Words speak louder than actions: the ‘peasant’ dimension of the Confédération Paysanne's alternative to industrial farming

Through its historical account of the Confédération Paysanne (CP)'s origins and early years (France), this paper explores the ways in which ‘peasant’ discourses are shaped by non-peasant understandings of what ‘being a peasant’ should mean. As we shall see, far from reflecting an innate and immutable ‘peasant’ way of being or seeing, references to ‘peasantness’ and ‘peasant farming’ act as discursive tools to both unite a heterogeneous activist base (composed of marginal and marginalized farmers) and advance organizational interests. This requires the CP – and its predecessors – to respond to a series of external constraints. In the course of this paper, we shall also show how academics play an important mediating role in the process of constructing or adapting the CP's ‘peasant’ discourse.     

Surveying the agrarian question (part 1): unearthing foundations,exploring diversity

This two-part article surveys the origin, development, and current meaning of the ‘agrarian question’. Part one of the survey explores the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in order to understand whether, and if so, how, the location of small-scale petty commodity food and farm production within contemporary capitalism has been reconfigured during the era of neoliberal globalisation. Together, the two parts of the survey argue that the agrarian question continues to offer a rigorously flexible framework by which to undertake a historically-informed and country-specific analysis of the material conditions governing rural production, reproduction, and the process of agrarian accumulation or its lack thereof, a process that can now be located within the law of value and market imperatives that operate on a world scale.     

Vladimir Iowa Lenin,Part 1: A Bolshevik Studies American Agriculture

A busy year for Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 1917 also marked the publication of his study of American agriculture. The report reads as more than a historical curiosity, offering insights, however era-bounded, on a variety of topics of substantive and epistemological interest today. Lenin writes of the history of American agriculture, its dynamic regionalism, and its sector-specific class conflicts. Along the way, despite his obvious structural tendencies, we meet an anti-foundational author who, while upbraiding bourgeois economists for their expedient technicism, often in scathing terms, also warns that sweeping conclusions about the sizes of farm and capitalization are problematic in the face of historically dependent and contradictory trends. Here, in the first of the paper’s two parts, we begin to place Lenin’s project in the broader stream of critical agrarian studies, including the classic contrast with agricultural economist Alexander Chayanov, but also the diseconomies of modern agriculture, the biological limits on industrializing food production, and Stalin’s “dekulakization” campaign. Our aims here are more than academic. The exploration is framed by the roles the structure of agriculture and its impacts on its participants play in political change, from elections to revolution.     

农民具体权利的有效保护——一个法社会学的多维视角

农民具体权利的立法进化实际上是一种与时俱进、安而不忘危、治而不忘乱的忧患思维.农民问题过去是中国革命的中心问题,今天和今后一个相当长的时期是中国社会主义建设的中心问题.21世纪上半叶,保护中国农民权益的首要任务应定位于实行具有法治意义的、饱含公平正义价值的具体权利立法,依法有效地保障农民之经济社会权利.化解农村社会矛盾的所有对策的核心价值必须以农民权利的有效保护为切入点和落脚点,尤以改善农民具体的民生、民权之福祉为要,通过整合良策引入立法着重解决农民的现实问题.同时,依据自然正义准则,结合成规制定法,依托发展着的社会实践不断探寻新的社会规则,促进社会的良法善治.     

雇工人身损害赔偿：游走于民事赔偿和工伤赔偿之间

随着近年来雇工人身损害事件的频发且趋升,特别是雇工人身损害赔偿在自然人的普通民事赔偿与劳动者的特殊工伤损害赔偿之间的徘徊不定,使得雇工人身损害赔偿的法律定性开始与社会公平正义的实现紧密相关,进而成为当前理论和司法实务界的一个难题。本文认为雇工具有身份复合性和性质特殊性,对雇工及其人身损害案件,不能片面依赖工伤保险或民事赔偿的统一调整模式来完成,应该采取“语境化／类型化／案例化”的方式处理;工伤赔偿与民事赔偿之间有必要建立协调和衔接机制。     

社会化专职工会工作者管理工作探析

在社会主义市场经济条件下,社会化是基层工会干部队伍建设的发展趋势。解决社会化专职工会工作者的编制、工资待遇、职业发展、队伍稳定及能力素质等问题;增强基层工会组织的活力,在管理工作上多措并举,建设一支长期稳定发展的干部队伍,是全总"两个普遍"、"面对面、心贴心、实打实服务职工在基层"等重点工作的要求。     

改革开放的继续前进呼唤农民政治参与的提高

研究农民政治参与的现状及其制约因素,充分发挥各种激励因素在农民政治参与中的作用,对于提高农民政治参与水平,推动农民政治参与,引导其向良性的方向发展,从而全面深入地推进我国的改革开放事业有着非常重大的意义。     

我国农民工社会保障缺失的原因分析与对策思考

我国农民工社会保障缺失是客观存在的,其缺失的原因有三.一是地位尴尬:职业和身份(户口)的错位;二是待遇特殊:二元结构下的制度排挤;三是缴费困难:利益博弈下的"牺牲品".改变这种状况,需要树立平等观念,取消现行的户籍制度,政府积极作为,企业承担道德责任,共同保障农民工的合法权益.     

浅谈我国城市流动儿童的教育支持问题

对于我国城市流动儿童这部分边缘群体,社会、政府、学校应从多个方面给予特定的关怀和教育支持。督促各地政府各部门严格执行国家制定的相关政策;改革户籍制度;学籍实现全国统一管理;试验创新教育经费的发放方式—教育券;审慎对待民办民工子弟学校。     

当代法国农业资本主义发展的主要途径和特征

二战结束后,法国通过土地集中和增加资本投入等途径,加速推进农业机械化、专业化、区域化、产业化、合作化、社会化、农民职业化的步伐,在家族化和公司化农业经营的基础上,既保持欧洲大陆地区农业生产的传统特点,又顺应当今世界农业国际化一体化发展的新趋势,走出了一条独具特色的农业现代化道路。