, such analysis also offers a satisfactory explanation of the impact of tenancy on several commonly studied variables.