Awkward Class or Awkward Classes? Class relations in the Russian peasantry before collectivisation

This article develops some criticisms of Teodor Shanin's thesis concerning the class structure of the Russian peasantry up to the end of the 1920s. Rival Marxist approaches are then discussed, especially that of L. N. Kritsman and his school who saw the relations of production of the Russian peasantry as characterised by exploitative class relations between households and thus called into question all approaches asserting the social homogeneity of the peasantry as a class.     

Managing the ‘main force’: The communist party and the peasantry in the Philippines

Despite the success of the Communist Party of the Philppines in winning rural support, its work has consistently been characterised by an instrumentalist approach to the peasantry. The article begins with an examination of the foundations of the party's attitude toward the peasantry and its roots in Marxist‐Leninist theory and practice. It goes on to consider evidence of the party's instrumental approach in practice, examining the impact on legal peasant organisations and the experience of socio‐economic projects in the countryside. Attention next turns to an analysis of the party's attitude toward ‘united front work’ and its impact on coalition building among the peasantry. Finally, the author considers the implications of the current split and debates in the ranks of the CPP for the peasantry and for the future of radical politics in the country.     

Contested paradigms of ‘viability’ in redistributive land reform: perspectives from southern Africa

This article reviews some of the salient aspects of the controversy over capitalism and the fate of Russian peasantry, among the Russian Marxists and the narodniks immediately prior to and after the Bolshevik revolution. At issue was the characterization of peasant economies. The narodniks believed that neither marginalism nor Marxism fully captured the nuances of peasant agriculture and the economic system/systems that evolved out of it; neither the market model nor class analysis adequately described the allocative and distributive processes in such economies. While nineteenth-century narodniks stressed the role of institutions based in the village community, Chayanov's twentieth-century populism stressed the organizational dynamic of peasant households within an institutional framework. Accordingly, the economics of the Chayanovian interpretation are examined from an institutional and organizational perspective. Such an exercise, it is argued, lends more credibility not only to the narodnik agenda, but also to the peasantist model of development.     

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.     

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.     

Resource allocation and agrarian class formation: The problem of social mobility among Russian peasant households, 1880–1930

The relationship between social mobility processes and the development of bourgeois social classes in the pre‐collective Russian peasantry has occupied an important place in recent discussion. On one level the discussion has concerned the ‘specificity’ of the peasantry; this is expressed in two quotations which preface the article. On another level discussion has concerned the use of agrarian statistics to establish the scale and significance of both class differentiation and of inter‐class mobility. It is argued below that the knowledge embodied in agrarian statistics can only be understood in relation to the theories of the statisticians. Theoretically reconstructed, the statistics throw new light upon the roles of underdevelopment and patriarchy in processes of class differentiation within the Russian peasantry.     

The roots of rural agitation in India, 1914–1947: A reply to Hardiman

This constitutes a reply to David Hardiman's recent criticism of my article on the middle peasant thesis and its applicability to late colonial India. It challenges Hardiman's notion of the middle peasantry as too narrow and not the indisputable Leninist definition. Further, it emphasizes the emergence of a more flexible agrarian economy and society which, whilst not necessarily ‘capitalist’, renders redundant the concept of a traditional middle peasantry. Finally, Hardiman's interpretation of the Bardoli campaign of 1928 and its implications for understanding rural agitations in British India are critically examined.     

The peasant mode of production in the work of A. V. Chayanov

Is there a peasant mode of production? Chayanov's work can be construed as a theory of the peasant mode of production at the level of the labour process. This labour process is analysed in terms of the forces of production, the relationship between the peasant and the means of production, and that between the peasant and the product. When subjected to an historical critique, from the point of view of the formation and decomposition of the peasantry, Chayanov's theory of a peasant mode of production yields to the idea of peasantry as a specific combination of structures.     

Indian peasant historiography: A critical perspective on Ranajit Guha's work

With the publication of six volumes of Subaltern Studies (1982–89), under Ranajit Guha's general editorship, South Asian social and political history, centred round the struggles of the subaltern classes of South Asia under colonial rule, and of the peasantry in particular, was poured into an entirely new historiographical mould. The intellectual foundation for this exciting project was laid in Guha's three major works published during the previous two decades. The historiography of the Indian peasantry, cast in this new mould, constitutes not only a formidable challenge to the dominant mainstream orientations of the metropolitan liberal and natonalist elite historians but has also opened a new frontier of understanding of the dynamics of peasant insurrections which is of significance for the future and for peasant societies in general.     

Book reviews

Michael Mann's interpretation of imperial rule is deployed here to theorise state formation during the era of Ottoman expansion and contraction. His five-part taxonomy of ‘compulsory co-operation’–namely military pacification, the military multiplier effect, the correlation of authority with economic power, labour intensification and the coerced diffusion of cultural norms – is applied to the Ottoman context in order to cast light on the relationship of the state with its agents and the peasantry. In doing so, it also seeks to reconsider an older debate regarding the ‘decline’ of imperial Ottoman rule and Istanbul's response to social change.     

Redistribution and recognition: land reforms in Kerala and the limits of culturalism

The most important achievements of the Communist governments in Kerala, India were the implementation of the land reforms and the legislation of the Agricultural Workers' Act. Using ethnographic and archival research based on these events and the processes through which they became a reality, this paper will question some of the fundamental assumptions of the influential Subaltern Studies project and postcolonial theory like the positing of governmentality and passive revolution as the general characteristics of ‘Third World’ societies' experience with modernity. It will argue that, more importantly, their culturalist framework, with its gross ignorance of class and material concerns, is hardly adequate to understand the fusing of the aspirations of recognition and redistribution or the material and cultural that characterizes the struggles by the peasantry and agrarian labor, and their synthesis by the Communist Party. Despite their professed aim of inaugurating a democratic project with the peasant as citizen, Subaltern Studies and postcolonial theory, unlike the Communist movement, do not envisage any material transformation of the agrarian classes that will actualize this objective.     

Origins of debt,mortgage and alienation of land in early modern Punjab

The agrarian structure of the Punjab in Pakistan and India was fashioned by the socio‐economic and legal institutions established by the British after their annexation of the Province in 1849. One of the consequences of this was an increase in usury/money‐lending capital and a resultant rise in endemic debt among the peasantry and alienation of proprietors’ land by money‐lenders. These changes alarmed the colonial authorities who attempted to deal with the situation simply through legislation, without addressing the complexities of Punjab's political economy. The problem of debt and the reliance of cultivators on the moneylenders for finance continued after 1947. Based on evidence from settlement reports and other original documents this article explores the origin of this problem.     

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.     

俄罗斯工会改革的历史与现实：基于社会统合主义的分析

俄罗斯工会在苏联解体之后经历了由计划经济到市场经济的转变,最终形成了社会统合主义的 模式。本研究在梳理俄罗斯工会改革历史的基础上,根据统合主义理论分析了俄罗斯工会在与政府的关系、对 工人利益的代表性和自身行动能力 3 个方面的现实情况。研究认为,俄罗斯工会在改革初期复杂、动荡的政治 经济背景下所追求的自由主义模式受历史因素影响并不成功。改革的转机出现在统一俄罗斯党成立之后,俄罗 斯工会与政府关系迅速改善,并在执政党的同情和支持下提升了自身对工人利益的代表性和行动能力,特别是 运用法律武器的能力。但俄罗斯工会也面临着新就业形式和移民劳工增长的挑战,还需要进一步的改革以适应 劳动力市场的复杂变化。     

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.     

Rural unions and the struggle for land in Brazil

Studies of Brazil's agricultural labor movement have generally neglected its relationship to the struggle for land, but this is neither fair nor accurate. Analyzing the rural labor movement's historical contributions to the land struggle in Brazil, this contribution has been organized into three main periods, emphasizing social relations, institutional activism and policy changes. It argues that despite the peculiarities of different historical contexts, rural labor consistently provoked protest against policies that privileged large landholders, whose concentration of power over land and labor resources continually worsened Brazil's ranking as one of the most unequal of nations. For more than half a century, the most constant opponent of this situation among the peasantry has been the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture (CONTAG), a corporatist organization of rural labor unions founded in 1963.     

In Praise of smallholders

In this review article, Robert Netting's book, Smallholders, Householders. Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive Sustainable Agriculture ‐ the product of a lifetime of study and fieldwork by an American anthropologist, schooled in cultural ecology ‐ is considered. The book, which is essentially about adaptations to population increase in different ecological contexts, is dedicated to the defence of smallholders against both Right and Left. It is seen as having some several excellent qualities, not least the relevance of its central stress on ecology. But it is criticised, inter alia, for its attempt to explain land tenure by land use rather than social struggle. The absence of any awareness of Narodnik ecological thought on the peasantry is noted.

Smallholders, Householders: Farm Families and the Ecology of Intensive, Sustainable Agriculture, by Robert McC. Netting. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Pp.xiv + 389. £37.50 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 0 804 721 025 (pbk)     

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.     

Women educators and the confucian tradition in Meiji Japan (1868–1912): Miwada Masako and Atomi Kakei [1]

Historians of the women's movement in Japan tend to equate the women's movement with opposition to the state and with Western liberal thought. Consequently, women who played a public role and contributed significantly to the modernisation of Japan, but who supported the imperial state, have received little attention. This article will examine the life, thought and activities of Miwada Masako (1843–1927) and Atomi Kakei (1840–1926). Both were educated in the Confucian tradition and were among the first to promote education for girls, establishing private schools for girls in Tokyo which still exist today. Although they did not fight for Women's rights in opposition to the state and were not led by Western ideas, they helped redefine the role of women, linking it to the well-being of the nation. Thus, they contributed to creating a society with increasing opportunities for women