Rural Proletariat Research Articles

Land in China: Struggle and reform

China has inherited a unique dual system of land tenure, in which urban land is essentially commercialized and rural land belongs to village communities guaranteeing access to all community members. The Chinese government has launched a major reform of this system, enabling the privatization of rural land use rights. Guus van Westen argues that while this reform may serve to remove institutional obstacles to agricultural modernization as well as urban development, it will also increase the risk of the rise of a landless rural proletariat.

Adapting Christianity on the Siberian Edge during the Early Soviet Period

The focus of this article is on different adaptations of Christianity by the northern indigenous peoples of Russia in the early Soviet period. We shall examine the community of Yup'ik Eskimo maritime hunters who experimented with Christian ritual forms in order to overcome the crisis caused by the intru- sion of the Soviets. Naukan Yup'ik developed a Christian-influenced ritualistic practice to fight back against growing pressure from the Soviets. We propose that the spiritual developments of this community on the edge of Siberia were tightly related to changing economic, social and political conditions. Early Soviet reforms had predominantly a secular and materialistic character. At the same time, these reforms produced unexpected outcomes in the reli- gious attitudes, ideas and behaviour of the state's population. The intensifica- tion of religious feelings as a reaction to the public secular ideology and admin- istrative measures was a common phenomenon from central Russia to the Siberian periphery. It spread amongst different ethnic and social groups from the very beginning of the Soviet period (A Collection 1919). Among others, the radical atheistic turn in Russia also provoked an upsurge of various Protestant groups who acted as conservative, anti-modernist and anti-Communist move- ments. Significantly, there was a period of mutual imitation between Commu- nists and Protestants that has some importance for our analysis below. At the beginning of the 1920s, the competition between secular and spir- itual worldviews was developing rapidly in Siberia like everywhere else in Soviet Russia. The main architect of the anti-religious policies, Emelyan Iaro- slavskii characterised these processes as a search for ideological forms. As Iaroslavskii insisted, the poorest were more empathetic towards the anti-reli- gious propaganda (Iaroslavskii 1922: 141-142). This statement is in accordance with the principle of the Communist ideology that envisions the urban and rural proletariat as a leading force in the socialist development. But besides this formal ideological correctness, Iaroslavskii described the real situation of the contemporary religious front in Siberia differing considerably from the ideological statements he himself made.

Neo-feudalism in Latin America? Globalisation, agribusiness, and land re-concentration in Chile

This article traces the effects of globalisation on an export-oriented ‘hotspot’ in Chile's non-traditional agricultural export sector. Drawing on evidence from fieldwork carried out in 1994 and in 2004/5, the analysis examines the impact of neoliberal policy over the past two decades. Although the fruit export sector is seen as a key success story of the Chilean economy, and is an area to which small producers are often encouraged to ‘reconvert’, it is argued here that the outcome has been land re-concentration, marginalisation and proletarianisation. Small farmers become increasingly locked into dependent relationships with larger landowners and agribusiness, whilst others form a rural proletariat that serves these concerns. Whilst some commentators have labelled this process ‘semi’ or ‘neo’ feudalism, this article maintains that we are witnessing a deepening fragmentation of the peasantry driven by the continued development of capitalism. The gains of the earlier land reform period are being eroded as rural Chile differentiates and depeasantisation unfolds.

In Defence of Neo‐Classical Neo‐Populism

This paper is a response to the discussion in the special issue of this Journal onRedistributive Land Reform Today(Vol. 4, Nos. 1 and 2). We begin by attempting to clarify the methodological debate, differentiating our approach, which our critics call neo‐classical neo‐populism, from mainstream neo‐classical economics and historical materialism. We then distinguish between land tenure reforms and redistributive land reforms, and argue that it is the latter that really matter. Next, we address the issue of the inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. Fourth, we discuss cases in which systems of labour control are used to transform the peasantry into a landless rural proletariat and challenge the view that systems of labour control can usefully be reduced to a problem of transaction costs. We end with discussions of reform in the transition economies, China and Bangladesh, where we defend the view that it is the distribution of landownership rather than operational holdings that largely determines the extent of poverty.

The Rural Batrachka (Hired Agricultural Laborer) and the Soviet Campaign to Unionize Her

This article explores the Soviet campaign in the mid-1920s to unionize the poorest women in rural villages: hired, agricultural laborers known as batrachkas. The goal was to make them literate, class-conscious workers who saw themselves not as peasants but as the vanguard of a rural proletariat. The mobilization movement met with little success--the majority of batrachkas remained outside the union--in part because the Soviet regime was ambivalent toward recruiting women and in part because it was ill-prepared materially to reach an often isolated and largely temporary work force. Moreover, the predominantly urban communists did not understand the needs or cultural assumptions of female agricultural laborers. Poor peasant women tended to rely on traditional village structures and were reluctant to risk losing the meager bene�ts they derived from the "bosses" by joining a union that seemed mainly to make promises.

Ensuring Inequality: The Structural Transformation of the African-American Family

Preface to the Revised Edition Forward to the Hardcover Edition Introduction Part I Chapter One: Slavery: A Reexamination of Its Impact Chapter Two: Sharecropping and the Rural Proletariat Chapter Three: The African American Family in the Maternalistic Era Chapter Four: The Arduous Transition to the Industrial North Part II Chapter Five: World War II and Its Aftermath Chapter Six: The Calm before the Storm Chapter Seven: The Black Family under Siege Chapter Eight: Family Composition and the Debate Chapter Nine: Black Marriage Patterns: Representations and Realities Chapter Ten: Where Are We Now? Where Do We Go from Here? Notes Index

Becoming a Contra

This article addresses peasant participation in the counter-revolutionary war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Many studies have examined peasant involvement in revolutions; few have looked at peasant participation in counter-revolutions. Nicaragua offers a rare chance to redress this imbalance. Although the counter-revolution in Nicaragua has generated much literature and controversy, insufficient attention has been devoted to the actors in it and too little weight has been given to their views. In this article, peasants speak for themselves, bring their own perspective to events, and give their own reasons for their participation. Their testimony suggests a new approach to understanding the phenomenon of peasant counter-revolution. My research shows that for many peasants the indiscriminate and extensive Sandinista repression of a sector of the rural population was a crucial factor in their decision to join the Contra.(f.1) It is a corrective to the view that peasants are naive and easily manipulated, and it questions traditional assumptions that middle-ranking peasants almost always support revolutions.Field research was carried out in Nicaragua between July and November 1991, at the end of the demobilization process of the Nicaraguan Resistance(f.2) when tensions were high between the Sandinistas, who lost the 1990 election, and the returning demobilized Contras. Violence, threats, aggression, and assassinations, mostly directed against the Contras, were numerous. Consequently, some people declined to be interviewed; others wanted the assurance of a safe place away from their community to deliver their testimony. But some, unafraid of Sandinista reactions and sometimes with defiance, were eager to tell their stories. Generally, all participants were surprisingly open in discussing the details of their personal experience and emotions and their motives for joining the Contra. Fifty-one people were interviewed, mostly rank and file soldiers from the peasant class (83 per cent).(f.3) They were recruited on an individual basis and located through personal investigation in regions where demobilized Contras were to be found. Interviews, which lasted on average about three hours, were conducted under conditions of strict confidentiality, and all witnesses were guaranteed anonymity. Most people used an alias.The north-central area of Nicaragua became the battlefield of the counter-revolutionary war during the 1980s.(f.4) The mountainous landscape contrasted with the much more densely populated low, fertile plains of the Pacific zone. The majority of the people in the north lived in small towns and satellite communities. However, an important segment of the peasantry was isolated in numerous smaller communities (comarcas) dispersed throughout a vast territory connected only by dirt roads which often became inaccessible during the rainy season. A large sector of small-and medium-sized cattle and coffee producers controlled the economy of the region.(f.5) Because they did not challenge the political authority of the regime of the Somoza family, they had been allowed to develop their own economy. There was also an important class of poor peasants who survived on a subsistence living and were subordinated to the producer class through a semi-feudal system. To fulfil their basic needs they had to work for larger landowners either as paid labourers or as sharecroppers. Their dependency was not simply on the wealthy but also on middle-class peasants who gained considerable social and political influence over the poorest peasants.Historically, the Somoza family ignored these regions and devoted its attention to the export-oriented crops of the Pacific lands. The rural Pacific zone was structured around large modern estates, most of them owned by the Somoza family and its supporters, and dependent upon a rural proletariat. The expansion of the family property occurred at the expense of small peasants, who were gradually displaced, often through repressive means, and forced to accept work on the plantations to survive. …

Proletarianisation, land, income and living conditions of farm labourers in Kenya

In some areas in Sub‐Saharan Africa, a rural proletariat has emerged, mainly consisting of labourers living and working on plantations and large mixed farms. Besides these ‘full proletarians’, there are also labourers living outside the agricultural estates who perform agricultural wage labour during specific seasons only. Most of these ‘semi‐proletarians’ own a small piece of land. The study analyses the relationship between the degree of proletarianisation on the one hand, and the socio‐economic situation and living conditions of labourers on large farms in Kenya's Trans Nzoia District on the other. In doing so, a comparison is also made with a group of non‐labourers. The conclusion is that a higher degree of proletarianisation coincides with a lower income level but not necessarily poorer living conditions.

Women in the Hungarian Populist Youth Movement: The Szeged Youth

BackgroundDuring the conservative period in Hungary between the two world wars, three unusual young women, Erzsébet Árvay, Judit Kárász, and Viola Tomori, joined a vanguard of youth who claimed to lead a new generation of Hungarians. As members of the Szeged Youth, they took up the cause of the peasantry of the Great Hungarian Plain, an isolated and neglected population presumed to bear “original Hungarian characteristics.” Until recently, the relationship between gender and nationalism in studies on Eastern Europe has been neglected. Current developments in post-communist societies have sharpened our realization that historical periods are experienced differently and have different implications when seen from the vantage point of women rather than men. Intriguing questions are raised concerning these women's participation in the Szeged Youth Movement and their active role with the peasantry. In a society often characterized as restrictive and limiting, what was the experience of the young woman activist? Was she accepted by her peers as their intellectual equal? How did she feel about her final place in national affairs? These questions are elusive and complex, yet the example of the Szeged Youth Movement in the 1920s and 1930s provides a compelling study of the intersection of gender and national identity in the Hungarian context.During the interwar period in Hungary, the question of the fate of the Hungarian “nation”—which included the Hungarian population in the territories lost after World War I—took precedence over all others. This was true in respect to women's issues as well. The peace settlement was viewed as a national tragedy, reviving fears that the Hungarians or magyarsag would disappear, swallowed up by the surrounding Germanic and Slavic peoples. Virtually the whole population believed that the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, which had reduced the Hungarian state to two-thirds of its former size, leaving 33.5% of the ethnic Hungarian inhabitants outside the borders, had been unjust and should be revised. The government under Prime Minister István Bethlen struggled to restore economic stability and to regain acceptance by the Western powers, on whom revision of the treaty depended. Certain moderate reforms were introduced, including the extension of the franchise to women and the broadening of educational opportunities. Yet, social insurance reforms for the urban populations were not extended to the masses of peasantry and rural proletariat, which still constituted over half of the population. In fact, the need to maintain the support of the large landowners precluded any extensive land reform, and Hungary remained a country of large estates.

Women’s response to violence in Guatemala: Resistance and rebuilding

While neoliberal ideology treats the elimination of the peasantry as an essential step to modernization,1 Guatemalan development from the ex pansion of coffee estates in the 1870s to the cotton boom of the 1960s has been built on a dual economy for peasants. Driven to the most marginal Highland areas by the plantation-building of the elite, they were permitted to retain relatively autonomous communal life reflecting their Mayan cul tural heritage on lands too marginal for economic self-sufficiency. Goaded by poverty and national labor laws requiring the poor to enlist as laborers on fincas or plantations, the indigenous became seasonal estate workers who subsidized their role as a rural proletariat by their efforts as hillside farmers on tiny village plots.2 Development strategy in the 1980s and 1990s has combined coffee and cotton production with an expanded "non-traditional" farm sector?vege tables, fruits, and flowers for the North American winter market?with tex tile assembly, each component based on the "comparative advantage" of cheap and compliant labor and politically-based access to the U.S. market under favorable tariff and quota arrangements.3 This development strategy has coincided with an impoverishment of the majority of the population. Between 1980 and 1987 the portion of the population living below the pov erty line increased from 79 to 87 percent; the extremely poor?those unable to secure a minimum diet?increased from 52 percent in 1980 to 72 percent by 1990; not surprisingly, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population earned 57 percent of the national income by 1987.4 Two percent of the farms oc cupy 65 percent of the country's arable land, while 80 percent of the farms are crowded into a mere 10 percent?the worst land distribution pattern in the Americas.5 Forty-six percent of the population is illiterate, 66 percent

Land Privatization and the Differentiation of the Peasantry: Nicaragua's Coffee Revolution, 1850–1920

Abstract The expansion of coffee cultivation in Nicaragua in the 1870s unleashed a social revolution. Previously most land was common property: by 1920 throughout the coffee districts land was privately owned. Influential historians of Nicaragua see this as the capitalist transition. This essay argues that instead of forging a rural proletariat, this social revolution created a differentiated peasantry whose access to land depended on relations of patronage. Peasant resistance to land privatization and the political, as opposed to economic, nature of the process are examined. The essay concludes that this revolution was more incongruent than congruent with a capitalist social order. The relevance of this history for contemporary political debates in Nicaragua is explored.

Allotments, enclosure, and proletarianization in early nineteenth-century southern England

Few issues have provoked as much controversy among economic historians as that of enclosure. One line of thought, often identified with the Hammonds and E. P. Thompson, sees the enclosure movement as 'a plain enough case of class robbery'.2 In this view, enclosure impoverished the masses of rural England, destroyed the communal values inherent in the institutions of common property, and created a rural proletariat of landless labourers completely dependent on capitalist farmers for their livelihood. Opposing this, the revisionist school beginning with Chambers3 argues that the move towards capitalist farming was a consequence of population growth, and that enclosure led to higher and more regular employment, and thus to rising living standards for the rural poor. This controversy remains largely unresolved. One recent insight, however, comes from the work of Humphries, who argues that the simplistic division between peasant and proletarian labour is largely unrealistic: 'rather than pushing families out of one category (propertied/peasant) into another (proletarian), parliamentary enclosure eroded non-wage sources of subsistence available to semi-proletarian families and left them increasingly dependent on wages'.' Enclosure should perhaps be seen as just one part of a lengthy and essentially continuous transition which starts from the pre-capitalist institutions of common property and relatively unspecialized labour, and ends with a purely capitalist agriculture in twentieth-century England. Although enclosure certainly abolished the commons, its effect in restricting non-wage activities was only partial. This article studies one of the few post-enclosure alternatives/supplements to wage labour available to agricultural labourers in nineteenth-century England, the system of 'allotments', that is 'pieces of land detached from cottages, and hired or owned by labouring men to supplement their main income'.' Contemporary observers often saw the rise of allotments as a

South Africa — where land reform meets land restitution

The pending land reform in South Africa represents a major departure from traditional programs designed to aid the landless tiller. The agricultural labor force in South Africa is a rural proletariat. There are few accomplished tillers and small-scale farm managers. Land reform will necessarily await a land restitution process in which millions of Africans, displaced to the homelands, will seek restoration of traditional areas for housing plots, and for a small piece of their patrimony. Only when such amends for past evictions are complete can a coherent redistribution of land occur.

Work and Life of the Rural Proletariat in Java's Coastal Plain

The village S lies in the plain that is known as the rice store of West Java. Surrounded by fields on which paddy is cultivated for a large part of the year, the visitor sees S as the prototype of the agrarian settlements that fill the landscape: a small-scale concentration of houses hidden amongst trees and farmyard crops, whose inhabitants have for centuries lived in the shelter of their community and depend for their living largely or even entirely on cultivating the land in the locality. This is the classical image of peasant society as laid down in the literature, but one that is in need of revision also in this particular case.

« Chacun laboure comme il peut ». Un village de Grande Pologne face à la transition

« Everyone Tills the Land as He Can » : A Village in Great Poland Faces Transition Since 1989, in Dziekanowice, part of the land belonging to the old state farm has been rented out to farmers, and the rest to a private agricultural company. The village's population comprises four social categories : intellectual workers (employees of the local museum), the farming proletariat (former state farm employees), the rural proletariat (landless families) and farmers (who both own and work land). The market economy has caused traditional conflicts to flare up again between groups of villagers while at the same time creating new ones.

Peasants and protest: agricultural workers, politics, and unions in the Aude, 1850-1914

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the sleepy vineyard towns of the Aude department of southern France exploded with strikes and protests. Agricultural workers joined labor unions, the Socialist party established a base among peasant vinegrowers, and the largest peasant uprising of twentieth-century France, the great vinegrowers' revolt of 1907, shook the entire south with massive demonstrations. In this study, Laura Levine Frader explains how left-wing politics and labor radicalism in the Aude emerged from the economic and social transformation of rural society between 1850 and 1914. She describes the formation of an agricultural wage-earning class, and discusses how socialism and a revolutionary syndicalist labor movement together forged working-class identity. Frader's focus on the making of the rural proletariat takes the study of class formation out of the towns and cities and into the countryside. Frader emphasizes the complexity of social structure and political life in the Aude, describing the interaction of productive relations, the gender division of labor, community solidarities, and class alliances. Her analysis raises questions about the applicability of an urban, industrial model of class formation to rural society. This study will be of interest to French social historians, agricultural historians, and those interested in the relationship between capitalism, class formation, and labor militancy.

Studies on North Africa–Introduction to A New Series

The shadow of islamic fundamentalism hovers over all of North Africa, notwithstanding the profound differences between the historic fates of the various Maghrebin countries.Algeria suffered by far the longest and most disruptive colonial period, In fact, Algeria had been colonized by the Ottoman empire before it had begun its French colonial period in 1830. A prolonged and brutal war of conquest was eventually followed by the establishment of a large European population, which acquired effective local political control under the Third Republic. Result: pre-colonial social institutions were largely destroyed, and Algerian society consisted mainly of a pulverized and oppressed rural proletariat. There were exceptions: a Muslim bourgeoisie survived in some centres such as Tlemsen, Constantine and even Algiers itself vigorous local institutions survived in the Berber hills and a few other places. But all in all, one could say that there were neither traditional institutions nor any Algerian nation.

Political Parties and the Worker-Employer Cleavage: The Impact of the Informal Sector on Voting in Lima, Peru

A major victim of the growth of the informal sector during the 1980s in Peru was the party system that had been organised around the class cleavage since the late- 1970s. The growth of the informal sector exacerbated internal tensions within the Left between revolutionaries and reformists, and within the Right between conservatives and liberals. The tension between revolu? tionaries and the reformists concerned whether the Left should turn to what some regarded as 'petty bourgeois' sectors for electoral support, or continue to build an organised base with the urban and rural proletariat. The tension between the conservatives and liberals concerned whether the Right should seek a pro-free market alliance between the formal and informal sectors or to build upon the ties of conservative parties to their bases of support among employers and the middle class in the formal sector. The factions that resisted change in both the Left and the Right were those with control over powerful party machines tied to specific interests in society?organised workers, employers, or the middle sectors. The leaders who promoted change sought potentially wider support from formally 'unorganised' sectors of society which, because of their numbers, were decisive in determining electoral outcomes. In their analysis of European social democracy, Przeworski and Sprague (1986) note that either socialist parties stick with their working-class base and are condemned to minority status in parliament, or they also appeal to middle-class groups and risk alienating their core working-class supporters. The saliency of class in shaping electoral outcomes is 'a cumulative consequence of strategies pursued by political parties of the left' (Przeworski, 1985:14). If political parties do not mobilise workers as a class, but as 'the people' or 'the masses', then 'workers are less likely to identify themselves as class members' (Przeworski, 1985: 27). Typically, socialist parties alternate between radical and reformist postures, remaining 'sentenced to perpetual electoral defeats' or diluting their class orientation (Przeworski and Sprague,

Toward the Modern Economy: Early Industry in Europe, 1500–1800 by Myron P. Gutmann

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 517 example of a technologically complicated, basic industry that can be compared to those of the celebrated Industrial Revolution. A table (pp. 301 ff.) of innovations and innovators classifies the former into only five, relating to furnaces and boilers (Pfanneri), preconcentration (Gradierung), management (Leitungeri), reconstruc­ tion (Neugrundung), and the use of coal as fuel (Kohlenfeurung). This hardly does justice to the variety of applications and seems not to include the piping of brine from one location to another. The principal objective of the table seems to be to stress the number of innovators (eighty-four are named) and applications (eighty-nine); but it also reveals only seven applications of coal as fuel. Here was the innovation probably most frequently mentioned in connection with the Industrial Revolution in Britain. In view of that, Piasecki’s account of Kohlenfeuerung seems a bit brief; but it is instructive, and he is after all dealing with a century before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. And his objective is the analysis of an industry as it was, not as it might or should have been. Although it is questionable whether the author is correct in hanging his book on the hook of a currently fashionable topic, inventioninnovation -diffusion studies, this is an important work. One hopes that Piasecki may go on to produce a version directed to a more general readership, in a more elegant format than that to which German dissertations seem to be fated—and with an index. Robert P. Multhauf Dr. Multhauf has been editor ofIsis and director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution. Toward the Modern Economy: Early Industry in Europe, 1500—1800. By Myron P. Gutmann. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Pp. xxi + 257; figures, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. Myron Gutmann, inaugurating a new series from Temple Univer­ sity Press, has succeeded in writing a difficult sort of book, one that is analytically sophisticated and at the same time accessible to students and general readers. He has worked through the major historical debates that have given us more accurate information and new questions, and he has explained them so clearly that no prior knowledge is necessary. Students will not be the only beneficiaries, since Gutmann’s careful work is important to historians of technology as well. The author calls into question the reliance of historians of technology on technology itself as a single or primary cause of economic change and ultimately of the Industrial Revolution. 518 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Gutmann argues his case by showing how political and economic crises constricting the urban guild industry of the Middle Ages caused a parallel line of rural industry to develop. This cottage industry in the countryside was exempt from guild regulations and monopoly and was managed by entrepreneurs who integrated and controlled all aspects of production. Industrial specialization, the emergence of a rural proletariat, and the experience of the merchant-manager provided the preconditions for modern industri­ alization. Thus, the application of machines and steam power was virtually an inevitable end product of the process of economic modernization, not its cause. In Gutmann’s view, the Industrial Revolution fitted into institutions that had evolved through the 16th to 18th centuries. Workers had already been gathered under one roof for economic efficiencies; the experienced rural and urban proletariat already depended on man­ ufacturing jobs; even by the late 15th century, English and Flemish wool producers had the modern idea of generating profit from a large quantity of inexpensive goods. Illustrating his argument with case studies from the Lowlands, Gutmann asserts that political, economic, and social elements were all contributory. Industrialization was not the cause of urbanization, population increase, class differ­ entiation, and class consciousness; rather, it was itself an artifact of a long, complex historical process. Two elements make Gutmann’s argument important to readers of Technology and Culture. First, despite his effort to demote technology as monocause, he is a conscientious historian of technology. His clear descriptions show how technical advances—in wool processing and nail making, for instance—lend themselves to institutional change. In each situation, he evaluates the role of technology. His individual...

Social and demographic origins of the European proletariat

The Problem Saxony is the only large European territory where we can make reliable estimates of the absolute increase of the different social classes and strata (Blaschke 1967). Here, from the midst of the 16 until the midst of the 19 century the overall population tripled. However, the absolute number of peasants (Vollbauern) remained nearly the same, the number of full citizens in towns doubled, and in villages the cottars (Hausler) and laborers (Handarbeiter) were in 1850 ten times as numerous as in 1550 and their relative proportion rose from about one tenth to more than one half of the total population. For anybody who is confronted with these figures and who remembers the number of siblings of his great-grandfather, it seems to be obvious that there was a disproportionate increase of the rural proletariat as a consequence of its higher natural increase. Accordingly, Charles Tilly (1984; p. 39) proposed the following hypothesis: “On the average, proletarians responded to economic expansion with greater decline in mortality and greater increases in fertility than nonproletarians did, and responded to economic contraction with greater increases in mortality but no greater declines in fertility than nonproletarians did. The consequence was disproportionate natural increase of proletarians in good times, not completely compensated by the natural decrease of bad times.“ Tilly, whose point of view, we must admit, was nothing more than “informed” speculation and not supported by reliable empirical data, goes even further.