The Transformation of Oriental Tobacco Production in the Aegean Turkey

Abstract

The persistence of simple commodity production (SCP) in capitalist economies has been a challenge to classical theories of the development of capitalism in agriculture, which considered SCP as a transitional phenomenon, doomed to disappear. SCP has not only persisted under capitalism but has become the predominant form of production in several branches of agriculture both in developing as well as in advanced capitalist countries. In the recent debate on the fate of SCP in agriculture, various observers have pointed out that necessary conditions for the reproduction of simple commodity producing families exist within capitalist formations and as long as these conditions prevail, the persistence of SCP will not be an anomaly (Friedmann, 1980 and 1986; Mann and Dickinson, 1978; Scott, 1986). Pursuing this latter position, this paper attempts to examine the conditions that led to the emergence and consolidation of SCP in Oriental tobacco production, in the Aegean region of Turkey.