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.     

biting the hand that feeds: Australian cuisine and Aboriginal sovereignty in the Great Sandy Strait

Wilhelmina (Mina) Rawson (1851–1933) is lauded in both academic and popular circles as the author of the first uniquely Australian cookbooks, which she wrote between 1876 and 1895. Rawson was a prolific writer and stressed that she was the first white woman settler at Boonooroo in the colony of Queensland, where she was ‘beholden to the blacks’ to show her what to eat (Rawson, 1895, p. 54). Rawson’s cookbooks famously codified how to use Australian non-human animals, including wallaby, parrot and goanna, as meat, and her published memories of this time detailed the context in which she implemented and refined these recipes. Rawson organised and policed racialised frontier space as a white woman, claiming British sovereignty over Butchulla country in order to profit from and teach other settlers to profit from the coastal land and waterways. This paper draws on ecofeminist and postcolonial theory and works to explore how Rawson organised food production to exercise violent colonial claims to sovereignty as a white woman, explicitly advising other settlers to do the same.     

Agricultural co‐operatives and development policy in Mozambique

This article examines the problems encountered since independence in an agricultural production co‐operative in Mozambique. It is argued that the problems are related to the complex rural class structure in the context of which the co‐operative is being constructed, and the distinction between the formal structure of the co‐operative and its real relations of production is considered. The article is based upon fieldwork conducted in mid‐1978. The development of the co‐operative is considered in relation to the post‐independence formulation of Mozambican policies toward agricultural co‐operatives as an element in the transformation of rural social relations.     

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.     

The Landless invading the landless: participation,coercion, and agrarian social movements in the cacao lands of southern Bahia,Brazil

This contribution draws on Nancy Fraser's concept of ‘participatory parity’ to analyze the reproduction and contestation of inequalities internal to land reform settlements affiliated with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) located in the cacao lands of southern Bahia, Brazil. These inequalities are variously manifest in unequal control over land and legal documents, disparities in status and what Fraser calls ‘voice'. These circumstances help account for quantitative evidence that shows a strong preference among local landless populations for land reform organizations that are more decentralized and less hierarchically organized. These circumstances also motivate direct actions undertaken by grassroots MST settlers seeking to destabilize the conditions that ground these inequalities. This research highlights the importance of attending to local histories and interactions through which participatory disparities are christened and reproduced; indicates potential methodological consequences; and examines the interplay of transgressive action, dialogue and recognition as settlers struggle to bring about ‘participatory parity' – or what they might call genuine ‘friendships' – in their communities.     

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.     

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.     

Agrarian doctrines of development: Part I

Doctrines of development are understood through a distinction between intentional development and the immanent process of capitalist development. Agrarian doctrine consists of proposals, usually associated with official policy, to undertake agrarian schemes of development based on small‐farm, household production. The intention is to compensate for mass unemployment, urban poverty and the threat of rural emigration. This article gives a historical account of two cases of agrarian doctrine. The first, that of nineteenth‐century Quebec following self‐government in 1848, illustrates the intention of land colonisation schemes to prevent emigration from French Canadian territory to the United States. In the second case, that of twentieth‐century Kenya, schemes of household production were developed in the face of the emergence of mass unemployment; their promotion, especially after political independence in 1963, accompanied the development of indigenous capitalism. The social trusteeship of development is the key to understanding agrarian doctrine. The article concludes by showing why agrarian doctrine underlies the ‘decentralised despotism ‘ at the heart of Mahmood Mamdani's recent book, Citizen and Subject, and is an integral part of the historical roots of contemporary advocacy of decentralised rural development.     

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.     

The economic bases of demographic reproduction: From the domestic mode of production to wage‐earning

This article investigates the changes affecting demographic reproduction of population of peasant origin when they shift from self‐sustenance to market economy and wage‐earning. It shows how in the domestic mode of production, the birth‐rate and the survival of the pre‐productive generation until the age of production are dependent on the labour productivity of subsistence agriculture and on the techniques of conservation of crops, and how social reproduction is governed by the mode of distribution of the surplus‐product. The loss of control of the communities over their grain reserves, and their progressive integration into the market economy and wage‐earning, change the conditions of demographic reproduction, which comes to depend on money income, prices of subsistence, market supply, level of employment etc. These circumstances and the concomitant insecurity favour both a burst of natality as a means of social security and the survival of the younger generations for longer periods; and they accentuate the demographic effects of famines or unemployment. Hence the dramatic consequences of the monetary policy implemented in the dependent countries on the physiological conditions of the proletarianised rural populations.     

The landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil

This translation of the 1912 preface by Karl Kautsky to Salvioli's book about captalism in the ancient world confirms the centrality to his interest of the way in which economic history informs the present and maps out the future. It reveals a concern not only with pre-capitalist and capitalist systemic transition but also economic development in turn prefigures socialism. Accordingly, kautsky's focus is on the connections between yet the distinictiveness of historically specific modes of production, their forms of property and propertylessness, and the links between production for consumption and for exchange, plus the resulting patterns both of the social relations and the forces of production and of surplus appropriation licensed thereby. For Kautsky, therefore, the value of understanding the economic conditions preceding capitalism itself, and thus also the reasons for its transcendence.     

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.     

Relative prices and the international comparison of real agricultural output and productivity

This article reviews the different methods of constructing multilateral output and productivity indices for agriculture in cross‐country panel studies. We show that various multilateral output indices used by different researchers can have considerable disparities, thus rendering the comparison of the final results problematic. The production indices produced by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are increasingly used by researchers as a unique source of data for cross‐country panel studies. The article examines the properties of the FAO index, and finds them deficient in paying little attention to the problem of loss of characteristicity in a highly heterogeneous panel. It is shown that the FAO production indices lead to unacceptably large deviations from domestically based production indices in the case of low‐income countries. It is argued further that the use of the FAO production index can lead to spurious results in econometric studies of the links between productivity growth, per capita income, and price levels.     

Commodity production and price formation before capitalism: A value theoretic approach

This article uses a historically‐specific approach to simple commodity production in order to analyse its functioning in precapitalist conditions. Through the use of value theory, the mechanism of the formation of prices in these undeveloped market conditions is examined, and the alterations in the operation of the law of value brought about by changes in historical conditions of existence (pre‐capitalistlcapitalist) are investigated. The theoretical background is provided by Marx's theory of value and recent debates on the working of simple commodity production, while the historical context is set by the evolution of commodity production in England at the dawn of modern era.     

The agrarian question in Peru: Some observations on the roads of capital

Under the military governments of Velasco (1968–75) and Morales Bermùdez (1975–80) one of the most important agrarian reforms of South American history took place in Peru. According to Alain de Janvry [1981] this reform involved a shift from a junker‐road to a farmer‐road toward the development of capitalism in Peruvian agriculture. In the first part of this study de Janvry's approach to the ‘agrarian question’ and his evaluation of the Peruvian reform will be discussed. It will be argued that he overestimates the importance of farmer‐type capitalism and pays too little attention to the cooperatives established during the reform. Focusing the discussion on the co‐operatives in the coastal region it will be argued that these enterprises can be understood, to an important extent, as a form of simple commodity production. In the final part of the article a case study of the cotton producing co‐operatives in the province of Ica will be presented.     

Colombian transformations: Peasants and wage‐labourers in the Santa Marta Banana Zone

This paper examines the various forms of rural protest directed against the United Fruit Company in Colombia between 1900 and 1964. It explores the three factors that explain the tensions between the rural population and the Company: structural tensions between the peasant economy and the export sector; the relationship between peasants and wage‐labourers; and the effects of international market cycles on local conditions. In concluding, it questions the usefulness of typologies that, by positing a structural distinction between peasants and proletarians, neglect the historical dynamics of class formation.     

Silence and Articulation—Whiteness,Racialization and Feminist Memory Work

Racialization is a constant process of “doing race”. Critical whiteness studies make efforts to address the silencing of whiteness in mainstream white feminism. In this article memory work is explored as a possible method for studies of whiteness as an unmarked majority position. The focus is on methodological practices or “how‐to‐do” questions. Starting from feminist epistemology the author investigates ways of practising the epistemological standpoint of situated knowledges. Feminist epistemology, despite its disagreements, has pointed to the importance of positioning work for scientific knowledge production. The relationship between racialization as an analytical concept and whiteness as dominant majority position is complicated. Usually memory work is employed to address gender or more specifically femininity, but, as argued here, it is well suited to investigations of racialization, too. The analysis shows that silent avoidance of matters associated with whiteness helps keep the majority position in place; whiteness is co‐produced with silence through avoidance in concrete everyday situations. Despite a number of problematic aspects, memory work proved productive in bridging the gap between an epistemological standpoint and the nitty‐gritty work of doing empirical research. It helped clarify racialization as a relational phenomenon and shows how lack of attention to or awareness of race has implications for scientific knowledge production.     

Protestantism and capitalism revisited,in the rural highlands of Ecuador

The central concern of this paper is to examine some of the consequences of the penetration of capitalism among a‐ group of Ecuadorian Indian peasants, recently converted to Protestantism. Particular attention is given to the role played by certain ideological practices in the extraction and appropriation of the peasants’ surplus. It is argued that, in addition to the analysis of the economic aspects of the interdependence between capitalist and non‐capitalist modes of production, the concept of ‘ideological articulation’ is particularly useful in the understanding of those social formations which have suffered successive colonialisms. The problem of Protestantism is analyzed in the context of the changing social relations of production, and in relation to the ideologies of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nationalism’. The paper concludes with some remarks on the redefinition of ‘tradition’, and on the development of political consciousness among Indian peasants.     

Peasants,proletarianization and the articulation of modes of production: The case of sugar cane cutters in northern Peru, 1940–69

This article examines the transformation of the labour market for sugar cane cutters in an area of Northern Peru between 1940 and the onset of the Agrarian Reform in 1969. The system of enganche (debt bondage) is described for one large sugar estate and is identified as a historically specific stage in the development of the labour market. This system disappeared in the 1960s, owing to a combination of population growth in the highlands, heavy rural‐urban migration, unionization of field labour and technical change in cane harvesting. The evidence presented suggests that the concept of the articulation of different modes of production is a more useful framework for analysis than that provided by Lewis‐type models of dualism.