Large Landlords Research Articles

Agricultural Protection in Wilhelminian Germany: Forging an Empire with Pork and Rye

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century protection for agriculture became an important feature of the economic and political landscape in Germany. The large landlords, who specialized in arable agriculture, used their political power to get high levels of protection. Peasants, who specialized in animal husbandry, received lower but substantial and rising levels of protection. Material interest can thus help explain the peasants' political alliance with the landlords. Protection encouraged German agriculture to modernize along intensive lines, bringing to the countryside the social and political developments dreaded by the same conservative elites who promoted protection.

Monopoly and Monopsony Powers of Landlords in Developing Countries

It has been argued in earlier papers [Koo 1973, 1977] that the high concentration of land ownership in developing countries led to an appropriate model of monopoly (or duopoly) in analyzing the land tenure system. Recently the monopoly thesis of land market has been given a new twist and extension in that landlords as large landholders possess the additional power to set wage rates (acting as monopsonist) in the rural labor market [Griffin 1974]. Undoubtedly the extension makes the original monopoly thesis even richer in content because there are far-reaching consequences of the rural wage market distortion. W. A. Lewis has argued that the wage rates in rural and urban sectors are closely related. Low peasant wage rates and income usually result in low wages and high profits in the urban sector [1954, p. 149]. But it is unclear in the discussion whether possession of monopoly power by landlords in the land market is a necessary or sufficient condition for them to have monopsony power in the labor market. Griffin, the proponent of the monopoly cum monopsony thesis, seems to believe that the former power is sufficient in many cases to give the latter power: Factor markets in underdeveloped countries are highly imperfect. Land is monopolized by a few families.... This alone is sufficient in many cases to give landowners monopsony power in the local labor market . [Griffin 1974, p. 222].1 The linking of power of large landlords in the two markets is much more complex than it appears at first. The purpose of this note is to clarify the issue by examining the intermediate steps and supplying the necessary qualifications. To this end one must start by comparing the demand for labor by landlords to work on the unrented portion of their holdings under a competitive land market with that under monopoly. Let r represent market rent under a competi-

Economic Problems of Pakistan under Bhutto

THE BHUTTO REGIME took power in December 1971 with a clearly articulated philosophy in many areas, but a curious, although perhaps explicable, absence of ideas in many others. economic thinking of the Pakistan People's Party followed directly from the emphasis on growth and neglect of distributional questions during the ten years of the Ayub administration. lightening rod for criticism has been Mahbubul IHaq, one of the chief architects of economic policy under Ayub, who said in 1963, The underdeveloped countries must consciously accept a philosophy of growth and shelve for the distant future all ideas of equitable distribution and welfare state.1 PPP in its Election Manifesto2 took quite the opposite tack: the emphasis there is on distribution, on changing the sharingout of the fruits of development (although really only in the most general of terms; specifics, aside from nationalization, hardly appear). In the first wave of reforms in 1972, the regime nationalized something approximating 20% of large-scale manufacturing industry; it took a small amount of land away from 2,231 large landlords, and is in the leisurely process of redistributing it to a number of farmers which will be small in relation to the need; it nationalized life insurance and clamped stiff regulations on banks; sweetened the deal somewhat for already pampered urban labor; and finally, in its most significant reform, devalued the rupee (this particular reform was not anticipated in the Manifesto). A second wave of reforms in 1973 na-

Landlords Without Land: The U. P. Zamindars Today

A MONG THE MORE SPECTACULAR ACHIEVEMENTS of Indian Government during its first decade of independence were extensive programs of land reform carried out in almost every state. Basing themselves upon Congress Resolutions dating back to I930's, which called for an end to feudalism and exploitation on land as well as to imperialism, various state governments took up question of agrarian reform as soon as they were in power. In large and populous state of Uttar Pradesh, for instance, a Zamindari (Landlord) Abolition Committee was appointed even before independence, in I946, and its report formed basis of legislation, enacted in i95i, which stripped large landlords of bulk of their estates and awarded land to cultivators. Similar legislation was soon passed into law elsewhere, and provides to this day fundamental legal framework for India's agrarian order. In fifteen years since its enactment this land reform legislation has come under severe criticism. Many critics have pointed out how initial proposals were watered down for political reasons in course of their passage through state legislatures, with result that sizable loop-holes were built into legislation. They insist furthermore that proposals were even in their initial conception excessively timid, for they failed to deal in any significant way with either of two fundamental problems facing rural India, that of social inequality and that of agricultural stagnation. The lot of landless and outcaste at bottom of rural society, critics contend, was in no way improved by abolition legislation, while cultivating castes who were its beneficiaries simply became tenants of state rather than of zamindar, with neither their social status nor their tax burden substantially altered, and with little new incentive for investment in land. W. C. Neale concludes his exhaustive study of land reforms in Uttar Pradesh with flat assertion that the abolition of zamindari system will not end poverty in Uttar Pradesh or even contribute much to solution of that problem.'

Aftermath of Communist Liberation in the Chengtu Plain

HENGTU, the capital of Szechwan province in west China, was '..the last major city on the mainland to be taken by the Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA). It was to be expected, then, that the liberators would, in Chengtu, be able to draw upon more practical experience and to effect a more thoroughly elaborated policy than in other Chinese cities. The obstacles to the Communist program in Chengtu and vicinity were tremendous: less urban modernization than elsewhere in China, one of the most strongly entrenched groups of large landlords in the country, a powerful anti-Communist secret society, and an especially large concentration (in this, the last Nationalist stronghold on the mainland) of Kuomintang bureaucrats and hangers-on and of turn-over and captured Kuomintang troops. But the stakes were correspondingly high: the Chengtu Plain is probably the richest and most densely populated agricultural region in all of China, and Communist strategy counted on a sufficient rice surplus from the Plain to feed the PLA units destined for the Tibetan campaign. Szechwan was clearly the key to the entire Southwest.'