Capitalism and the Common Man: Peasants and Petty Production in Africa and South Asia

Abstract

In 1976, the political sociologist of Africa, Gavin Williams, controversially ‘took the part of peasants’ in an essay, the critique of which had far-reaching impacts. Africa’s common man was then a peasant. In this article, the method of his essay is used to structure a review of petty commodity production (PCP) in India four decades later. India’s ‘common man’ is a petty producer. In neo-liberalizing India, PCP is numerically the commonest form of production and contributes roughly as much to GDP as the corporate sector. Reproducing by multiplication rather than accumulation, it drives growth in Indian livelihoods. Without pretence to being exhaustive, the article uses eclectic micro-level literatures to explore the internal logics of PCP (found to be varied), the circuits and relations of exchange in which PCP fails to accumulate (also very varied), the state’s economic project for PCP (incoherent), and the politics of PCP (mediated, marginalized and divisive).