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Accumulation: Historical shift from simple commodity production (and simple reproduction)to generalized commodity production (and expanded reproduction) = continuous
The Agrarian Question
accumulation.
Agrarian exceptionalism: argument -> Agriculture is a special case or anomaly within
capitalism (evidence: the many family farmers in the world). Why do we have agrarian
Primitive accumulation: Commodification through ‘primitive accumulation’: a contentious
exceptionalism? Different explanations:
process. This kind of appropriation is not just something from the past, but also contemporary.
1. Mainstream modernization thinking: lack of technology and entrepreneurial skills;
E.g. land grabbing and - > Accumulation by dispossession.
backwardness of rural people.
2. Persistence of pre-capitalist relations of production (e.g. feudalism, commons).
Expanded reproduction: is the common accumulation in capitalism.
3. Peasant nature of family farming makes it competitive vis-à-vis ‘capitalist’ farms (lecture
2): self exploitation, peasant rationality.
Different types of social justice struggles:
4. Agriculture is a biological process (article Watts).
- Accumulation by dispossession results into: reclaiming the commons (defending the
5. Resistance by small-scale farmers to dispossession and proletarianization ( = from
commons, bottom-up development initiatives, resisting expulsion etc.).
employer/unemployed/self-employed to work as wage labourer by an employer).
Versus:
- Expanded reproduction results into: Capital – labour struggles (redistribution of income
The Agrarian Question: Whether, and how, capital is seizing hold of agriculture,
with tax, public pension funds, international solidarity etc.).
revolutionizing it, making old forms of production and of property untenable and creating the
necessity for new ones. -> How does capital, when it inserts itself in agriculture, changes the
forms and relations of production? Core themes:
1. Insertion of farmers (not only peasants) in (inter)national economy
2. Relation agriculture – industry: accumulation fund for industrialization.
3. Role state in mediating between classes: balance of the interests of different class
forces, class/political struggles over agrarian change (from above and below).
Commodification (commoditization): turning things, activities, and processes into
commodities with exchange value. The deepening of commodity relations within the cycle of
reproduction.
Use value - exchange value distinction: besides use value, things get an exchange value.
Appropriation: two definitions:
1. First forms of appropriation are highly contested, generates a strong feeling of injustice
e.g. appropriation of land (think about colonialism/imperialism).
2. Discrete elements of the production process are taken over by industry, without
necessarily radically transforming the land-based forms of production (e.g. manure by
synthetic chemicals) -> definition in lecture Farming question!
Substitution: In this process, not only does industrial activity account for a steadily rising
proportion of value added but the agricultural product, after first being reduced to an industrial
input (1), increasingly suffers replacement by non- agricultural components (2) . E.g. key
agricultural crops (foods and fibres) can be substituted by industrial products (synthetic sugars).
1 2
, Peasant Questions: What is the future of the ‘peasantry’ (in its various definitions) in the
context of an expanding capitalism? The question: future of peasantry? => different Bernstein’s PCP:
views, different answers. Capitalist farmer <- Independent peasantry disappears, petty commodity producers -> classes
Historical needs for addressing the peasant question: of labour.
Top down: Bernstein argues that the idea of independence of the peasants creating self-sufficiency for their
- Liberalist modernization: peasant agriculture is backward, how to get rid of them. own family, has disappeared. Instead we have petty commodity producers, capitalist farmer and
- Russian revolution/decolonization: : the role of the peasantry in obstructing or proletarians and labour farmers.
supporting socialist or nationalist (post-colonial) transformation.
- After WO2: avoid poor peasantry to switch co communist revolution. Functional Dualism positions:
- Today: how to feed 9 billion people? Capitalist entrepreneurs + marginalizes peasantry kept as labour reserve army and to lower
Bottom-up: Future and resilience of family farms in the North, poverty and marginalization of reproduction costs -> Rural proletariat composed of semi-proletarians.
the peasantry in the South. How to forge alliances between different movements (food Small holder farmers are still out there, but you have to see them as a labour reserve.
sovereignty)?
Petty (or Simple) Commodity Production (=PCP): combines the class places of both capital
Social differentiation, differentiation of the peasantry Social differentiation is a major and labour. Contradictory as class places are not evenly distributed within households.
aspect of agrarian change and can follow many different roads.
Models of the development of capitalism in agriculture, transition trajectories:
Debt burden: a mechanism that can shape social differentiation. When farmer are too much Capitalism from above: big landlords became capitalist.
in debt, they lose land. Causes can be inheritance, lack of security (household member falss ill) Capitalism from below: class differentiation led to capitalism. Recognition of ‘desires for
or falling prices for farm products. modernization’ of the rural poor, desire to become petty commodity producers.
Simple reproduction squeeze: Commodification of subsistence: Key elements of subsistence
become subject to the dynamics of market exchange and their compulsions. Struggling to
reproduce capital and labour from their own farming.
Commodification of subsistence: If rural poor can no longer reproduce themselves as
‘peasants’ or petty commodity producers (and have to reduce consumption, increase
commodity production, or become wage labourer).
Positions on differentiation:
Chayanovian: Capitalist farmer (or entrepreneurial farmer/landlord) <-> Peasant-
undifferentiated (but with internal diversity). Argument that peasant mode is something
different from capitalism, other say it does relate.
Lenin: Capitalist farmer <- Peasantry disappears through differentiation -> rural proletariat. 4 key questions of political economy in theoretical terms (Bernstein):
In the past undifferentiated peasantry, now different classes but in the longer run these
categories disappear into capitalist entrepreneurs and Proletarianization (landless, work for Who owns what? Social relation of property
somebody else): Who does what? Social division of labour
- Rich: expanded reproduction, is able to accumulate. Who gets what? Social division of value produced
- Middle: simple reproduction = reproduce capital on the same scale as production, (or surplus distribution); who gets the fruits of
labour and consumption scale. More or less produces on the farm with family labour the labour and capital.
necessary amount of capital, and has a small reproduction and back-up. What do they do with it? Social relations of accumulation, consumption
- Poor: simple reproduction squeeze. Not able to live from farming. Sale of their own and reproduction.
labour power.
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