WEP 1-3/VP.7
PROVISIONAL DRAFT
WORLD EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMME RESEARCH
Comprehensive Employment Strategies
Working Paper No.7
THE THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT IN THE PERIPHERY
Part II
ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN THE PERIPHERY:
CREATION OF WAGE-LABOUR AND DEVELOPMENT OF
PRODUCTIVE FORCES IN AGRICULTURE
Paul Zarembka
Note: Working Papers are preliminary material circulated
to stimulate discussion and critical comment.
Copyright fcT) International Labour Office,
Geneva
September, 1976.
42098
ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL IN THE PERIPHERY;
CREATION OF WAGE-LABOUR AND DEVELOPMENT OF
PRODUCTIVE FORCES IN AGRICULTURE
by
Paul Zarembka
We have seen in Part I that the accumulation of capital is extension of the capital-labour social relation, extension of the proletarianised world under the domination of capital.
This extension, however,
is not evenly spread throughout the world, but rather begins from a
"centre", from England more particularly.
For the capitalist mode of
production only achieves a certain amount of stability when the hegemony of the capitalist class obtains against pre-capitalist dominant
classes, a hegemony only possible when the class base for hegemony is
large.
Afterwards, the hegemony is of course consolidated by further
enlarging the base of the hegemony.
There is no doubt today that such social formations as Great
Britain, France, the Federal Republic of Germsiny, the United States, and
Japan have consolidated the hegemony of the capitalist class, that the
accumulation of capital is located in the so-called Third World (third
to the capitalist centre and the socialist countries).
The consolida-
tion of hegemony in the centre is not without consequences, however.
Thus, if the capitalist
is not to be, in turn, quickly overthrown by
the proletariat, the extreme forms of nineteenth century exploitation
of workers must be ameliorated.
In other words, work hours begin to
be shortened and wages begin to increase —
of course not as "gifts"
from capital but as temporary resolutions of proletarian struggles
against capital.
The reduction in emigrations from European social
formations to North America, with its relatively abundant land also
followed.
The beginning of rising wages in the centre is also the beginning of
the end of accumulation in the centre and of much intensified accumulation in the Third World. The result could ha.ve been immigrations to
the centre from the periphery.
Indeed some did occur. But the capital/
labour struggle is condensed in a social formation and the position of
labour in the centre would be weakened by such immigration. In the
latter part of the nineteenth century, labour in the centre started
demanding immigration restrictions. Given capital's preservation of
- 2 -
its international mobility, its vital interests are not jeopardised
by accepting such demands in the process of proletarian struggle in
the centre, particularly given the fact that the production of
relative surplus value can be used to maintain a reserve army within
the social formations in the centre.
The result is that the prole-
tarian class of the periphery is created while being separated from
its counterpart in the centre.
There are three broad questions resulting from this historical
development.
First, what is the natural mechanism within commodity
production itself by which capital reinforces its position in the
centre, vis-a-vis the rising wage demands there, by penetrating the
periphery?
We see in Section 1 that it is the transferring of value
from periphery to the centre through prices of production which helps
sustain those wages in the centre ( in addition, of course, to developments of productive forces under capitalism).
Second, how does the
structure of social relations in peripheral agriculture condition the
process of accumulation and the development of productive forces there?
In Section 2 and 3 we examine the leading cases —
agriculture dominated
by a latifundia structure and agriculture dominated by a peasantry.
Third, what conditions the absorption of labour in industry after labour
has been separated from means of production in agriculture and not
employed as wage-labour there?
This topic is left to Part III.
1. TRANSFERRING VALUE FROM THE PERIPHERY
THROUGH INTERNATIONAL PRICES OF PRODUCTION
The capitalist has capital.
capital.
His only interest is to expand that
But to expand capital he has to first use capital to acquire
means of production and labour power in order to cause production.
Means of production and labour power imply a cost-price given by c+v,
measured in value terms.
The value of produced commodities is, however,
the value of the consumed means of production c and total living labour
time required for production v + s , i.e., c + v + s .
Thus, capital
receives a total profit s (the same as surplus value at the highest
level of abstraction), for which it has paid nothing.
"The capitalist cost of the commodity is measured by the expenditure of capital, while the actual cost is measured by the expenditure of
labour" (Marx (1974, H I , p.26, italics in original)).
- 3The rate of profit is then the relation of total profit s to total
advanced capital C + v (C is total constant capital, while c is onlyconstant capital consumed).
From the capitalist class position, it is
this rate of profit that is the focus of attention and not the rate of
surplus value.
In other words, while "in surplus-value, the relation
between capital and labour is laid bare; in the relation of capital to
profit... the capital appears as a relation to itself, a relation in
which it, as the original sum of value, is distinguished from a new
value which it generated" (Marx (l974» H I , p.4#» italics in original)).
Indeed it is precisely this reflection of capital onto itself, this
absence of a class relation, that justifies describing the economic
theories of that class as bourgeois economics.
Now, at a lower level of abstraction in which the technical-value
compositions of capital vary across industries, there is no necessity,
without some kind of equilibrating mechanism, that the rate of profit
in different industries i,
i
0± + v ±
=
i/ i
, be the same
1 + k± (1 + si/vjL)
(again, where C. is total value of means of production advanced, generally greater than the value of means of production transferred into
production in a year).
V/e have only an assurance that within a nationstate the rate of surplus value in each industry tends to be equalised
to the average s/v r— the work-day tends to be equalised and the labour
hours represented by wages tend to equality, so that the division into
s and v is equalised.
But there is an equilibrating mechanism on the
rates of profit.
For, as all commodities are products of capital,
capital withdraws somewhat from industries with higher-than-average
technical-value compositions of capital, and thus lower rates of profit,
and expands in industries of lower-than-average technical-value compositions, and thus higher rates of profit. The consequence is that supply
decreases in the former and increases in the latter, the rate of profit is
equalised across industries at the average rate Of profit, and commodities
have a tendency to be sold at their prices of production, c. + v. + r (C.+v.)
where r is the average rate of profit for the economy.
Commodities
"Now, if the commodities are sold at their values, then, as v/e have
shown, very different rates of profit arise in the various spheres of production, depending on the different organic composition of the masses of
capital invested in them. But capital withdraws from a sphere with a low
rate of profit and invades others, which yield a higher profit. Through
this incessant outflow and influx, or, briefly, through its distribution
among the various spheres, which depends on how the rate of profit falls
here and rises there, it creates such a ratio of supply to demand that the
average profit in the various spheres of production becomes the same, and
values are, therefore, converted into prices of production...." (Marx (1974
III, pp.195-196)).
- 4produced with higher-than-average technical-value composition of capital
have prices of production higher than their values c. + v. + s., since
r (Ci + v i )> r. (C. + v ) » s., so that profit there is greater than
surplus value.
Commodities produced with lower-than-average technical-
value composition of capital have prices of production lower than their
values, so that profit there is less than surplus value.
In other words,
in the process of circulation of capital value is transferred from industries of lower technical-value composition to those of higher.
Table 1 reproduces an example of such a transfer of value, an
example provided by Emmanuel (1972, p.59).
two industries, A and B.
In this example there are
Everything is the same in the production of
the two industries, including the rate of surplus value (equal to 100
per cent), except that the total capital (constant plus variable)
required by industry A is twice as large as that required by industry B.
Both industries produce a value of 170, but through the equalisation of
profit rates contained in prices of production there is a transfer of
value of 20 from industry B to industry A.
In other words, the narrow-
ness of viewing the world from the capitalist class position (i.e., the
narrowness of the concept of equalisation of profit rates) implies that
industries, using exactly the same amounts of living labour time (120)
as well as past labour time (50)» appropriate unequal amounts of that
labour time (190 versus 150).
In this case, the unequal appropriation
is simply unequal appropriation by capitals in the industries A and B;
for the expenditures on variable capital are the same in both cases (60),
and so the surplus value is the same.
Now we can leave aside the question of unequal technical-value
composition of capital and still find the concept of prices of production
directly relevant for our concern here with an effect of capital's penetration into the pre-capitalist areas of the periphery.
Suppose that A is a pseudonym for industry in the centre and B,
a pseudonym for industry in the periphery. Production of labourintensive products in the periphery implies a transfer of value from
capitalists in the periphery to capitalists in the centre. In other
words, capitalists in the centre control more of the world's labouring
time than would be indicated by simply measuring manhours of work in
capitalistic production by labour in the centre versus that in the
periphery.
In any case, however, struggle between capital in the centre
with capital in the periphery is the topic of Part III.
- 5 -
o
a
o
0)
O -P
h o
H Pi 0
o
o
cr»
H
o
in
H
O
O
CO
o
o
P4
Pi
-P
•H
<H
O
M
S
t-l H
-P ClJ
4»
h O
d
-P
-H
Pi
d
"3-
CM
c^v—'-p o
a> <H
to o +»
tn
rn
a> 4> o
>• d n
< rt
Pi
•H
H
«H
O
•P
CO
o
•H
4* O +»
to
0
m h o
•d
C
H
a> to
O
(M
CM
o
O
H
>
<
o
in
s«
H
OS
O
H
O Pi d
CO
ftf
ta
n
o
U
o
0>
rH
o
H
a>
a
>
O
VO
H
VO
O
O
CM
o
O
CM
pi
O
u
m
0)
<H
03
R
0)
rt +>
d
O
VO
M Pi
d (4
t> O
u
EH
-P
«d
0
|
-P 3
- H en
Pi a
d O
§ rHa)
o
-p
to
O
o
o
O
in
in
O
O
rH
o o o
H ©
d -P
d -P a>
-p - H a>
O Pi > •
EH d
q
H
+»
to
o
o
CM
CM
m
O
VO
tn
- 6 -
The process of transition to the capitalist mode of production has
everywhere, but at different historical periods, implied a weak position
for labour (with some exceptions in the case of North America)
Today
the weakness is located in the periphery, partly as a result of the
limitations on emigration to the centre mentioned in the introduction.
«ages are, therefore, much lower in the periphery than in the centre.
On the other hand, hours of work are at least as long as in the centre
and, from the position of capital, the socially necessary labour time
required to produce a given set of goods consumed by workers is the
same everywhere.
Therefore, low wages in the periphery implies a high
rate of surplus value there.
This high rate of surplus value in the periphery aids capital in
its struggle with labour in the centre, the mechanism being precisely
the transfer of value through prices of production.
Emmanuel (1972,
p.63) provides an example, reproduced in Table 2 here.
Total capital
invested is the same in both countries (240), as is the constant capital
consumed in production (50)«
But the same living labour time of 120 is
absorbed in variable capital of 100 in country A (the centre) and 20 in
country B (the periphery), so that the rate of surplus value is 20 per
cent in the former and 500 per cent in the latter.
Value equal to 40
is therefore transferred by capital through -prices of production from
labour in the periphery for capital's needs with regard to its labour in
3
the centre.
Therefore, not only is the accumulation of capital in the
Some emigration is permitted, particularly for "undesirable" jobs
needed in Common Market countries.
2
"On the average...foreign labour required 8 per cent more manhours
than the manhours required by U.S. workers to assemble such articles as
radios, phonographs, television receivers and subassemblies, and semiconductors. The foreign wage rates were such, however, that the average
foreign unit labour cost...in assembling articles was...for the Par Eastern
countries (except Japan)...from 3 to 11.5 per cent (averaged 8 per cent) of
the U.S. unit labour cost; for Mexico it ranged from 15 to 21 per cent and
averaged 20 per cent."
(United States Tariff Commission (1970, pp.172-173)).
By the way, from the same source (p.173) "On the average foreign labour
required 3 per cent less [sic!] manhours than was required by U.S. workers
to assemble such diverse articles as luggage, baseballs, toys, footwear,
gloves, photographic equipment, and scientific instruments." And, to think
that neoclassical economists presume that labour time is paid by a "marginal
product"!
^ This transfer of value depends upon the periphery producing a separate range of products from the centre. For the centre is driven out of
all products the periphery produces. The implied struggle over the international division of labour is a topic for Part III.
- 7 -
O
0)
O
• H
U
P4
Pi
C
O Pi
1 -H
O -P >•
M O
P. 3 O
-d
+
+
0)
Q>
/—x
rH
-p a
n5
•H -H rH •P
<H -P d •H
O
-P Pi
H H O CTJ
P4>^-P o
rH
CM
O
rA
H
o
• *
m
O
M3
VO
o
o
C\J
o
H
<D <H
JJO O -P
05
-H
t4 © <H
0) +» O
> CU fH
^
in
CM
<5 W P«
<H
R
o
o
1 -H
-P O +>
ra M o
o p. 2
o
>d
S>
+
o
O
in
rH
o
o
O
t>rH
o
c—
H
o
"3m
O
CM
O
o
O
O
H
O
CM
O
CM
H
O
O
in
O
O
H
o
-aCM
o
O
CO
<
«
l>-
CM
CM
CD 01
5s id >
>a +
o
CQ
J j CD
rH
ca
0
£"3
o
rH
CM
H
2 >
CQ
CD
H
H
,Q «J
rt +>
•H -H
M P.
a ao
>
-p
-tf
C H 0)
rt rt a
-p -p 3
CQ - H CO
S PiR
O Cfl O
o
m
o o
•a
r H CO
rH
Bj
-P
O
B
d
-P
-H
P,
Cfl
O
-P
01
0)
!>
C
-H
«=i-
C\l
fr
•P
a
0
o
o
"fr
- 8 -
periphery a necessary outgrowth of the completion of accumulation in
the centre, the accumulation in the periphery also strengthens the
position of capital against its labour in the centre.
The international transfer of value is a very important phenomenon
of the modern centre-periphery relationship.
Perhaps the most obvious
example of production in the periphery setting up the conditions for
such transfer of value is production by wage labour there of certain
foods for export, such as tea in Ceylon, sugar in the Caribbean, and
bananas in Central America.
In Ceylon the required proletariat was
created in the mid-nineteenth century by importing hundreds of thousands
of Tamils from Southern India, initially for coffee production, converted
2
to tea in the 1880's.
In the Caribbean, sugar was growing when
Columbus arrived and it quickly became an attraction for planters, who
imported black slaves from Africa until sugar was "king sugar" in the
eighteenth century.
Inefficient from the capitalist point of view in
Emmanuel (1972, see particularly Chapter 6) uses the concept of
transfer of value through prices of production to argue that Ricardo*s
theory of comparative advantage is misleading.
But he misinterprets
Ricardo. Unlike Emmanuel who is concerned with capitalist production
processes in the centre and periphery and available techniques of
production are the same all over the world, Ricardo's theory seems to
describe a simple commodity economy and unexplained differences in
natural resources leading to different productive possibilities in
different countries. Of course, one can argue that the classlessness
of Ricardo*s conceptualisation is misleading; but that is another
question, located in the bourgeois foundation of Ricardo's economics.
Emmanuel's use of "unequal exchange" has been appropriately criticised by Bettelheim as an ideological term (see Bettelheim in Emmanuel
(1972, pp.272-273)).
p
"...The Kandyan villagers refused to abandon their traditional
subsistence holdings and become wage-workers on these new capitalist
estates. Despite all the pressure exerted by the colonial state,
they could not be broken into the mould of a plantation proletariat
in the nineteenth century. British imperialism thus had to draw on
its limitless reserve army of labour in India itself, to man its lucrative new outpost to the south. An infamous system of contract labour
was established, which transported hundreds of thousands of Tamil
'coolies' from Southern India into Ceylon for the coffee estates.
These Tamil labourers died in tens of thousands both on the journey
itself, and in the nightmarish conditions of the early plantations.
Nearly a million were imported in the 1840s and 1850s alone: the death
rate was 250 per 1,000. The decimation and super-exploitation of this
class founded the fortunes of British imperialism in Ceylon...."
(F.
Halliday (1975, pp.156-157)).
- 9an increasingly capitalist world,
the abolition of slavery began
with the British colonies in 1833
and ended with Cuba in 1880.
The
planter's response was similar to that in Ceylon, "a total introduction
of nearly half a million Indians into the Caribbean" (Williams (1970,
p.348)) under a wage and a free-passage-both-ways contract, generally
for five years; but the planters failed to develop productive forces
and were outclassed before the end of the century by producers
(including of beet sugar) elsewhere in the world.
So it was left to
American capital to revolutionise Caribbean sugar production in the
twentieth century.
As to Central American bananas, it is the story
of United Fruit Company (which also had an important role in Caribbean
sugar).
[Reader: A short description will be added here.]
Also, but less relevant to its overthrow in the Caribbean, "the
slave system was based on terror. For the slightest offence the slave
could be whipped and put in irons..." (Williams' (1970, p.190)).
"There were four ways of escape open to the slaves. The first
was suicide, a powerful weapon, practised both on the slave ships and on
the sugar plantations with the deliberate intention of striking at the
trader or planter....The second way out for the slaves was flight from
the plantations. The popularity of this weapon is attested by the
severity of eighteenth century legislation....After 1772, a third means
of escape was opened to slaves in the British West Indies [that of setting
foot in England]....it was no easy matter for the slaves to run away from
the West Indian plantation to England....The final and most popular reply
of the slaves to the slave system was revolt. The revolts began on the
slave ships. Such evidence as is available suggests a proportion of one
slave revolt on every fifteen slave ships from Nantes....The danger of
revolt was greater on the plantations, where, in the nature of things,
the slaves could not be kept chained and shut up day after day...."
(Williams (1970, pp.191 ff, paragraphing not indicated). This final
reply culminated in the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 an<l Haitian
independence on January 1, 1804, an interesting example of taking advantage of inter-imperialist contradictions, by the way.
"...Thus the production of one hogstead of sugar [in Barbados]
required two Negroes in 1736, nearly three in 1748, and six in 1783•
It
was ghastly proof of the inefficiency of slave labour."
(Williams (l97°»
p.124)).
"Thus, of every hundred slaves in the British West Indies and in
Jamaica, the most important colony, nearly thirteen were engaged in domestic serviceJ [i.e.] for every hundred slaves producing in the field,
nearly seventeen were domestics. This, combined with the large number
of slaveowners and the small number of slaves held on an average by each
one of them, made the British West Indian slavei system in 1833 more like
a system of household management than a commercial plantation economy."
(pp.284-285).
In general, "the abolition of the slave system in the British,
French, Dutch and Danish colonies in the Caribbean was a metropolitan
measure imposed on recalcitrant colonials..." (pp.289-90). For capital
has a demand "for cheap food, particularly cheap sugar" (p.315).
- 10 -
Industrial raw materials are another, if somewhat more subtle,
example of international transfer of value.
Since raw materials are
an element of constant capital (to the extent that technical change is
not raw material saving), as one means of devaluing constant capital,
capital searches for raw materials that can be produced with as low
a value of living labour power as possible.
The climate and/or soil
for agricultural raw materials and the physical location of extractive
raw materials may be particularly advantageous in a peripheral country
so that the necessary labour time to produce a mass of those raw
materials may be lower than elsewhere.
More important for our pur-
poses here, low wages in the periphery and the implied high rate of
surplus value, leads to an international transfer of value as the raw
materials are exported to the centre.
Cotton in Egypt particularly
after the U.S. Civil War, oil palm in Zaire, and rubber in Malaysia
and Indonesia are examples from agricultural production, all with
2
substantial production by wage-labour.
The mining of gold and diamonds
in South Africa, tin in Bolivia, copper in Chile, Zambia and Zaire are
well-known extractive examples, all of which are produced with wagelabour.
(Petroleum production is a weaker example since it uses very
low living labour time relative to other sectors.)
"Prior to World War I, the British colonial office,...in considering a request by Unilever [then Lever] to establish oil palm plantations
[needed for soap] in Nigeria, decided against plantations, because they
did not want to create a large landless agricultural proletariat, and
Unilever moved to the Belgian Congo instead.
This was the origin of
the vast Huileries du Congo Beige plantations, still important today."
(Kamarck (1971» pp.l6l-l62)).
2
Rubber production also includes important peasant production, in
addition to the plantations. For an analysis for Malaysia, see Lee (1975)•
The same is true of Egyptian cotton.
Incidentally, sometimes facts intrude too deeply for bourgeois
economists to avoid them by delimiting questions of Third-World exports
to simply the comparative advantage issue of man-to-nature, "We have
already instanced the establishment and successful development of rubbergrowing in Malaya and Sumatra, where the rubber tree is not indigenous,
the soil not particularly rich, and where at the time of the establishment
of the industry local supplies of both labour arid capital were very sparse,
so that these territories would hardly have been singled out a priori as
suitable for rubber cultivation." (Bauer and Yamey (1957» p.159)).
- 11 -
The process of proletarianising labour in agriculture for work
in mines is well-represented by the (Southern) Rhodesian case in the
first third of this century.
The basic problem of Rhodesian mining
was that world price and demand of gold (the most important output of
mining in Rhodesia) tended to be relatively constant, so that unit profits
were enlarged, or maintained by holding down costs, while the single
most important item of cost was African labour.
Yet the Rand mines
in South Africa were more profitable and allowed somewhat better
labouring conditions (including higher wages).
Thus labour going
into mining was constantly attracted to South Africa, and Rhodesia
mining had to rely on continuous recruitment of labour from areas to
the north.
Such recruitment was no easy task since, in addition to
low wages, the living conditions in the compounds of the workers were
miserable —
implying, for example, a high death rate due to pneumonia,
scurvy, dysentery, phthisis (a disease of the industry) and syphilis,
in addition to deaths resulting from industrial accidents and from
outbreaks of infectious diseases such as smallpox and, in 1918, the
,
Spanish' flu.
In sum, "the Rhodesian mining industry was confronted
with serious problems in attempting to meet its most basic requirement —
a large supply of cheap labour (van Onselen (1976, p»74))»
These
problems were augmented by an ability of the local peasantry to market
produce to the mine compounds, if they need cash, rather than work in
the mines themselves*
Between 1898 and 1901 an important source of cheap labour was the
use of native commissioners to force Africans (with the aid of 'native
police') to work in mines.
And a second source was to increase the
pressure on the local peasantry by increasing their need for cash through
increasing taxation and through the threat of an increasingly competitive
white commercial agriculture, and by lengthening the period of the
The following summary of Rhodesian proletarianisation is based
upon van Onselen (1976).
p
On the other hand, "it is of considerable significance that the
bulk of Rhodesian legislation affecting conditions in the compounds was
passed during the years when labour was in shortest supply" (van Onselen
(1976, p.66)) — i.e., when attracting fresh wage-labour was particularly
necessary.
"The basic function of labour legislation was to reduce the
death rate to a level where it would not jeopardise labour supplies,
without threatening the profitability of the industry by requiring an
unacceptably high level of indirect expenditure on compound inhabitants"
(p.67).
- 12 -
contract for working in the mine.
But the most important means,
at least until 1912, was the creation of the Rhodesia Native Labour
Bureau in 1903 (which lasted, after two reconstitutions, until 1933) •
The task of the Bureau was to supply cheap coerced labour to the mines
by recruiting, legally, natives from Nyasaland (now Malawi), Mozambique
^often illegally, also), Southern Rhodesia (much less successful than
elsewhere) and North Western and North Eastern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
Sometimes the means of recruitment were simply physically rounding up
natives;
sometimes by destroying homes, crops, or grain stores of tax
defaulters;
sometimes by only giving travel passes to those contract-
ing with the Bureau;
sometimes trapping natives along labour routes
or on ferry crossings of the Zambezi, Luangwa and Hunyani rivers;
sometimes taking advantage of starvation conditions produced by
drought;
sometimes by exaggerated advertising of advantageous conditions
of mine work to peasants in areas not yet sensitised to the facts.
result was, indeed, to satisfy capital's need for cheap labour.
One
Another
was that "the Bureau was universally feared and hated by black workers.
Throughout most of central Africa, work secured through the R.N.L.B.
became known as chibaro -- 'slavery* or 'forced labour1" (van Onselen
(1976, p.104)).
After 1912, proletarianisation was in Rhodesia to stay and the
Bureau became less necessary.
Thus, "over a quarter of a century of
colonial presence in central Africa, taxation, the decline of peasant
markets, increases in population and restrictions on the amount of land
available were all forcing a growing number of African workers into the
cash markets of the regional economic system.
The decline of peasant
independence on the periphery of the system was making cheap labour
available at a rate that undercut even chibaro rates on the mines.
What chibaro had done between 1903 and 1912, 'market forces' were
achieving in the years of consolidation." (van Onselen (1976, p.H7))«
This labour came not only from Southern Rhodesia, but also from, particularly, Nyasaland (one-third of the labour force in Southern Rhodesian
mining after the first World War) where extraordinarily high taxation
of the peasantry from 1892 on caused early proletarianisation there.
- 13 -
2. PRE-CAPITALIST TO CAPITALIST FORMS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION ON
LATIFUNDIA, THEIR RESISTANCE TO DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES,
AND AGRARIAN REFORM
The area of the present-day periphery first colonised was of
course Latin America.
A theoretical controversy has developed, prima-
rily as the rosult of the hook "by Frank (1967), over how to characterise
this colonisation, capitalist or feudal, but the "basic facts are
accepted.
The Spanish encomienda was a grant to encomenderos of rights
to tribute from and forced labour of Indians, particularly for mining of
gold and silver but also for construction of churches and public works
and for food.
But the catastrophic decline of Indian population (for
example, a fall in New Spain, estimated as 30 million at the beginning
of the fifteenth century to 1 million a century and a half later) as
well as changing colonial needs
led to the system of peonage on lati-
fundia, a system quite similar to that of the feudalism in Europe (see
Stavenhagen (1974> PP.40-42)).
Thus,
"••.Peonage, which at the outset had served to bind and hold a
labour supply in the face of a diminishing population, became the
foundation of an onerous and exploitative system of labour as
population again increased.
Squads of peons gave rise to peon
companies, peon companies to entire armies of peons, all born
within the framework of the haciendas and bound to them through
debt and past conditions of servitude. By the end of the seventeenth century, New Spain was securely in the hands of a class of
great landed proprietors, self-made nobles, commanding thousands
of dependent labourers, captains of private armies, living in
splendid houses, and leading the life of a new aristocracy on
horseback, with its display of equestrian skill in competitive
games.
In sharp contrast with Europe, where a decline in population and an improved technology had freed the feudal serf and
turned him into an owner or renter of agricultural property, but
much as in Russia during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the growth of capitalism £sic] in New Spain did not produce a
greater measure of liberty and freedom for the labourerJ instead it
sharpened exploitation and increased bondage." (Wolf (1959, pp.210-11)).
"The economic decline of Spain created havoc in her Western Hemisphere colonies. Apart from mining operations, no major economic enterprise whatsoever had even been started. Agricultural exports from the
immense territory at no time reaohed any meaningful figure for three
entire centuries. The supply of manufactured goods for the great masses
of the native populations was at all times based on local handicrafts,
postponing any change in the already existing subsistence economy."
(Furtado (1963, p.13)).
2
Referring to New Spain, "the dual nature of the hacienda — its
ability to retrench in times of adverse markets, its ability to increase
production if demand rose — allowed it to adapt even to conditions which
differed from those that gave it birth. When ifhe depression of the seventeenth century came to an end in the economic upswing of the eighteenth
century, the hacienda, too, participated in the renewed expansion."
(Wolf (1959, p.210))i
- 14 -
In Portuguese Brazil, however, slavery was the predominate means of
labour control in the latifundia production of sugar for the European
market (later and for a limited time, also in the mining of gold);
the slaves initially being from the Indian population, then increasingly
blacks imported from Africa.
Even if the form of social relations in Latin America was precapitalist and survived for a long period,
the continent was, of course,
2
dominated by its relationship to the developing world capitalist system.
For, more than in the feudal mode of production, surplus was marketed to
the capitalist centre rather than substantially retained.
Indeed,
ultimately, it was the articulation with the centre that undermined the
pre-capitalist patterns, undermined by increasing commodisation.
In Brazil, the transition from slavery to capitalist latifundia was
motivated by the manpower requirements for expanding coffee production
(see Purtado (1963, Chps. 20-24)).
European migrants, coming particu-
larly from southern Italy, were offered free transportation, along with
a subsistence plot of land, if they agreed to perform wage-labour on
coffee plantations;
also, emancipation in 1889 converted slaves sub-
stantially into wage-labourers.
the peonage system
While revolution in Mexico overturned
and took the country's agriculture out of the lati-
fundia system, in the rest of Latin America the basic pattern has been
the undermining of peonage within the latifundia.
For example, the
hacienda proprietors in Venezuela moved toward specialisation in coffee
in the latter part of the nineteenth century and, at the same time,
shifted labour from peonage to sharecropping;
but they were not able to
resist the effects of the Great Depression and either converted sharecropping to wage-labour or sold their land (Goussault (1975))•
Klein
Thus, for example, "from the viewpoint of its economic structure,
mid-nineteenth-century Brazil was not much different from what the country
had been during the previous three centuries. The economic structure,
based mainly on slave labour, had remained unchanged through the stages of
expansion and decadence." (Furtado (1963, p.4l)).
"By the mid-nineteenth
century, the working force of the Brazilian economy were basically composed
of a mass of slaves amounting at most to perhaps some two million persons"
(p.127).
Wallerstein (l974» p»9l) emphasises the dominance of capitalism and
de-emphasises the form of labour control by referring to the latter in
Latin America as "coerced cash-crop labor", a concept that seems to avoid
the theoretical problem.
* "By 1895 Mexico had an industrial proletariat of 365,000, a rural
middle class of 213,000, an urban middle class of 776,000. In comparison
with the 7,853,000 living in peon families on haciendas, these represent
only a fraction of the population; but their very presence indicates the
direction of social and economic growth." (Wolf (1959> p»247))»
- 15 (1976) has thus characterised the present stage of latifundia in Latin
America as (l) traditional haciendas of peonage labour (on the decline),
(2) latifundio-minifundio of small peasant plots of land and wage-labour
on estates (neither the wage or the subsistence plot by itself being
enough for a family's subsistence ), and ($) commercial estates using
only wage-labour.
In the process of transition the patron does not
become just another capitalist, rather a particular fraction of the
capitalist class, the large-landowning capitalist.
The key characteristic of the large-landovning capitalist class
fraction is that this fraction simultaneously controls the amount of
land on which agricultural production takes place as well as the
productive forces used on the land.
The control on the amount of land
put under cultivation, as one of the essential means of agricultural
production, is a pre-capitalist residual in a capitalist society. For,
that control is utilised by landowners conscious of their special
interest to obtain rent. And this control of land, as we shall see,
both conditions and reaffirms a resistance to the development of productive forces used on the land. Thus, the capitalistic function of
development of productive forces takes a "distorted" form on latifundia.
In Marx, all organisers of production are capitalist hiring proletarianised labour (i.e., feudal social relations of production had
been replaced by capitalist so that the accumulation of capital is
located somewhere else in the world), but that in agriculture capital
meets the landlord —
the controller of access to that reproducible
natural resource land (see Marx (l974» HI» Chp.37)).
T
he landlord
knows that capital needs land for any agricultural production and,
therefore, is interested in using his monopoly of controlling access to
land to appropriate surplus for himself, even though he has nothing to
do with the actual production process.
The struggle by the landlord
The small plots may themselves also be considered capitalist.
"These smallholders-principally sharecroppers or small tenants-are not
agricultural producers in the sense that they can freely determine what
to grow, how to grow it and what and how to sell.
They work under strict
orders and under the control of the landlords." (Peder (l971» pp.129-130)).
Furthermore, "it is found that in many campesino families, it is only the
cash income from the sale of crops or from wages that really counts."
(p»133» italics in original).
Deere (1976) indicates how family work may be then divided along
sexual lines, with dominance of female labour on the small plots of land
and dominance of male labour for wage-labour (on the latifundia or elsewhere).
Such a sexual division is also common in Africa.
- 16 -
against the capitalist is then a struggle for the appropriation of
some of the surplus of capitalist production "by the landlord in the
form of rent.
Such a description of agriculture was indeed character-
istic of England during the Industrial Revolution.
The landlord on
the latifundia typical of Latin America, however, does not rent his
land to a capitalist (who would in turn organise the production process)
"but maintains control of use of the land.
Thus, our starting point
for discussion is the large-landowning capitalist, not separate landowning and capitalist classes.
Yet the implications are virtually
identical.
To "build an understanding of the resistance to the development on
productive forces on latifundia, we abstract from all differences in
soil fertility and locational advantages, so that any section of land
has the same use value as another (i.e., we abstract from Marx's
differential ground rent I).
monopolised.
Suppose, then, that land is not in fact
Capital, expanding into the agrarian branch, would
expand there just like in any other branch — until supply satisfied
demand at the price of production for the branch, i.e., until the rate
of profit on agrarian capital equals the average rate of profit for the
economy as a whole.
If access to land for agrarian production is controlled by a few,
however, capital cannot necessarily expand agricultural production
until the market price moves to the price of production.
For capital
meets its landowning fraction which can deny access in the absence of
rent.
In this case, capital would expand into agriculture only until
the market price included payment of rent and also allowed the average
rate of profit on capital.
Thus, the agrarian price would be above
the price of production for the branch, while the surplus value
represented by the difference between the two would go to the landlord
in his social role of landowner.
Even so, without consciousness of how to use his social position,
competition within the landowning fraction would drive the rent to zero
(the agrarian price to the price of production for the branch).
For
By the way, while land is a necessity for production, it is not
a produced means of production and therefore transfers no value to
commodities.
- 17 -
each landowner, separately considered, could increase his rent (extraction of surplus value) by increasing his supply to the market when the
agrarian price is above the price of production.
But their individual
actions would increase supply of agricultural products and drive the
agrarian price down until all rent had evaporated.
Thus, earning rent
(anyway, rent that is not differential rent) from the monopolisation of
land requires a collective consciousness on the part of the landowners
of their fraction's interests.
The consciousness required by the
landowners must be the recognition that rent can be earned if agriculture supply is restricted, and therefore that each landowner must protect
his and his fraction's interest by restricting supply.
The material
conditions for such a consciousness are, in fact, few large landowners,
not a large number of smaller landowners; for the latter too easily
leads the individual landowner to individualistically increase his
production.
The latifundia of Latin America are the typical represen-
tative of such an agrarian structure.
A direct means of limiting supply is, of course, to limit the land
under cultivation, a limitation observed over and over again on latifundia (Feder (1971, pp.63-72)).
But a second means is to resist the
capitalisation of that area that is cultivated, implying a resistance
to the development of productive forces (Feder (l971» PP»74-89» 96-100)).
For, such resistance implies that labour-intensive methods of production
persist in agriculture, that the technical-value composition of capital
there remains low relative to other branches.
And by arresting the
expansion of capital into this labour-intensive branch, the monopoly of
landownership thus arrests the transfer of value out of the branch
through prices of production (the transfer is not eliminated, however,
for transfer of value still occurs through international prices of
production).
The foundation for absolute ground rent is therefore created (Marx
X1974, •tI** Chp.45))» absolute because it would obtain on all land, whether
or not individual parcels~aTs6"earn differential rent. More specifically,
"...there is a strong social pressure oh the members of the landed
elite to adhere to the 'rules of the game' of latifundismo. Few estate
owners would wish to antagonise their peers by introducing on their
properties practices considered inimical to the foundation of latifundismo."
(Feder (1971, p.88)).
Also, "...estate owners are highly organised on
the local, national, and international levels..." (p.255).
- 18 -
this rent concept is the difference between agrarian price (less than or equal
to agrarian value) and the price of production for the branch.
There-
fore, it is a concept of rent directly reflecting the nature of technological development in agriculture in the presence of a large-landowning
capitalist class fraction.
(At a lower level of abstraction the
individual landowner receives rent from restricting area under cultivation, and the development of productive forces is not of much concern
since, unlike the usual capitalist, the landowner is not threatened
with extinction by failing to develop productive forces.)
Emmanuel (l972, p.216) asserts, without support, that Marx
"defined absolute rent as the difference between value and price of
production" and then goes on to comment that Marx's argument on absolute
rent is "perhaps the weakest chapter in Marx's theory", presumably
because "Marx gives no precise reason why the market price of agricultural products should be governed by value."
But Marx gives no such
reason because he does not assert that agrarian price equals value and
that absolute rent is the difference between value and production price.
Rather, he comments that "although landed property may drive the price
of agricultural produce above its price of production, it does not depend
on this, but rather on the general state of the market, to what degree
market-price exceeds the price of production and approaches the value..."
(p.764) and, therefore, that "whether the [absolute] rent equals the
entire difference between the value and price of production, or only a
greater or lesser part of it, will depend wholly on the relation between
supply and demand and on the area of land newly taken under cultivation"
(p.762).
2
If the landowning monopoly implied that the agrarian price is
even above agrarian value, then there is even a positive transfer of value
into the agrarian branch, a transfer Marx would call monopoly rent.
"Apart from [differential and absolute rent] the rent can be based only
upon an actual monopoly price, which is determined neither by price of
production nor by value of commodities, but by the buyers' needs and
ability to pay.
Its analysis belongs under the theory of competition,
where the actual movement of market-prices is considered." (Marx (1974,
III, p.764)).
While Emmanuel does seem to have misread Marx's definition of
absolute rent (see the preceeding footnote), he seems to be correct in
pointing out that "value is no longer in itself a significant magnitude in
the conflict between the landlord and his farmer" (Emmanuel (1972, p.217));
for the foundation of both absolute rent and monopoly rent is the classconscious control over access to land. But absolute ground rent expresses
the underdevelopment of productive forces in agriculture as a specific
modality of reinforcing the appropriation of surplus value in the form of
rent by restricting supply.
- 19 -
An important consequence of observing that the landowner of latifundia need not pay much attention to the development of productive
forces, is that, even though we have seen that modern latifundia are best
described as capitalist, they do not necessarily need the wage-labour
form of labour control.
For wage-labour is used precisely for that
mode of production for which continuous development of productive forces
requires that the quantity of employed labour power be flexible.
Given
the resistance to the development of productive forces on latifundia,
wage-labour is less necessary (although still useful for responding to
the economic fluctuations of the world capitalist system) and the survival
of pre-capitalist forms of labour control
explicable.
The implication
is that we can accept Prank's (1967) view that Latin America today is
capitalist (so that there is no question of a bourgeois revolution in
the future), while rejecting his (and Wallers tein's (1974, pp.126-127))
view that Latin America is best described as capitalist since the beginning of colonialism.
On the other hand, Laclau's (197^) criticism of
"...in reality in the early 1960's there had still been just about
as many workers without land as those workers with some access to land.
This would confirm field observations about the continued economical
importance of traditional forms of employment of campesinos whose remuneration consists wholly or in part in the right to the use and produce of a
plot of land. Payment or part payment in terms of some right to the use
of land still has considerable advantage for rural employers in most areas
of Latin America.
It attaches the workers to the land and guarantees the
employers a more than adequate supply of labour at all times. It reduces
the employers' need for cash and allows control over their workers' activities.
Contrary to what one might expect, the type of employment is not
necessarily a function of the type of land use,'. Livestock enterprises
may employ salaried workers or sharecroppers; plantations may employ
sharecroppers, tenants, or workers with or without plots of land. Employis actually influenced by many factors: tradition, the owners' participation in the management of the farm, and institutional arrangements, such
as labor laws, credit and banking facilities, and even the political situation.
"We must not overlook the fact that in recent years the proportion
of hired landless workers who work only for cash wages has increased.
The rural labor force grows more rapidly than their access to land, which
automatically tends to increase the number of the landless. The increasing proportion of the landless is also a function of both the "pull" of
workers who abandon onerous working conditions in rural communities to
seek the greater freedoms of the villages and towns (although they continue
to depend on agriculture for a living), and the "push" of the employers
who replace their workers by motorized equipment or shift to pure wage
employment, both of which simplify their labor problems. But the shift
to cash wage workers is still only partial in most areas...."
(Feder
(1971» p.114; for elaboration see Chp.lj)).
- 20 -
Prank that the latter avoids the nature of social relations in Latin
America itself (capital-wage-labour or lord-peon) seems less significant for the modern period, but still significant for the colonial
period.
It is useful to note that the resistance to the development of
productive forces obtains whether the landowners are also capitalists
or the class functions are separated into different groups of individuals.
For suppose they are separated, as in Marx.
Then the landowners rent
their land to capitalist tenant farmers (who in turn employ wage-labour).
Tenants will seek land for undertaking production until the supply they
control implies an agrarian price such that the rent is paid and capital
receives the average rate of profit for the economy as a whole.
But
if a development of production forces were undertaken, supply would
increase and capital would not earn, in the branch, the average rate of
profit and at the same time be able to pay rent.
(At a lower level of
abstraction, if an individual capitalist develops productive forces on
the land he has rented, he will only obtain surplus profit from his
reduced cost of production until the lease expires.
Afterwards and to
the extent that the improvements are embodied in the land —
and fertilization, but not equipment —
irrigation
the landlord is able to raise
the rent according to the increased productivity of the land he controls,
Marx's differential rent II, and, unlike for the general capitalist, the
appropriation by the individual agrarian capitalist of the surplus
profit is eliminated.
The implication is that the tenant capitalist
has a resistance to the development of productive forces in agriculture. )
In fact, this resistance of tenancy obtains whether or not the
landowning class consists of few large landowners (latifundia) or many
smaller landowners (without the material conditions for consciousness
of their class interest in restricting supply). While the generality of
this resistance is not a property that is of particular concern in this
section, it is certainly relevant for tenancy so important in Asia.
- 21 -
Agrarian 'Reform
In most countries of the centre the power of the large landowning
class was of course important during the rise of capitalism;
thus it
was important for capital to break that power so that surplus value
transferred to the landowning class in the form of absolute (and monopoly) ground rent could "be ended.
In the periphery, however, some of
rent in fact is transferred to capital through the mechanism of the
international transfer of value that we develop in Section 1 here.
Therefore, the intensity of the struggle by capital against the latifundia is muted;
capital does not struggle for agrarian "reform" to
break up the latifundia and, by implication, the class consciousness
needed to protect rent.
Thus, and in spite of the rhetoric^of the
Alliance for Progress, "except in Cuba, no Latin American country has
undertaken in the 1960's a program which had radically modified the
agrarian structure of a large community or region..."
p.240)) .
(Peder (1971>
In the 1970*s, Chile under Allende began a major reform
as part of a struggle against capitalism, but with well-known consequences (so that only Peru has completed a major reform in the period).
If, however, the result of struggle by the oppressed in'agriculture
against the landowners leads to a structural crisis only overcome by
structural change (as in Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru), the bourgeoisie
in turn struggles that the structural change is limited to agriculture,
to agrarian reform.
Referring to Mexico "...the accumulated pressures
of a growing smallholding and landless peasant population could conceivably force the bourgeoisie to sacrifice its rural fraction again, in
the interests of its own survival, as it has already done once before
"Only in Venezuela were about 100,000 families given land, beginning before the Alliance for Progress.
But in all countries, including
Venezuela, 'land reform* activities slowed down considerably as the
decade drew to a close." (Peder (1971, p.252)).
While "Venezuelan
officials were deliberately trying to keep land redistribution secondary
to a broad program of rural development including the colonization of new
lands, road building, construction of irrigation systems, mechanization,
electrification, and supervised credit" (Erasmus (1967* p«369))> the fact
that redistribution had any priority made Venezuela some kind of an exception.
The limited nature of the Venezuelan reform is similar to the case of
the Philippines, a country also colonized by the Spanish and also with a
latifundia agricultural system.
"Where land reform [in the Philippines] is
being implemented is in selected areas known to be trouble spots for the
purpose of 'letting off steam' from the rural volcano" (Shoesmith (l974>
p.286)).
- 22 -
during the present century" (Stavenhagen (1970, p.235)).1
And the
bourgeoisie struggles that the character of the reform is in its
interests.
Referring to Bolivia, "if the reform is irreversible, its
methods of development most certainly are not.
There is no truth to
the belief that the only way of annihilating the hacienda system was
to settle the ex-colonos or sharecroppers, on the same marginal lands
that they cultivated before the reform..." (Garcia (1970, p.315)).
Agrarian reform usually consists of redistributing access to land
and giving titles to the resulting distribution.
If the land reform
leaves some large enough holdings that wage-labour becomes the primary
means of cultivation there, the new owners are capitalists.
However,
land reform usually results from demands for minimum size plots for
many cultivators and thus implies many small holdings on which agricultural workers who had no private ownership in land now own land.
(Concomitantly, obligations to, for example, hacienda patrones are ended.)
The owners resulting from typical agrarian reform are peasants, agricultural producers who at least control their means of production.
The small holdings are not of equal size.
Thus, Erasmus (1967)
examined, ten years afterwards, the results of the agrarian reform in
Southeastern Bolivia and noticed that the post-reform land distribution
2
was quite unequal.
"Nothing was done by the reform to equalize the size
°f the arriendos. which varied in my sample between such extremes as 0,1
and 648 hectares (including pasture).
The amount of cultivated lands
within arriendos fell predominantly between 1.0 and 15.8 hectares.
Peasants with less land than they needed to subsist often sharecropped
(aparcerfa) parcels of land belonging to peasants with larger holdings."
(Erasmus (1967, p.359)). Additionally, since population per parcel can
still rise, any equality today can be inequality in the next generation.
Nevertheless the Mexican agrarian reform at least tried to eliminate the
leading possibility of continuous re-creation of ever more unequal distribution of land ownership as time passes by prohibiting the sale of
redistributed land — i.e., attempting to return to non-commoditized
land — the e.iido.
In i960 (twenty-five years after the beginning of
Note, though, that the conditions have changed: the Mexican
Revolution and the Cardenas administration of 1935-41 broke the power of
the hacienda; now the struggle in Mexico is against capital.
o
Notice that "land reform beneficiaries probably represent no more
than one-tenth of the agricultural labour force, and the land distributed
by 1963 represented only a little over one-tenth (13 per cent) of the area
registered by the 1950 census" (Garcfa (1970» PP.313-3H)).
- 23 -
major redistribution) only one-quarter of the agricultural labour force
were e.iidatarios. however (Stavenhagen (1970, p.244)).
Even if some type of "decommodization" of land has been typical of
agrarian reform in Latin America, in one way or another, the intent of
the law is often evaded.
"The most common means of reconsolidation in
Mexico and Venezuela is through renting and sharecropping.
Renting
procedures are those normal anywhere, but the sharecropping practices
might better be labeled 'sharecropping in reverse*.
Since the land-
reform beneficiary in these cases is without financial resources, the
tenant provides the seed, machinery, water, and fertilizer costs and
even pays the beneficiary for his labour.
At harvest time the crop
is equally divided after the tenant first deducts the above costs."
(Erasmus
(1967, pp.372-373)). 2
Finally, peasants are incorporated into market relations which
can undermine any independence the peasant was able to achieve.
consider a peasant exchanging some of his crop
Thus,
for manufactures produced
in the city (including tools and fertilizers needed to produce again
next season).
First, agricultural production is competitive and manu-
facturing production may be monopolistic.
Second, monopolistic middle-
men often control crop purchases from peasants (locally and/or on the
international market) and sales of manufactures to peasants.
Third,
imports from the centre to the periphery imply an international transfer
of value through prices of production (see previous section).
credit is expensive (interest on debt high).
Finally,
The sum of all these
mechanisms can imply quite substantial transfers of surplus and set up
pre-conditions for converting a peasant into a wage-labourer.
Many ejido plots created in Mexico are also sub-subsistence (see
Stavenhagen (1970, p.237; also p.266) and Eckistein (1970, pp.278-280)).
p
"More than half the plots in some Sonoran e.iidos were being rented
or sharecropped in 1959.
In most cases a single tenant sharecrops a
large group of contiguous efiido plots to economize his operations.
In
Carabobo, Venezuela, in 1964 a fifth of the 150 members of the land-reform
settlement La Linda were sharecropping their parcels in one huge block
with a Canary Island immigrant who owned his own farm machinery."
(Erasmus (1967, p.373)).
* The peasant may not actually consume what he produces; he may
produce a crop to barter or to exchange for money and consume what he can
obtain in return.
- 24 -
3.
STRUGGLE AGAINST THE PEASANTRY THROUGH
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCTIVE FORCES:
THE GREEN REVOLUTION
The accumulation of capital implies devaluation of the value of
labour power in order for capital to control as much surplus value as
possible and using that surplus value for means of production in the
control of capitalists as a substitute for pre-capitalist forms of
production.
The requirement of devaluing the value of labour power
implies that the food supply going to workers be large enough to keep
food prices down.
With handicrafts by and large already replaced by
capitalist production processes and with feudal forms of agricultural
production on the descent, the substitution for pre-capitalist forms
of production is now centred on the peasantry.
At the more obvious
level, the so-called "green revolution" is an effort by capital to
increase the supply of food to the proletariat so that the value of
the labour power of the proletariat is kept low.
At the deeper level,
capital's struggle against the peasantry conditions the character of
the development of the productive forces in agriculture.
Thus, the
extreme difficulties faced by the peasantry in the face of the green
revolution are rooted in who decided how the productive forces in
agriculture should be developed, with "institutional constraints" of
utilising that technology merely a further implantation of the same
process.
The first high-yielding variety of wide distribution in the Third
World was developed in Mexico.
It is no accident.
The Mexican
Revolution of 1910-17 was the first major struggle by peasants in the
Third World against the landowning class. While the Revolution did
not immediately lead to major structural changes in rural areas, preconditions were established that facilitated the reforms instituted by
the Cardenas administration of 1935-1941. The base of support for
that administration quickly came to be peasants and workers discontented
by the effects of the Great Depression and over two million hectares of
a total of 5.2 million hectares (in 1930) of privately held cultivable
land was redistributed, so that landless workers dropped from 68 to 49
per cent of the rural labour force.
Furthermore, the landholding
form of the e.jido was actively enlarged, a form that we have noted
1
See Hewitt (1974, P-17) and Stavenhagen (1970, p.244).
- 25 -
prevents alienation of land held by a community (i.e., denies private
property in land);
farming could be by individual plots or on collec-
tive e.iidos. the collective preserving any advantages of large-scale
farming.
By 1940 productivity on e.jido land was larger than on large
private farms.
In sum, 1935-1940 represented a major swing away
from capitalism in the rural areas of Mexico.
In 1941 the administration of Manuel Camacho came into office,
backed by Mexican capital's interest to take advantage of the expanding
world market resultant from the beginning of World War II. The restructured rural sector did not, however, provide a sufficient surplus of food
to the cities to keep food prices from rapid inflation (although many in
the rural population definitely improved their standard of living), for
peasant agriculture is only market oriented to the extent that the social
system in which it is embedded forces such an orientation (peasant
production of non-subsistence crops being rather rare), forces as taxes,
rents, sharecrops. The reaction was to support large capitalist enterprise in agriculture, a mode of production that maximises exploitation
of labour, markets its produce, and directs attention to the development
of productive forces. In other words, supporting the accumulation of
(agricult\iral) capital supports the accumulation of (industrial) capital.
The nature of the support for capitalist agriculture was the agreement by the government of Mexico and the Rockefeller Foundation in the
United States, with the intermediation of the United States Ambassador
to Mexico and Vice-President Wallace, to assist the development of
2
Mexican agriculture as a basis of Mexico's wartime industrialisation.
The administrative apparatus was the Office of Special Studies in the
Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, established in October 1943» with the
Rockefeller Foundation providing the bulk of the financial support and,
at first, all top-level scientific personnel (later, Mexicans returning
from U.S. graduate schools were included).
The personnel directed their
efforts precisely on the problem they knew best how to solve, the
Hewitt (1974, pp.17-18).
This and the remainder of our information on the green revolution
technology in Mexico is based upon Hewitt (1974).
- 26 -
increasing of yields on large-scale farming with use of technologysimilar to that in use in the United States.
With corn the main stable crop and, particularly in urban areas,
the increasing consumption of wheat, these two crops have been given
most attention by the Office (beans, being of some importance later).
The fundamental experimental decision is not, however, the crop, but
the productive pre-conditions presumed and, implicitly, the social
class of those with those pre-conditions.
The pre-condition assumed
in the case of Mexico was irrigated agriculture.
The explicit reason
for this choice is that hybrid crops developed in the United States
require controlled supplies of water.
But controllers of most
irrigated land "happen" to be capitalist farmers, not peasants (inside
or outside the e.jido sector).
Thus, the experimenters, whatever their
consciousness, are objectively serving the interest of capital by posing
a question of Mexican agriculture similar to one answered in the United
States.
Given the pre-conditions, the time-consuming and skillful task
of finding hybrids that are high-yielding, rust and insect resistant,
etc., only makes a basic change in the experimental question all the
more difficult.
And the difficulties encountered all the way tend to
lead to hybrids produced with a "technology package" including usually
purchased seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, weed controllers, and mechanisation, in addition to irrigation.
The importance of presuming irrigation and then finding those highyielding hybrids that have the character of a self-fulfilling prophecy
can be emphasised by illustrating the contrary approach.
During the
1930's a group of indigenous agricultural scientists in the Ministry of
Agriculture began working on improved varieties of corn and wheat for
small farmers and e.iidatarios, with little interest in imported technology.
In 1947 they were institutionalised in an Institute for Agricultural
Investigation and emphasised improved corn seeds precisely because most
peasant agriculture was in corn (and most corn area sown by peasants).
Large quantities of water is derivative of the need for irrigation,
not of high-yielding itself.
"But it must be stated emphatically at the
outset that the greater uptake of nutrients by HYVs does not mean greater
consumption of water per hectare by the new seeds. So great is the wastage
of water in irrigation schemes that even were HYVs to use more water per
kilogram of grain produced it is unlikely that it would be noticeable."
(Palmer (1972, pp.50-51)).
- 27 -
Although overshadowed "by the Office of Special Studies, they developed
open-pollinated varieties that do not require purchasing new seeds each
year but instead allow the farmer to use part of his harvest for seed.
While hybrids in practice had somewhat higher yields (in 1948» 70 per
cent over common corn seeds, versus 50 per cent for the open-pollinated
— Hewitt (1974, p.45)), only five per cent of corn area had the irrigation required of the hybrids; thus, in terms of output and sustaining
the peasantry, the open-pollinated variety is preferred.
Yet, "by
1956, the seed production programme of the Ministry was devoting 96 per
cent of its capacity to hybrids —
thus assigning the responsibility
for increased commercial corn production overwhelmingly to irrigated
agriculture....The use of fertilizers and improved seeds outside irrigation districts remained largely unknown."
(Hewitt (1974, P»47))»
The experience of the Office of Special Studies is now institutionalised in the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (established
in 1963 and located in Mexico), where the irrigation-based technology
developed in Mexico is sent to other parts of the world.
For example,
"India's success with the new HYVs of wheat has been largely confined to
four million hectares of irrigated land out of a total of 140 million
hectares of wheat land" (Palmer (1972, p»53)).
Indeed, the presumption
of irrigated land in the development of high-yielding varieties for corn
and wheat was duplicated for rice.
With funds from the Rockefeller and
Ford Foundations, an International Rice Research Institute was founded in
I960 and located in the Philippines.
The main experimental stations
were precisely in well-irrigated areas.
The result is similar: "the
difference between irrigated and non-irrigated yields might be even
greater [than for wheat] because the new dwarf seeds perform no better,
and frequently worse, than improved traditional varieties in non-irrigated
areas.
The University of Bangalore's extension folder on dwarf rice
input requirements did not even include those for non-irrigated areas."
(Palmer (1972, p.50)).
The fact that high-yielding varieties require, in practice, irrigation implies that capital is even more motivated than before the green
revolution to struggle against the peasantry for a policy of the extension
of irrigation which implies that newly irrigated land is capital's land.
.see Palmer (1975, p.15).
- 28 -
In Mexico, for example, "while the more than 200,000 irrigated hectares
opened under the Cardenas administration were delivered to rural workers
and smallholders, those "brought into production after 1940 (some 1.8
million up to 1964) were generally sold as private property to the
families of prominent politicians and businessmen, as well as to employees of federal government agencies" (Hewitt (l974> p.24)).
This
struggle over irrigation is particularly important since the greenrevolution technology is relatively scale-neutral —
size does not imply
important cost advantages since seeds, fertilizers, and insecticides are
divisible —
except if large four-wheel tractors and combine harvesters
are used in conjunction with the new varieties (Griffin (1972, pp.62-64)).
Thus, the only other important means of struggling against the peasantry
is agrarian capital's advantages in a capitalist economy over technological information, input supplies and pricing, output marketing, and
credit.
The green revolution technology has spread mainly to Asia and the
Near East, not very much to Latin America and Africa (see Pearse (1975>
Chp.III, pp.14-17) and Peldman and Lawrence (l975))»
In Latin America,
as we saw in the last section, the struggle against the latifundia is
not yet completed so that a technology useful against the peasantry
3
losses much of its relevance for the present.
In Africa, the accumulation of capital has not yet decisively entered into agriculture (see
In the Yaqui Valley of Sonora "the construction of the Angostura
Dam in 1941 [before the green revolution] increased the cultivable area
from around 45>000 hectares to 99»600. This land went entirely to the
private sector: to the pre-reform elite and to a group of men who sold
(or had lost through expropriation) properties in other commercial farming areas of the country (La Laguna, the Bajio, Sinaloa) and used the
new land of the Yaqui Valley to re-establish themselves in agriculture."
(Hewitt, p.l33)«
Presumably reproducing the same pattern, but for
Sonora as a while, "between 1947 and 1958, when accumulated federal expenditures in great irrigation projects reached their height, some 950,000,000
pesos were destined by the federal government to build the dams and canals
which were to make Sonora the breadbasket of the nation. This amount...
composed one-fourth of the entire federal budget for irrigation in thatperiod." (Hewitt, p.137)).
Hewitt (1974, Chps. II and all of Part II) provides the most thorough case study of the use of such advantages.
^ "Most progress has been made in maize. Hybrid varieties are
planted in almost all countries of the region.
In Brazil the area under
hybrid seed is about 30 per cent of the total [almost all the hybrid sowings are in the southern states].
As in Mexico, however, the new varieties
are limited to large, irrigated farms and grown mainly for commercial or
industrial purposes". (Pearse (1975. Chp.III, p.15)).
- 29 -
Feldman and Lawrence (1975, pp.l09-lll)).
When it does, mechanisation
will probably be the key technological issue, for irrigation in Africa
is difficult.
In sum, a study of the effects of the green revolution
is, at this point, primarily a study of the effects in Mexico and Asia
(less information appears to be available on the Near East where wheat
is the main crop subject to high-yielding varieties).
The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development has
undertaken a world-wide study of The Social and Economic Implications
of Large-scale Introduction of New Varieties of Poodgrain.
A summary
of conclusions suggests the long-run implications of the green-revolution.
One consequence, therefore, of the profitability of the
new technology is the proliferation of entrepreneurial or
capitalistic farms in which production is market oriented and
management is guided by the prospects pf financial gain, in
which labour is hired according to needs, and in which there
is progressive investment in the means of production.
...recent evidence shows that entrepreneurial farms able to
reinvest profits in their productive potential can now achieve
higher yields and much higher profits per acre than the small
farm.
This economic fact establishes a trend which in the
shorter or longer run could exclude thei small cultivator,
leading towards a fully capitalistic agricultural sector.
(UNRISD (1974, P.25)).
Thus, in India, as a result of the green revolution, "a qualitative
change is taking place:
a shift from one mode of production (which we
may loosely describe as semi-feudal) to another (capitalist agriculture)"
(Byres (1972, p.104)).
One mechanism of such penetration of the peasantry is certainly that
"the demand for land increases, pushing up its commercial value.
Small
landowners with no means of obtaining working capital may continue
traditional cultures, or they may sell their land at the improved price."
(UNRISD (1974, p.22)).
This is particularly important as population of
smallholdings increases, reducing production per member.
Another
mechanism would be the falling price of marketed products as supply from
high-yielding farms increases.
Nevertheless, the process does take tir,e;
in India, "capitalist agriculture is not yet widespread...it is confined
to a few states fortunate enough to have assured water over large tracts"
(Byres (1972, p.105)).
Indeed, "the invasion of agriculture by the
"The African continent is comparatively poorly equipped for irrigation development.
Most of the rivers dry up in the dry season while the
major rivers, frequently with catchment areas demanded by shifting cultivation, become raging torrents in the wet season.
Moreover, the rock formation in Africa is not conducive to the expectation of abundant groundwater.
In Tanzania, one of the most poorly endowed countries, it is believed that
only 2 per cent of the land is irrigable." (Palmer (1972, p.60)).
- 30 -
capitalist mode of production, transformation of independently producing
peasants into wage-workers, is in fact the last conquest of this mode
of production..."
(Marx (1974, H I , p.650)).
- 31 References
Bauer, P.T. and B.S. Yamey (1957)» The Economics of Under-developed
Countries, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Byres, T.J. (1972), "The Dialectic of India's Green Revolution",
South Asian Review, Vol.5, pp.99-116.
Deere, C D . (1976), "Rural Women's Subsistence Production in the
Capitalist Periphery", Review of Radical Political Economy, Vol.8,
PP.9-17.
Eckstein, S. (1970), "Collective Farming in Mexico: The Case of the
Laguna", in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America,
R. Stavenhagen, ed., Anchor, Garden City, New York.
Emmanuel, A. (1972), Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of
Trade, translated by Brian Pearce, Monthly Review Press, London.
Erasmus, C.J. (1967), "Upper Limits of Peasantry and Agrarian Reform:
Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico Compared", Ethnology, Vol.6, pp.
349-380.
Feder, E. (1971)» The Rape of the Peasantry: .Latin America's Landholding System, Anchor Books, Garden City, New York.
Feldman, D. and P. Lawrence (1975)» The Social and Economic Implications
of Large-Scale Introduction of New Varieties of Foodgrain; Africa
Report, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development,
Geneva, mimeo.
Frank, A.G. (1967), Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America:
History Studies of Chile and Brazil, Monthly Review Press, New York
and London, revised edition, 1969*
Furtado, C. (1963), The Economic Growth of Brazil: a Survey from
Colonial to Modern Times, translated by R.W. de Aguiar and E.C.
Drysdale, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Garcfa, A„ (1970), "Agrarian Reform and Social Development in Bolivia",
in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movement in Latin America, R.
Stavenhagen, ed., Anchor, Garden City, New York.
Goussault, Y. (1975)> "Des latifundia aux fermes capitalistes", Le Monde,
31 Octobre, p.l5«
Griffin, K. (1972), The Green Revoluti on: An Economic Analysis, United
Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva.
Halliday, F. (1974)» "The Ceylonese Insurrection", in R. Blackburn, ed.,
Explosion in. a Subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ceylon,
Penguin, Middlesex, England, pp.151-220.
Hewitt,c(l.974)» The Social and Economic Implications of Large-Scale
Introduction of New Varieties of Foodgrain: Country Report, Mexico,
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, mimeo.
- 32 Kamarck, A.M. (1971)* The Economics of African Development, revised
edition, Praeger, New York.
Klein, E. (1976), "Un marco analitico para el estudio de las estructuras
agrarias y el empleo en America Latina", mimeo.
Laclau, E. (l97l)» "Feudalism and Capitalism in Latin America", New
Left Review, No.67, pp.19-38.
ee, G. (1973)> "Commodity Production and Reproduction amongst the
Malayan Peasantry", Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol.3» PP»441-456.
Marx, K. (1974)> Capital; A Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence
and Wishart, London, in three volumes.
Palmer, I. (1972), Science and Agricultural Production, United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva.
Palmer, I. (l975)» The New Rice in the Philippines, United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva.
Pearse, A. (l975)» The Social and Economic Implications of Large-Scale
Introduction of New Varieties of Foodgrain; An Overview Report,
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva, mimeo.
Shoesmith, D. (1974)» "Land Reform in the Philippines: Emancipating
or Emaciating the Tenant Farmer", Australian Outlook, Vol.28, pp.
274-289.
Stavenhagen, R. (l970)» "Social Aspects of Agrarian Structure in Mexico",
in Agrarian Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America, R.
Stavenhagen, ed., Anchor, Garden City, New York.
Stavenhagen, R. (1974)1 "Structures agraires et sous-developpement en
afrique et en amerique latine", L'Homme et la Societe, Vol.33-34»
PP.37-53.
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (1974)» The
Social and Economic Implications of Large-Scale Introduction of New
Varieties of Foodgrain; Summary of Conclusions of a Global Research
Project, Geneva.
United States Tariff Commission (1970), "Economic Factors Affecting the
Use of Items 807.00 and 806.30 of the Tariff Schedules of the United
States", TC Publications 339, Washington, D.C.
van Onselen, C. (1976), Chibaro; African Mine Labour in Southern
Rhodesia, 1900-1933, Pluto Press, London.
Wallerstein, I. (1974)> The Modern World-System; Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth
Century, Academic Press, New York.
Williams, E. (1970)t From Columbus to Castro; The History of the
Caribbean 1492-1969, Deutsch, London.
Wolf, E. (1959)» Sons of the Shaking Earth, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.