Landlords, sharecroppers and agricultural labourers: Changing labour relations in Rural Java

Abstract

Summary It has mainlv been the large landowners in Gondosari who have been in a position to take advantage of the modernisasi of agricultural production. Long before the seventies they enjoyed a dominant economic, social and political position in the village. Closely linked by family ties,7 they have occupied all the important positions (such as village head and members of the village administration) since the end of the last century. In this way they have been able to maintain and enlarge their economic power. Although several of them attempted to engage in commercial farming in the past, particularly in the twenties, until recently such efforts did not always meet with success. The cultivation of cash crops such as peanuts and kapok was practically under their complete control, but because profit margins were narrow, this did not lead to accumulation on a large scale. In the period 1930 to 1950, when monetized trade practically disappeared as a consequence of economic depression, war and revolution, commercial production was rather unattractive. Although the Indonesian government tried to create an “agricultural middle class” in the first years of independence, the efforts soon failed in Gondosari because of monetary inflation and the lack of an adequate economic infrastructure (roads, marketing) on the one hand and the political mobilization of small peasants and landless on the other. It was not until after a second major effort was made to increase commercial rice production through the Bimas programme in the wake of the 1965 military coup that the large owners in Gondosari could make the transition to “rural capitalism”. Capital investments were shown to bear fruit provided that production costs could be reduced by limiting the number of labourers and by cutting down wage in cash or in kind. Given its virtual monopoly of land ownership, the government support it has received, the growing number of landless households and the destruction of the peasants' unions, the village élite was able to carry its strategy into effect without too much opposition. The landlords are becoming “entrepreneurs” not only in agriculture, but also outside it. In Gondosari and some other villages they have introduced new rice hullers; purchased ‘Colts’ (pick-ups adapted for public transport) that visit all the main villages in the district; acquired diesel-powered generators, the electricity from which they sell to other villagers; and engaged in trade in agricultural produce (peanuts, chillies, cloves and citrus fruits). On the other hand, it is also they who purchase the imported luxury goods such as televisions, radios, motorbikes, cassette-recorders and amplifiers. In the houses of the village élite these have become common status symbols in recent years. The agricultural labourers have seen only the negative effects of this transition to rural capitalism, namely a drastic decrease in employment as the rationalization of rice and peanut production on the lands of the large landowners where they used to work has gradually resulted in the expulsion of their “superfluous labour”. In the absence of any other employment prospects they are increasingly driven into the marginal sectors of the village economy such as petty trade, various forms of handicrafts and cottage-industry and the illegal felling and selling of teak wood from the government forest. Such forms of activity generally provide much lower returns on labour. For the sharecroppers, commercialization of agriculture has led not to a decrease in employment, but ironically to its very opposite. Sharecroppers are now expected to make a greater financial and physical contribution to production for a proportionately smaller share in the harvest. The mode of production debate in India has shown that a developing rural capitalism does not necessarily put an end to precapitalist relations of production, but sometimes reinforces them (McEachern, 1976: 453). The case of Gondosari also shows that sharecropping for the large landowners is the most profitable relationship and is therefore also maintained in a commercial context.