Dorset,Kincardine and peasant crisis: A comment on David Craig

David Craig's paper ‘Novels of Peasant Crisis’ is to be warmly welcomed. But Craig provides no adequate analysis of the peasant crises underlying the novels which he considers. This paper considers one of Craig's novels; Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song. Craig's explanation of this book in terms of depopulation and the destruction of the Kincardine peasantry from outside is seen to be inadequate. Sunset Song is about the crumbling of a peasant mode of production through the working out of internal contradictions within that mode of production. As an introduction to this discussion of Sunset Song Craig's dismissal of the utility of Thomas Hardy's work for the analysis of rural class relations is argued to be distinctly premature.     

Exit from agriculture: a step forward or a step backward for the rural poor?

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development recommends that rural smallholders unable to compete in higher value production should exit agriculture. For the old and new landless, the way forward is wage labour in agriculture, in rural off farm work, or in urban areas. Disjunctively, the Report also proposes ‘farm-financed social welfare’ as a safety net when urban workers are ejected back to countryside at times of ‘urban shock’. My essay contrasts the Report's narrative about felicitous trajectories away from and back to the farm with the historical and contemporary experience of Asia's rural poor.     

Plantation rubber,land grabbing and social-property transformation in southern Laos

This paper critically examines theories of accumulation, dispossession and exclusion for analyzing the agrarian transformations that result from contemporary large-scale land acquisitions across the Global South. Building upon Marx's primitive accumulation, Harvey's accumulation by dispossession and Hall et al.'s Powers of Exclusion, conceptual lenses are developed through which to examine how land grabs transform property and social relationships of resource-based production. I examine the concession of 10,000 hectares by the central government of Laos to a Vietnamese corporation for extracting timber and planting rubber in the southern province of Attapeu. This acquisition has excluded farmers from land and resources that constituted their primary sources of (re)production, reconfigured rural property relations, altered the peasant relationship to land and produced new exploitative forms of wage labor.     

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.     

Relations of production,productive forces and the mass line in the formation of the rural people's communes in China∗

The structure, pace and uneven progress of the collectivisation of Chinese agriculture can be explained in terms of contradictions that persisited between relations of production and productive forces in the countryside and the ways in which these contradictions could be confronted through the application of the principle of the mass line. The formation and subsequent re‐organisation of the Rural People's Communes is interpreted as a necessary response to the fact that collectivisation was not predicated on prior modernisation of agriculture, but rather that Chinese political economy predicated the modernisation of agriculture on the success of the communes.     

Social relations and agricultural production in Nepal's Terai

The analysis of the process of surplus production, expropriation and realisation is central to the understanding of both the development process and the forces which are leading to transformation, particularly those arising from the relations of production [Frank, 1967; Laclau, 1971; Amin, 1974]. A central argument of this paper is that the details of the production relations, especially in agriculture, can vary very considerably, not only for historical reasons, but because of specific conditions in the technology of production and the conditions existing in the economy external to the actual process of production described. Institutions to control labour and property relations which best fit in with the maximisation of the expropriation of surplus value may not be those which are conventionally associated with industrial capitalism. This paper explores surplus production and expropriation in a specific situation: the production of the agricultural surplus in Nepal's Terai, in order to explain the social formations occurring within it.     

Before and after Mau Mau in Kenya

Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp.296. £27.50.

Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.206. £25 and £8.95.

David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–1953, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.304. £25 and £8.95.

The author discusses three books on Kenya. Tabitha Kanogo's Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau and Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau by David Throup examine why there was agrarian revolt in Kenya during the 1940s and 1950s. This article raises questions about tragedy and community, the two key ideas upon which the two books rest. Another text, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980 by Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, proponents of the new liberal attack on development, is also reviewed. It is argued that Collier and Lal fail to grasp the basis of state intervention to support schemes of peasant production.     

The 2008 World Development Report and the political economy of Southeast Asian agriculture

This article seeks to determine what light the literature on the political economy of agriculture in Southeast Asia can shed on the analysis that underpins the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report, Agriculture for Development. It argues that work on Southeast Asia highlights gaps and problems in the Bank's account relating to the dynamics of boom crops, to the nature of social and political mobilisation around agriculture, and to the conceptualisation of agrarian transition.     

Contesting Rural Resources: Emerging ‘Forms’ of Agrarian Production in Uzbekistan

The most recent land reform in Uzbekistan, in which Large Farm Enterprises (LFEs) were split into medium-sized fermer enterprises, left, alongside the country's overwhelming majority of small dekhan peasants, continued strong state intervention in agrarian production. Three ‘forms’ (rather than ‘modes’) of production emerged: (1) state-ordered production of cotton and wheat; (2) commercial production, in particular of rice; and (3) household production of other food staples, including wheat and rice. These production ‘forms’ or processes are characterised by distinct input and output relations, terms of trade and technical requirements. They interrelate through competition for limited resources, such as land, water and other inputs, rather than competition amongst the actors themselves (the state, the new medium-sized fermers and the small dekhan peasants). A contest over resources is particularly evident between the (state-ordered) cotton crop and the (commercial) rice crop in the case study on which our argument is based, namely the province of Khorezm, a downstream part of the Amu Darya river basin, in the western part of the country.     

The Agrarian Path to Capitalism?

In 1976 an article by the American Marxist historian Robert Brenner inaugurated a debate in Past and Present on the relationship of agrarian conditions and structures to the differing rates and forms of capitalist development in Europe. He was especially concerned to challenge what he termed ‘neo‐Malthusianism’. Exemplified in the work of M.M. Postan and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie this explained the decline of feudalism in terms of impersonal economic and demographic forces. In stressing instead the role of class struggle between lords and peasants, Brenner brought critical responses not just from this school, but also from Marxists who considered his explanation too ‘super‐structural’. The publication of the critical pieces and of Brenner's response in a single book provided an opportunity to take an overview of a major and stimulating debate which can be considered still very much alive.

The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre‐Industrial Europe, edited by T.H. Ashton and C.H.E. Philpin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp.viii + 339; £27.50.     

Controlling land they call their own: access and women's empowerment in Northern Tanzania

Formal rights to land are often promoted as an essential part of empowering women, particularly in the Global South. We look at two grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on land rights and empowerment with Maasai communities in Northern Tanzania. Women involved with both NGOS attest to the power of land ownership for personal empowerment and transformations in gender relations. Yet very few have obtained land ownership titles. Drawing from Ribot and Peluso's theory of access, we argue that more than ownership rights to land, access – to land, knowledge, social relations and political processes – is leading to empowerment for these women, as well as helping to keep land within communities. We illustrate how the following are key to both empowerment processes and protecting community and women's land: (1) access to knowledge about legal rights, such as the right to own land; (2) access to customary forms of authority; and (3) access to a joint social identity – as women, as ‘indigenous people’ and as ‘Maasai'. Through this shared identity and access to knowledge and authority, women are strengthening their access to social relations (amongst themselves, with powerful political players and NGOs), and gaining strength through collective action to protect land rights.     

From peasant to entrepreneur in Italy and Japan

From Peasant to Entrepreneur: the Survival of the Family Farm in Italy, by Anna Bull and Paul Corner. Oxford: Berg, 1993. Pp. ix + 174. £29.95. ISBN 0 85496 309 X.

Bull and Corner's historical study of the development of the ‘pluriactive’ rural household and its impact on the structure of industry in one region of Italy might go unnoticed by those concerned with rural change in other parts of the world. However, the clear similarities between the experience they describe and contemporaneous developments in Japan suggest the possibility of an alternative pattern of agriculture/industry relations over the course of industrialisation in economies where the small‐scale, multi‐functional, rural household prevails.     

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.     

Institutionalizing economies of opposition: explaining and evaluating the success of the MST's cooperatives and agroecological repeasantization

Dominant conceptions of social movements consider their constitutive feature the disruption of order, not practices around building it. In this paper, I challenge this notion by analyzing the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)'s relatively successful efforts to institutionalize the practices of agricultural production developed by its members in cooperatives and agroecology. Through this analysis, I show that the movement's administration of a democratically managed form of agricultural production exemplifies a unique form of social movement resistance – namely, what I call self-governmental resistance. Rather than reformist or revolutionary contention, self-governmental resistance – performed by movements like the MST – redevelops state policies by vying for and often taking control over the design and implementation of agricultural production.     

Persistence and polarisation: A study in the dynamics of agrarian contradiction

Backward agrarian economies like that of contemporary Bangladesh are generally held to be strongly subject to a process of polarisation between those with increasing ownership of land and those who become landless with nothing but their labour‐power to sell. Empirical evidence has often been at variance with such unilinear prognosis. Using data from south‐eastern Bangladesh, this study examines the complexity of the dynamics of backward agriculture. It is shown that the very process of polarisation itself generates a contradictory process of stabilisation of the small peasantry through the creation of supplementary income opportunities. It is the resultant dynamic which often manifests itself in the persistence of a large number of small‐owner farms amidst the process of polarisation.     

Editing the 1930s: The Lost Work of Josephine Johnson Excerpts from Josephine Johnson's published and unpublished writings are quoted with permission of the Estate of Josephine Johnson Cannon. All quoted materials © Estate of Josephine Johnson Cannon 2005.

The radical avant-garde has aged profoundly. Yet, led by director Judith Malina, the Living Theatre, founded in 1947, remains the longest surviving political theatre collective in the US. The Living Theatre opened its doors at a new theatre/home on New York City's Lower East Side in 2007, where Malina directed a much lauded revival of the company's groundbreaking 1963 production of Kenneth Brown's The Brig, and performed the role of Maudie in the premiere production of Hanon Reznikov's adaptation of Doris Lessing's Maudie and Jane. Vibrant and luminous at 81, an aged Venus rising from the half shell, Malina (dis)played the decaying and decrepit Maudie, standing naked onstage, sensually and lovingly bathed by Pat Russell, playing Jane. Malina's ageing activist/artist's body and voice spoke volumes about decades of societal and cultural transformations, of sexual revolutions, and of wounds that never heal.

Evoking Pierre Nora's ‘sites of memory’—this performative lieu de memoire ‘talks back’ on many levels, both in contemporary contexts and re-membering the zeitgeist of Malina's earlier performances—nearly naked, strident and much younger in the Living Theatres’ legendary production of Paradise Now (1968–70), and eloquently, flamboyantly anarchist, if too old, playing Antigone in Malina's adaptation of Brecht's version of Sophocles play (1967–84). This essay analyses the mise en scène and the reception of Maudie and Jane in light of the working processes and performance history of director/performer/inspirator Malina. Finally, the challenges and hope made visible and corporeal in Malina's on- and off-stage performances are explored.     

Kokwet

Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, by William Alexander with an Introduction and an Appreciation by Ian Carter. Towie Barclay Castle, Turriff, Aberdeenshire: Heritage Press (Scotland), 1979. Pp. x + 285, glossary, illustrations. No price.

Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840–1914, by Ian Carter. Edinburgh: John Donald Ltd, 1979. Pp. xiv + 258. £12.50

In this review article two books are considered: Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk, by William Alexander, a reprint of a novel concerned with the peasantry of the northeast of Scotland, which was written in the late 1860s; and a new book by Ian Carter, Farm Life in Northeast Scotland, 1840–1914. The former is seen as part of a rich, older tradition of study of the countryside of the northeast, that existed outside of the universities; the latter as a highly original contribution to a newer enterprise, based within the universities; and it is suggested that both transcend the little ‘orthodox’ economic history that has been written. Carter's great merit is to show that in the northeast of Scotland, unlike other parts of the lowlands, the peasantry had not been eliminated by 1840, but remained, in significant articulation with capitalist agriculture in the area, until 1914.     

Marx's third class: Capitalist landed property and capitalist development

This article consists of a detailed discussion of Marx's theorisation of a landed class in the capitalist mode of production. It is argued that Marx does not consider landlords as feudal leftovers but does indeed succeed in providing a sophisticated theory of capitalist landed property as an independent class, which conforms in all major respects with his theorisation of capital and wage‐labour. Moreover, the role of landed property in the process of capitalist development of relative surplus‐value extraction is analysed. It is argued that it is possible to speak of different forms of capitalist relations according to whether landed property or capital provides the leading force behind the development process. Capitalist development is then shown to be the outcome of a class struggle between landed property, capital and wage‐labour. This process is briefly illustrated with reference to England in the 1840s and Latin America in the 1960s.     

The World Development Report 2008: inconsistencies,silences, and the myth of ‘win-win’ scenarios

The World Development Report 2008 (WDR-2008) on agriculture and development has been received with much expectation and controversy. This paper welcomes some aspects of the WDR-2008 that help us reinvigorate some debates on agricultural development, so far marginalised in international development policy agendas. The paper, however, focuses on some critical problems in the report and the World Bank's stance on agriculture. First, there are tensions between advocacy and research and between the World Bank's rhetoric and operational realities. Secondly, the report suffers from the usual adherence to superficial win-win scenarios that mask conflict of interest and power relations. Thirdly, the WDR-2008 is caught in a tension between neo-populist pro-small farmer views and ‘modernist’ pro-agribusiness stances. Fourthly, the analysis of agricultural development in isolation from broader development processes and especially without a systematic analysis of industrialisation and agriculture–industry relations seriously limits the analytical and empirical value of the report.     

Minzhu guanli: the democratization of factory management in the Chinese revolution

From 1948 to 1951, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to implement a policy of ‘democratic management’ in urban industry. Minzhu guanli entailed various, sometimes contradictory elements including worker participation in management organs, the rationalization of factory production, and improvements in worker welfare. It was hoped that such reforms would not only help to build up working-class support for the revolutionary party, but would also improve production by relying on the initiative and creativity of the ‘worker masses’. Although short-lived and largely unsuccessful, experiments with democratic management in state-run factories in the early years of the People's Republic represent one of the most ambitious efforts to overcome capitalist relations of production. Although the CCP never went so far as to advocate worker control along syndicalist lines, minzhu guanli was aimed, in part, at overcoming alienation and the separation of decision making and implementation at the factory level. This paper draws upon diverse sources reporting on experiments with ‘democratic management’ throughout China. It assesses the conditions surrounding the implementation of participatory forms of factory management in order to determine which factors facilitated or hindered such reforms. The discussion includes a wide range of industrial enterprises and groups of workers in order to illuminate the underlying structures that conditioned the success or failure of democratic management. The concluding section traces the fate of minzhu guanli to the present day and assesses the implications of these experiences for China's experiment in socialism.