3 Peasant studies in Indian sociology: Marxism and the agrarian question

Introduction

In the decades of 1960s and 1970s, peasant studies in India got a major fillip owing to the great efforts of a number of scholars who were variously influenced by Marxism. Even though Marx did not have a charitable view of the peasants, and considered them to be like potatoes in a sack of potatoes, other scholars belonging to the Marxist tradition paved the way for a serious scholarly engagement with the class of peasantry. Marx was critical about various aspects of the ‘rural idiocy’ and, on the whole, thought of peasants as a socially conservative and reactionary force. Yet, the conditions in Russia and China, in a way, compelled leaders like Lenin and Mao to reflect seriously on what subsequently came to be termed as the ‘agrarian question’ in the literature on peasant studies. In this module, we present a synoptic overview of the classical origins of the agrarian question’ in the Marxist tradition, and its later extensions and modifications.We also talk about a contending tradition, known as populism that had its origins in the writings of Chayanov. Thus, we introduce you to the two contrasting traditions of Marxian class analysis and agrarian populism in the studies of peasantry.

Genealogy of a Tradition

The ‘agrarian question’ acquired global political and scholarly attention after the communist leader V. I. Lenin’s presentation of the ‘Preliminary Draft Thesis on the Agrarian Question’ at the Second Congress (COMINTERN)in 1920. It does not mean that there were no reflections on the issue earlier. In fact, Marx’s collaborator, Frederich Engels wrote ‘The Peasant Question in France and Germany’ in 1894. Of course, Engels’ concern was not with peasantry as such but with the exploration of enabling political conditions for socialist revolution. Since peasants constituted the majority of mankind, it was but natural to look at in terms of its relationship with differing political persuasions – from the bourgeois and reactionary political parties to the socialist ones. One simply could not wish peasants away from their reflections upon the order of the day. Given their sheer demographic presence –‘from Ireland to Sicily, from Andalusia to Russia and Bulgaria’ -, and their key role in production and political power, they had to be factored in for any political project of the day. It is important to note that Marxists’ engagement with peasantry started in an obvious political fashion and was seen as an important object of serious discussion and political programme in many Western countries including France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and Russia. The later publications of two important Marxist tracts –Karl Kautsky’sDie Agrarfrage (1890), and Lenin’s Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899) –laid the scholarly foundations of the ‘Agrarian Question’ in Marxist politics, historiography, praxis and scholarly endeavours. Evidently, the ‘Agrarian Question’ has been a political question since the day one. Also, the elaborations and delineations of the ‘Agrarian Question’ have been different in different countries depending on their varying socio-economic and political contexts. During 1890s Germany was one of the industrially developed countries. Not surprisingly, the ‘Agrarian Question’ has been inextricably linked with the related issues of parliamentary democracy, socialism, revolution and the like in the context of Western Europe to begin with. Once the ‘Agrarian Question’ was made to converse with the then prevailing conditions in Russia, it acquired a centrality that it did not have before. It would not be wrong to say that it was the Marxist political project in Russia that accorded ‘the agrarian question’ an unparalleled centrality in Marxist tradition and elsewhere.

In fact, since the late Nineteenth century, the ‘agrarian question’ has been tied up with the politics of the day. For example, the rise of Social Democratic Party (SPD) in mid-1880 in Germany was of great consequence to the ‘agrarian question’. One does find rudimentary discussion of the peasantry and agriculture in the 1860s during the First International. The central debate has been around the question of the ownership of land. For the Marxists, the nationalisation of land was an utmost item on the political agenda. On the other hand, Proudhonists/Mutuellistswere in favour of allowing peasants retain their property rights. In 1867, the Lausanne Congress witnessed major discussions onthe nationalisation of land. Likewise, Brussels Congress in 1868 passed a resolution supporting the nationalisation of land. It was decided that land would be leased out among the cooperative of farmers instead of individual farmer. By contrast, the non-Marxists generally favoured the idea of a self-sustained peasantry. Since Marxists generally argued for the collective control of all means of production, it was but natural that they would support nationalisation or collective ownership of land. However, the issue of nationalisation of land does not find crucial place in the early years in Marxist agrarian programme. Yet, the issue of private property land has always been a contentious issue. Marxists have often debated if nationalisation of land is consistent with socialism. Or, should one look at the issue merely from a pragmatic angle in terms of avoidance of fragmentation of land and having economies of scale to enable application of modern technology for enhanced agricultural production. But then, such pragmatism would certainly feed capitalist tendencies in agriculture.One gets a glimpse of these dilemmas in Kautsky following assertion where he says that the classical expectation of concentration of land in big units was grounded, in part, on the economies of scale supposedly enjoyed by them in the use of means of production, animals of traction, labour, specialization and in the advantages enjoyed by them (big units) in marketing and in obtaining credit. In Marxist terms, the concentration of production brought about by capital would launch a revolution in the forces of production, epitomised by the application of science in the process of production, which would force the peasants out of production and force them into being landless wage labourers. The breakthrough of large scale production in agriculture is hampered by the ability of peasants to resist competition; they are not more productive but they have lesser needs, and they put in more labour per worker, they use their children in production etc. But the sturdiness of peasants can at most delay large-scale production and cannot prevent it.

Classes in Agriculture: Lenin and Mao

V. I. Lenin was the first Marxist leader of repute who traced the growth of class differentiation within the cultivating peasantry under a regime of commodity production in a capitalist direction in his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). He analysed the changing relations of old lord-serf economy in the wake of formal abolition of serfdom in Russia. He looked at Russian agriculture at a time when Russian social structure was characterised by feudal production relations in decline, co-existing with and being replaced by developing capitalist relations. These conditions made Lenin privilege three indices for his characterisation of the class structure in Russian agriculture (a) the extent and possession of land and other means of production, (b) whether the household exploits others by hiring labour and taking rent, or is self-employed, or itself exploited, i.e., the extent of being exploited or exploiting relative to self-employment, and (c)  if the household is unable to meet the subsistence requirements and is, therefore, enmeshed in usurious indebtedness or whether it succeeds in obtaining a subsistence or produces a surplus available for investment. Based on these parameters, Lenin posits the following class structure in agriculture:

i. Agricultural Proletariat: They generally workat capitalist agricultural enterprises and, as a rule, survive by wage labour.

ii. Semi-proletarians or peasants: They own tiny plots of land (owned or rented), they may be part wage labourers as well. This is quite a numerous class in agriculture.

iii. Small peasantry: They are small-scale tillers (owners or tenants).Generally, they produce enough for subsistence. They do not hire outside labour. In fact, according to Lenin, majority of rural poor belong to these three groups – agricultural proletariat, semi-proletarians and the small peasantry.

iv.  Middle peasants: They produce a certain surplus from their farm. They own some capital as well and go for employment of hired labour. In general, one farm out of two-three belongs to the middle peasants.

v.  Big Peasants: They are capitalist entrepreneurs in agriculture and employ hired labour as a rule. They are connected with peasantry only in their low cultural level, habits of life, and the manual labour they themselves perform on the farms.

vi.Big landowners: They exploit wage labour and small peasantry. They do not do any sort of manual labour. According to Lenin, they are rich financial magnates, exploiters and parasites.

Thus, in Lenin’s classification of agrarian classes, we find three related criteria – possession of land, basis of production with respect to labour (hiring versus self-employment), and associated levels of satisfaction of subsistence by the rural poor versus the production of surplus above subsistence which can be invested by rural exploiters.

Another major influential work relating to the understanding of agrarian classes has been Mao’s work titled ‘How to differentiate the classes in Rural Areas’. It is important to remember that Mao was engaged in a revolutionary political project in the 1930s, and for him, identification of agrarian classes was pre-eminently a political exercise. However, scholars in the field of peasant studies have been heavily influenced by the works of Lenin and Mao. It is only appropriate that we look at Mao’s classification. Needless to add, Mao’s classification reflects the then prevailing conditions in agriculture in China, which were qualitatively different from those of Russia.

According to Mao, the following five-fold classification of peasant classes can be thought of:

i. Landlords: They are engaged in collection of land rent, and have economic interests in lending, industry, commerce. They own land, and do not engage in labour themselves.

ii.Rich peasants: They either own land or take land on rent. They have liquid capital and better instruments of production. They do engages in labour themselves but encourage various forms of exploitation-hiring of labourers, land rent, lending money, industry and commerce.

iii.  Middle peasants: They can either own or take all the land they have on rent. They possess a fair number of farm implements and depend on their own labour. Generally, they do not sell their labour power. They do not exploit others but they do get exploited through their payment of land rent and interests on land.

iv. Poor peasants: They have a few odd farm implements and hire themselves out. They get exploited through land rent and interests on loans as well as through the sale of part of their labour power.

v.  The workers: Workers have neither land norany farm implements. They survive mainly or wholly by selling their labour power We should notice that Mao’s analysis is more in synch with the idea of pauperization (de-peasantisation) rather than proletarianisation. Mao’s main focus is on rent exploitation whereas Lenin’s focus is more on hiring of labour.

The Agrarian Question in India

Under the overall influence of Marxism, scholars have elaborated on the agrarian question in India in relation to the political analysis and strategy of Marxist politics and Marxist agrarian political economy. Byres (1996, 2003) and Bernstein (1996) have been in the forefront of the debate on the agrarian question in India. Their scholarly interventionsposit three issues regarding agrarian question (Lerche et al, 2013: 338). First, agrarian question is to be seen as a political issue. Second, it revolves around the politics of class struggle and the formation of strategic class alliances for the socialist transformation. That is to say, the task is to identify the right type of alliance among the urban labour, rural wage labour, and the poor peasantry for democracy and socialism. Lastly, it is about the place of agriculture in the transformation of society from the agrarian to the industrial. In other words, it is about forms of agrarian transition.

Evidently, there is no uniform road-map for agrarian transition. As Byres (1991, 1996) argues, the countries of Europe have followed distinctive types of agrarian transition depending on their historical specificities. These differences arose from regional variationsin terms of varying class-based relations in agriculture and their association with overall class dynamics (ibid, 2013: 338). In the Indian case, it primarily means an assessment of the spread of capitalism in rural India. Besides, it is about the nature of class struggle and left politics.

Conversely, the agrarian question is related to a mapping out of the constraints for the development of capitalism in countryside.Scholars like AmitBhaduri (1973), Nirmal Chandra (1974), Pradhan Prasad (1973) and R.S. Rao (1970) see the existence of semi-feudal relations hampering the growth of capitalism in rural India. In semi-feudal relations, landlords lease out their lands to the poor peasants, and provide credits to the peasants. After the harvest, the landlords get a lion share of the produce and high interest rates from the peasants. The peasants are always entrapped in perpetual indebtedness. Moreover, landlords do not feel the need to go for intensive cultivation or capitalist mode of production. In fact, the landlords have no incentive to invest. Daniel Thorner (1956) calls it a ‘built-in depressor’ (Thorner 1955).

Of course, there are scholars like Harriss, Basu and Das (2009) who underline thedecline of landlordism and the diminishing, control of landlords over the peasants. One also sees the signs of reverse tenancy when large land holders who have the means to invest in agricultural production seek land on rent from the small landholders. But this is a phenomenon restricted to Green Revolution areas. In general, small and marginal farmers do not depend on large farmers in the old way. The nature of family managed farms has equally changed along with the expansion of non-agricultural economy in rural India. Migration is an added variable. This does not, however, mean the complete transformation of the surplus labour of agriculture into working class or proletariat. According to Harriss, the agricultural labourers are only partially proletarianized because they try to keep agriculture as their security (ibid, 2013: 342). Basu and Das (2009: 158) are of the opinion that the Indian agrarian system is no more semi-feudal in character. Land and labour are commoditised, peasants sell their produce at the market, and surplus is now generated in different ways including capitalist profit, mercantile profit and interest on credit.

Lerche (2013) looks at the agrarian question in the context of Green Revolution in Indian agriculture. According to him, surplus is accumulated by both big and small capitalist farmers even as the inequality between the large landowners and landless has increased. The issue of bonded labour too figures prominently in these debates. Apparently, it is seen as a semi feudal feature. However, Guérin (2009) argues that bonded labour today is a capitalist phenomenon (ibid, 2013: 343). According to her, the bonded labour relations show the state of un-freedom and, un-freedom itself is a matter of capitalism. Debt-bondage helps the capitalist to gain control over a large, cheap labour force. Guérin’s (2009) arguments support Harris’s thesis mentioned earlier. On the other hand, Rao (2008: 254) posits that Indian capitalism is ‘canonical’ capitalism. It means capitalism in Indian agriculture is subjugated by industrial production and wage-labour relations. Lerche et al (2013) argue that capitalism in India has a historically defined route similar to the one followed in other parts of the world. It transforms existing pre-capitalist relations, and at the same time, it makes selective use of the features of these relations.

In essence, the agrarian transition refers to role of capitalist agriculture in industrial development. According to the classical agrarian transition model (Byres 1996), raw material, capital, and labour power come from agriculture for industrial development. On the other hand, large rural population constitutes markets for industrial production. Now the question is whether a classical agrarian transition is still present under the neoliberal globalization or not. In this context, McMichael argues that the main contradiction today is between the global corporate food regime including multinational agribusiness monopolies and supermarkets, and the peasantry (McMichael, 2008). The small scale agrarian production is subordinated to the international capital. Such contradictions disallow peasant differentiation, and class formation within the peasantry. On the contrary, Henry Bernstein argues that the classical agrarian question has lost its significance for capital (Bernstein, 2011: 449). Under globalization capital and commodity are no longer national as they have become international. Industrial development depends more on international investment and global markets. Therefore, the relation between the national agriculture and national industry is irrelevant. Industrialization no longer depends on capital accumulation and capital transfer from agriculture. Likewise, Lercheasserts that classical pattern of agrarian transition does not fit with the Indian context (Lerche et al, 2013: 344). Industrial growth in India gets supports from liberalization and globalization as international markets have been opened up for investment. Therefore, industrialization in India does not require a prosperous capitalist agriculture to promote growth in the rest of the economy.

Conclusion: Contrasting Conceptualisations

In theoretical terms, the agrarian question revolves around the issues of class differentiation within the peasantry (Marxist) and the conceptualisation of a‘Specific Peasant Economy’ (Populism).In general, the Marxist school of thought argues that with increasing commoditization and commercialisation in agrarian societies, a process is set in motion whereby rural producers are set apart into many classes. This is a process of change which tends to create a small agrarian bourgeoisie or class of capitalist farmers, either from former landlords or from among the richer peasants, and a large class of agricultural labourers who might or might not retain small allotments of land for their own use. In between, there is a middle peasantry or a class of more or less self-sufficient household producers, who use mainly their own household labour and are little involved in selling their labour power, and who have sufficient resources to provide for their own livelihood requirements. This classtends to be squeezed out progressively as the process of differentiation gathers momentum.

The other school of thought looks at peasants as rural producers who produce for their own consumption and for sale, using their own or household labour, though the hiring and selling of labour power is also quite possible and compatible with peasant society. Peasants possess a degree of independent control over the resources and the equipment they use in production, peasants may also be described as a part society defined by their subordinate relationship to external markets, the state, and the dominant culture. The peasantry are subordinate to other classeswithin the state and may be required to yield some tribute to them. The other school argues that even as the development of commodity production is important, there remains a distinctive peasant economy of small producers who are not separated from their means of production and who retain a degree of control over land and household labour beyond the threats of decimation. Peasants survive essentially because they are able to supply goods more cheaply than capitalist farmers. Even if there is differentiation amongst the peasantry, this is brought about by cyclical processes so that there is no long term developing trend of polarisation of classes (Chayanov). Others, however, accept the existence of persistent inequalities in peasant society and concede that a secular process of differentiation might take place, but still maintain that peasants in the sense of household producers retaining some degree of independent control over land and labour may survive (Shanin). Other writers have explained how despite capitalist development in agriculture, tendencies towards the polarisation of peasant classesmay be weakened because of factors such as the breakup of large units at inheritance, and the reproduction of small scale holdings by the interventions of merchant’s or money lender’s capital, or in the most recent past, of state capital. The persistence of small peasant farms may serve the interests of capital very well.

References

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