Smallholders and the spread of capitalism in rural Southeast Asia

Abstract

Abstract: Although capitalism is now widely seen to be the world's only remaining form of political economy, most discussion of capitalism is vague regarding what it is and gives it little analytical importance. In this paper, I attempt to determine whether two more explicit conceptions of capitalism – those of Ellen Meiksins Wood and Hernando de Soto – can shed any light on the literature on rural smallholder commodity production in the Asia Pacific, and vice versa. I use the papers collected in this volume to analyse the relevance of ‘market dependence’ (Wood) and the various ‘mysteries of capital’ (de Soto) for agrarian relations in the Asia Pacific. The paper tries to point towards a definition of capitalism that distinguishes it from such related terms as commercialisation, markets, and globalisation.