‘Peasantry’ as an economic category

This paper is concerned to challenge the category ‘peasantry’ as defining a distinct and general type of economy. It is divided into three sections: i. an examination of the work of Lenin and Kautsky on capitalism in agriculture which shows that they investigated economies in which peasant production was important without using such a concept; ii. it is argued that no rigorous concept of a ‘peasant’ mode or ‘peasant’ relations of production can be constructed which has the general applicability of the common‐sense notion of ‘peasantry'; iii. the treatment of ‘peasant’ economy in non‐Marxist literature is considered.     

A project for research on the peasant revolution of our time

Up to the present my work has centred on economic aspects of the peasantry. Starting from an analysis of the nature of collective farms (kolkhoz), which I found to consist of peasant agricultural units agglomerated rather than really structured, I was led to the study of peasant economy itself: its internal organisation, its specific rationality, its relations with the surrounding economy. The results of my enquiries brought home to me, on the one hand, the capacity of the peasant unit to adapt to the different economic systems in which it exists, and on the other hand, the pervasive stamp the peasantry impresses upon these systems. Accordingly, I believe it would be valuable at this point to study the consequences of the peasant imprint in the social and political as well as economic spheres, particularly in the socialist countries. Of course I myself could undertake only a small part of the research programme sketched in the following pages.     

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’.     

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The paper examines the main components of Mexican agrarian populism, and the attractions of the populist position in the light of the current crisis within the Mexican agricultural sector. It is suggested that the ‘campesinistas’ (agrarian populists) have incorporated various aspects of marxist analysis, but have nevertheless emphasised ways in which their approach pans company with that of most marxists in Latin America. According to writers like Gustavo Esteva, perhaps the leading ‘campesinista’, the peasant economy in the process of developing can co‐exist with capitalism for a protracted period, and considerable doubt exists as to whether the peasant economy is ‘ultimately’ inconsistent with capitalist development. The agrarian populists look to the peasantry in Mexico as a vehicle for rural development, believing that a better understanding of the internal logic of peasant production might facilitate an alternative series of policy measures. The weaknesses of the ‘campesinista’ position are explored, and doubts expressed about the viability of the populist stance as long as Mexico has the option of importing basic foodcrops.     

The nature and logic of the peasant economy—II: Diversity and change: III. Policy and intervention

The following Part II of this paper is devoted to the diversity of peasant economies, focusing on the typical patterns of change included under the umbrella term of ‘modernisation’. It reviews in these terms the aspects of the peasant economy outlined in Part I. The final Part III turns to agrarian policies and the impact of state intervention on peasant economies. It discusses the aims of such interventions i.e. land reform and the major programmes of reconstruction and transition in peasant economies today: ‘betting on the strong’, collectivisation, and the transformation of the peasant into a ‘modern’ farmer.     

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.     

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 transformation of rural labour systems in colonial and post‐colonial Northern Nigeria

The study attempts to highlight the interrelation between three central points in the ongoing debate on the political economy of development: viability, surplus, and class‐formation. A case study of the development of rural labour systems in Northern Nigeria is meant to provide both a better qualitative and quantitative idea of this interrelation. After an analysis of the socio‐economic effects of forced and bonded labour during colonial times, the articulation of different systems of family and non‐family labour has been investigated. Class‐specific effects of labour and capital input do even result in an increasing use of communal labour by rich and middle peasants after the Nigerian Civil War: its form remains, but its content changes fundamentally. The socio‐economic and material base for small‐scale peasant subsistence production has been gradually destroyed.     

Peasants and politics

This paper discusses the political relations of ‘traditional’ peasants to groups and institutions outside their local community, with special reference to situations in which they encounter the political movements and problems of the twentieth century. It stresses the separation of peasants from non‐peasants, the general subalternity of the peasant world, but also the explicit confrontation of power which is the framework of their politics. The relative isolation of local communities, and their consequent ignorance, does not confine peasant politics only to parish pump or undefined millennial universality. However, it makes certain forms of nation‐wide peasant action without outside leadership and organisation difficult and some, like a general ‘peasant revolution’, probably impossible. The political problems of a ‘modern’ peasantry are briefly touched upon in conclusion.     

Peasant leadership and the Pugachev revolt

This paper examines the leadership of the Pugachev revolt, the vast peasant uprising which took place in Russia between 1773 and 1775. It is also concerned with certain general issues, particularly those concerning the raising and subsequent sustaining of large‐scale peasant movements in ‘pre‐industrial’ societies where peasant organisations beyond village level are lacking. The Pugachev revolt had peculiarities which are of intrinsic interest, but it also provides significant parallels and contrasts to other peasant uprisings (not only in seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century Russia) and generally serves to highlight the problems of the articulation of rural protest in backward societies.     

Land reform and Agrarian change in India and Pakistan since 1947: 1

Analysing the class character of land reform in India and Pakistan the author makes a distinction between ideology and programme. Judged by its ideology, land reform in India is sharply anti‐landlord and pro‐peasant and is thus a mobiliser of peasant support for the ruling elite. The programme of land reform, however, serves primarily the interests of an emerging intermediate class of under‐proprietors and big peasants. This intermediate class makes a joint front with the rural poor to curb the privileges of landlords. But it makes a common cause with the landlords to thwart any prospect of agrarian radicalism turning into a pro‐poor agrarian programme. In Pakistan the conflict between the old landlords and the emerging intermediate class is not as sharply articulated as in India and land policy therefore had a more pronounced pro‐landlord bias than was the case in India. In Pakistan at best it denotes the tension between the old moribund and a new dynamic landlord class.?     

Peasant counter‐revolution?

This paper discusses some aspects of the wide peasant support of Spanish counter‐revolutionary movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This support should not be viewed as a mere manipulation by the church of the religious ‘fanaticism’ of the rural population, but as a political reaction consistent with the peasants’ perception of their antagonisms with other classes. The peasant opposition to liberalism does not necessarily signify support of the old order but can be understood as the expression of a preference for an alternative to that project which was materialising in the politics of the liberal governments.     

A new model for sharecropping and peasant holdings

Sharecropping has posed many puzzles to the theoretician. It seems to disappear with the coming of capitalism and yet again evidence exists for its reappearance and cyclical behaviour. This article maintains that many of these puzzles can be solved by juxtaposing Marxist thought on to the neo‐classical tools of analysis. This is achieved by concentrating on a specific type of sharecropping from which the rest of the puzzle can be explained. The way is also paved for a general model of differentiated peasantry according to the initial endowments of land and labour. The link with the ‘Inverse Relationship’ is also explained.     

The agrarian question and class contradictions in South Africa: Some theoretical considerations

The article first considers two dominant approaches to black rural social formations in South Africa, those of neo‐classical populism and radical political economy, examining their ideology and politics as well as their theoretical inadequacies. The major part of the article then provides a general interpretation of the theory and politics of the agrarian question in Marxism, which has strategic implications for the current phase of national democratic struggle in South Africa, as for democratic and socialist struggles elsewhere. This discussion concentrates on issues concerning the land question, the agriculture/industry contradiction and the worker‐peasant alliance, petty commodity production and class differentiation vs. a homogenised rural mass ('the people'), and the centrality of the agrarian question to national democratic struggles and those for socialist transformation.     

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.     

Multiple job holding in rural villages and the Chinese road to development

This paper examines some of the interrelations that exist between rural China's peasant economy and the wider economy in which it is embedded. In doing so it focuses on the circular flows that link town and countryside. Multiple job holding is strategic in this respect. The paper draws on research undertaken in a peasant village in Hebei Province. The research highlights some remarkable differences that exist between development processes in China and in other developing countries and traces these back to a combination of an enlightened rural policy and the strong linkages that exist between rural China and its urban ‘global factory’.     

Gandhi and India's peasants, 1917–22

The general problem raised here is peasant involvement in Afro‐Asian nationalist movements. As a case study the focus is M. K. Gandhi's attitude to and activities among Indian peasants from 1917 to 1922 and their response, firstly to his broad span of rural work for social reform and the rectification of particular peasant grievances, and then to his India‐wide passive resistance campaigns on continental issues which had no specifically rural appeal. This analysis underlines the fact that ‘India's peasants’ were no monolithic group. They differed from area to area in economic and social position and were further fragmented by the ties of religion, tribe and caste. Consequently the nature and range of their wider public awareness varied, and their relationships with Gandhi were diverse and complicated. In certain areas he attracted wide support, even adulation, particularly where he campaigned on local grievances. But peasant response to his all‐India calls for passive resistance was geographically restricted, and often dependent on a very garbled understanding of the issues at stake and the expected pay‐offs of the movement. Peasant activists were often outside Gandhi's control; and this threat to cohesion and discipline made him very ambivalent towards wide rural participation. His relationship with India's peasantry illustrated the problems any continental leader or organisation faced in trying to accommodate ‘national’ appeals and tactics to the diverse and often specifically local needs of rural groups — an accommodation which was difficult, dangerous yet essential in some degree if nationalist movements were to be broadly based.     

论加快农民工工人阶级化的历史进程

随着我国经济的发展和城镇化进程的加快,大批农村富余劳动力进城务工,成为我国工人阶级的新成员和重要组成部分。加快农民工工人阶级化的历史进程,是工会组织一项重大的战略任务。把农民工组织到工会中来,健全农民工权益保障制度,强化农民工的培训,注重满足农民工不断增长的精神文化需求,加强和改善各级党组织对农民工工作的指导等,都是加快农民工工人阶级化的重要举措。     

Inequality,land reform and agricultural growth in China, 1952–55: A preliminary treatment

Although the Agrarian Reform Laws of the late 1940s were intended to preserve the rich peasant economy, Chinese land reform during 1947–52 was uneven in its spatial impact. In some areas, the reform was indeed a ‘wager on the strong’. But in others, land reform was more egalitarian, re‐distributing self‐cultivated land from rich peasants to the rural poor. New county‐level evidence suggests that this egalitarianism hampered the pace of agricultural growth in the years immediately prior to collectivisation.     

Peasant insurrection in China reconsidered: A preliminary examination of the Jun Mountain peasant rising,Nantong county, 1863

Focusing on a concrete historical example ‐ the Jun Mountain Peasant Rising, a small‐scale, mid‐nineteenth century insurgency in the Yangzi delta region ‐ this article re‐evaluates standard interpretations of peasant action and resistance in China. Although obscure and abortive, the Jun Mountain rising illuminates the developing role and interpenetration of ‘outsider’ communities, sectarian ideology/organisation, class formation, and long‐term trends in peasant culture in the emergence of an insurgent politics which at once built upon and transcended local ties. Preliminary examination of these politics thus contributes to current debate about the nature of Chinese peasant rebellions.