Peasant Exploitation: A Reply to Dalton

Abstract

Dalton's article on peasant (AA 76:553-561, 1974) is characterized by specious arguments, irrelevant issues, and selectivity of evidence. Not only is the title (How Exactly Are Peasants 'Exploited'?) misleading-it suggests that Dalton is really concerned with discovering the manner in which peasants are exploited-but the whole thrust of his article is aimed at diverting attention away from the very issue he says he is dealing with. For example, throughout the paper he casts doubt on whether exists. Alternatively, he implies that if it exists, it may be universal-part of human nature and the human condition-and hence beyond the control of man. particularly exception to a number of assumptions and generalizations Dalton makes in the article. These may be summarized as follows. (1) Since not all peasants are and since some nonpeasants may also be exploited, the notion of peasant is rather meaningless. (2) Peasant is either poorly defined or undefined in the literature. (3) It is mainly those who study peasants who have anything to say about exploitation. (4) Those who suggest that peasants are are politically motivated-they are socialists-while those who do not are objective. (5) Statements about characterize the bulk of contemporary peasant studies. Each of these assumptions or generalizations is either incorrect, inappropriate to the issue of peasant exploitation, or unsubstantiated by the bulk of the literature on peasants and non-peasants alike. (1) It is difficult to reply to Dalton's head-scratching on the issue of whether all peasants are equally or whether is confined to peasants: Well, gee, here's a fellow who isn't a peasant and it looks like he might be too and here again is a peasant who say's he's getting his money's worth. What's a social scientist to think? This confusion is magnified, according to Dalton, since those who suggest that peasants are do not take into account the subjective of the peasants, that is, whether or not various sorts of peasants feel themselves to be exploited (p. 558). can only respond to this attempt to deflect attention from the issue at hand with the following questions. Is peasant irrelevant since peasantlike also occurs among nonpeas nts? Does peasant become palatable because it is not a condition confined to peasantry? Does the possibility that not all peasants are equally taken advantage of make the of those who are less significant? Do not the objective feelings of the often reflect the values which are really those of the exploiter? In answer to the last question we are reminded of the typical reply of slaves in the Southern United States during the antebellum period when asked by visitors whether they wished to be free: No, massa, me no want to be free, have good massa, care of me when I sick, never 'buse nigger; no, me no want to be free' (Stampp 1956:87). (2) Dalton claims he is not appealing to semantic nicety in his request for conceptual clarity in the definition of peasant exploitation. In particular, he is concerned that: We are rarely told by those who assert that peasants are what exactly they mean by exploitation (p. 553). Yet he still manages to successfully abstract not one but two of its most obvious meanings from his references. The problem, then, appears to be not one of the meaning of but its occurrence as an empirical phenomenon. (3) Dalton's suggestion that notions of are largely confined to studies of peasantry is both irrelevant and incorrect. Even were this contention correct-and it is not-we again assert that it is immaterial to the idea of peasant exploitation. It is untrue because it ignores a literature too vast to begin citing here on various kinds of (racism, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, genocide, etc.) in complex societies. Placed within the context of these kinds of studies, the phenomenon of peasant does indeed appear to be only a small facet of a complex issue. Submitted for publication November 19, 1974 Accepted for publication January 9, 1975