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Peasant studies in Indian sociology: Marxism and the agrarian question

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Genealogy of a Tradition
  3. Classes in Agriculture: Lenin and Mao
  4. The Agrarian Question in India
  5. Conclusion: Contrasting Conceptualisations

Introduction

Due to the tremendous efforts of many academics who were each in some way influenced by Marxism, peasant studies in India received a significant boost in the 1960s and 1970s. The Marxist tradition's other scholars paved the way for a serious scholarly engagement with the peasantry despite Marx's unkind opinion of the peasants, who he compared to potatoes in a sack of potatoes. In general, Marx viewed peasants as a socially conservative and reactionary force and criticized various aspects of "rural idiocy" in this regard. But in a way, the circumstances in Russia and China forced figures like Lenin and Mao to seriously consider what the peasant studies literature has come to refer to as the "agrarian question.". In this module, we provide a comprehensive overview of the agrarian question's historical development within the Marxist tradition as well as its subsequent extensions and modifications. We also discuss populism, a competing tradition that has its roots in Chayanov's writings. The two opposing traditions of Marxian class analysis and agrarian populism in the study of peasantry are thus introduced to you.

Genealogy of a Tradition

After the communist leader Stalin, the "agrarian question" attracted political and academic interest on a global scale. I. Lenin's 1920 Second Congress (COMINTERN) presentation of the "Preliminary Draft Thesis on the Agrarian Question.". It doesn't imply that there weren't earlier discussions about the subject. The Peasant Question in France and Germany, authored by Marx's associate Frederich Engels, was first published in 1894. Of course, Engels' interest was not in the peasantry per se, but rather in the investigation of favorable political environments for a socialist revolution. The majority of people in the world were peasants, so it was only natural to consider how this group related to various political ideologies, ranging from bourgeois and reactionary political parties to socialist ones. Peasants' reflections on the daily routine could simply not be dissuaded. They had to be taken into account for any political project of the day due to their overwhelming demographic presence—"from Ireland to Sicily, from Andalusia to Russia and Bulgaria"—as well as their crucial role in production and political power. It is significant to note that Marxist engagement with the peasantry began in a blatantly political manner and was considered an important topic of serious discussion and political program in many Western countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, and Russia. The later publication of two significant Marxist works—Karl Kautsky's Die 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 endeavors. Evidently, politics have been a part of the "Agrarian Question" from the beginning. Additionally, due to the various socio-economic and political contexts of the various nations, the elaborations and delineations of the "Agrarian Question" have varied. One of the industrially advanced nations in the 1890s was Germany. It is not surprising that, in the context of Western Europe, the "Agrarian Question" has always been inextricably linked with related issues of parliamentary democracy, socialism, revolution, and the like. The "Agrarian Question" gained a centrality that it had not previously experienced once it was made to converse with the circumstances that were then in place in Russia. It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the Marxist political project in Russia was responsible for giving "the agrarian question" a position of unmatched importance both within and outside of the Marxist tradition.

In fact, the "agrarian question" has been intertwined with contemporary politics ever since the late 19th century. One significant impact on the "agrarian question" was the rise of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany in the middle of the 1880s. In the 1860s, during the First International, there was some basic discussion of agriculture and the peasantry. The ownership of land has been the main topic of discussion. A top political priority for the Marxists was the nationalization of land. Proudhonists and Mutuellists, on the other hand, supported preserving the property rights of peasants. Major discussions on the nationalization of land took place in 1867 at the Lausanne Congress. The Brussels Congress also voted in favor of nationalizing the land in 1868. It was decided that the farmer cooperative, rather than the individual farmer, would lease out the land. Those who were not Marxists, on the other hand, tended to support the notion of a peasantry that could support itself. Marxists typically advocated for the collective control of all means of production, so it was only natural that they would support nationalizing or communal ownership of land. The Marxist agrarian program does not, however, give significant consideration to the nationalization of land in its early stages. Private property land, however, has always been a divisive topic. Marxists have frequently debated whether nationalizing land is consistent with socialism. Or, should one simply approach the problem from a pragmatic standpoint, keeping in mind the need to prevent land fragmentation and achieve economies of scale to make it possible to apply contemporary technology for increased agricultural production. However, such pragmatism would undoubtedly encourage capitalism 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

In his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), Lenin, the first well-known Marxist leader, described how class division among the cultivating peasantry grew under a system of commodity production in a capitalist direction. After serfdom was formally abolished in Russia, he examined how the old lord-serf economy was changing. He studied Russian agriculture at a time when the country's social structure was characterized by feudal production relations that coexisted with and eventually replaced developing capitalist relations. These circumstances led Lenin to prioritize three indices for his description 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 labor and taking rent, is self-employed, or is itself exploited, i. e. , the extent of being exploited or exploiting in relation to self-employment, and (c) whether the household is successful in obtaining a subsistence or generates a surplus that is suitable for investment or whether it fails to do so and becomes entangled in usurious debt. Lenin proposes the agricultural class structure listed below based on these criteria: 
  • 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 twothree 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, three related criteria—land ownership, the basis of production with regard to labor (hiring versus self-employment), and associated levels of subsistence satisfaction by the rural poor versus the production of surplus above subsistence that can be invested by rural exploiters—are found in Lenin's classification of agrarian classes.

Mao's essay, "How to Differentiate the Classes in Rural Areas," has also had a significant impact on our understanding of agrarian classes. It's important to keep in mind that during the 1930s, Mao was working on a revolutionary political project, and for him, classifying people into agrarian or urban groups was primarily a political exercise. But Lenin and Mao's writings have had a significant impact on researchers in the field of peasant studies. We must examine Mao's classification, as is only right. It goes without saying that Mao's classification reflects the then-current agricultural circumstances in China, which were qualitatively different from those in 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
It's important to note that Mao's analysis aligns more with the concept of pauperization (depeasantization) than it does with proletarianization. Lenin places more of a priority on hiring labor, whereas Mao places more of a priority on rent exploitation.

The Agrarian Question in India

Under the general influence of Marxism, academics have elaborated on the agrarian issue in India in relation to the political analysis and strategy of Marxist politics and Marxist agrarian political economy. The discussion of the agrarian question in India has been led by Byres (1996, 2003) and Bernstein (1996). According to Lerche et al. (2013) on page 338, their academic interventions put forth three issues pertaining to the agrarian question. First, it is important to consider the agrarian question in political context. It also focuses on the politics of class conflict and the formation of tactical class alliances for the socialist revolution. To put it another way, the task is to determine the best kind of alliance between urban labor, rural wage labor, and the underclass of peasants for democracy and socialism. Last but not least, it discusses the role that agriculture played in the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society. In other words, it concerns various agrarian transitional forms.

Evidently, there is no set plan for the transition to agrarian society. According to Byres (1991, 1996), the various European nations have experienced different agrarian transitions depending on their unique historical circumstances. These distinctions resulted from regional variations in terms of the various class-based relationships in agriculture and their relationship to general class dynamics (ibid., 2013: 338). In the case of India, it primarily refers to an evaluation of how far capitalism has gotten in the country's rural areas. In addition, it deals with the nature of left politics and class conflict.

On the other hand, mapping out the limitations on the growth of capitalism in rural areas is related to the agrarian question. scholars like Pradhan Prasad (1973), Amit Bhaduri (1973), Nirmal Chandra (1974), and RdotS. According to Rao (1970), the existence of semi-feudal relationships hinders the development of capitalism in rural India. Landlords in semi-feudal relationships give poor peasants leases on their lands and loans to help them pay their debts. After the harvest, the landlords receive a large portion of the harvest and high interest rates from the peasants. The debt cycle that the peasants are stuck in is never ending. Additionally, landowners do not feel the need to adopt a capitalist or intensive farming style. In actuality, the landlords lack any motivation to make an investment. It is referred to as a "built-in depressor" by Daniel Thorner in 1956 (Thorner 1955).

There are, of course, academics who emphasize the decline of landlordism and the waning power of landlords over the peasants, citing Harriss, Basu, and Das (2009) as examples. Reverse tenancy is also evident when big landowners who can afford to invest in agricultural production ask small landowners to rent them land. However, this only occurs in regions that experienced the Green Revolution. In general, small and marginal farmers are no longer as dependent on large farmers. Along with the growth of the non-agricultural economy in rural India, the nature of family-managed farms has also changed. One more variable is migration. However, this does not imply that the surplus labor of agriculture has been completely transformed into the working class or proletariat. Because they attempt to maintain agriculture as their source of security, Harriss claims that agricultural laborers are only partially proletarianized (ibid., 2013: 342). The Indian agrarian system is no longer considered to be semi-feudal in nature, according to Basu and Das (2009: 158). A surplus is now produced in a variety of ways, including capitalist profit, mercantile profit, and interest on credit. Land and labor are commodities, peasants sell their produce at the market.

Lerche (2013) examines the agrarian issue in relation to India's agricultural Green Revolution. He claims that even as the gap between the wealthy landowners and the landless has grown, surplus is being accumulated by both large and small capitalist farmers. In these discussions, bonded labor is a significant topic as well. It seems to be considered a semi-feudal characteristic. Guérin (2009) contends, however (ibid., 2013: 343), that modern-day bonded labor is a product of capitalism. She contends that un-freedom itself is a matter of capitalism and that the state of un-freedom is demonstrated by bonded labor relations. A large, affordable labor force can be controlled by the capitalist with the aid of debt-bondage. Guérin's (2009) arguments are in favor of the earlier-mentioned thesis of Harris. Rao (2008: 254), on the other hand, asserts that Indian capitalism is a form of "canonical" capitalism. Thus, industrial production and wage-labor relations serve as the subordinates of capitalism in Indian agriculture. Lerche et al. (2013) assert that India's capitalism has a historically defined path that is comparable to the paths taken in other parts of the world. At the same time that it transforms current pre-capitalist relationships, it makes selective use of their characteristics.

The agrarian transition essentially refers to the contribution of capitalist agriculture to the growth of industry. According to the traditional agrarian transition model (Byres 1996), agriculture provides the raw materials, capital, and labor needed for industrial development. Large rural populations, however, provide markets for the sale of industrial goods. The issue at hand is whether or not neoliberal globalization is still accompanied by a traditional agrarian transition. In this context, McMichael contends that the primary conflict currently existing is between the peasantry and the global corporate food regime, which includes multinational agribusiness monopolies and supermarkets (McMichael, 2008). Small-scale agricultural production is a slave to global capital. Such contradictions forbid class formation among the peasants as well as peasant differentiation. Henry Bernstein contends, however, that the traditional agrarian question is no longer important in terms of capital (Bernstein, 2011: 449). As a result of globalization, money and commodities are no longer national but rather global. Global markets and foreign investment are more important for industrial development. The relationship between national industry and agriculture is therefore unimportant. Industrialization is no longer reliant on agricultural capital transfer and accumulation.

Similarly, Lerche asserts that the traditional pattern of the agrarian transition does not fit with the Indian context (Lerche et al., 2013: 344). Due to the opening of global markets to foreign investment, liberalization and globalization have a positive impact on India's industrial growth. As a result, India's industrialization does not require a successful capitalist agriculture to stimulate expansion in the rest of the economy.

Conclusion: Contrasting Conceptualisations

In terms of theory, the agrarian question is centered on the concepts of a "Specific Peasant Economy" (Populism) and class differentiation within the peasantry (Marxism).

Generally speaking, the Marxist school of thought contends that rising commoditization and commercialization in agrarian societies set in motion a process whereby rural producers are divided into numerous classes. This process of change tends to produce a sizable class of agricultural laborers who may or may not keep small allotments of land for their own use, as well as a small agrarian bourgeoisie or class of capitalist farmers, drawn from either former landlords or the wealthier peasants. In the middle, there is a middle peasantry, or a class of more or less self-sufficient household producers, who primarily employ their own domestic labor and are not heavily involved in the sale of their labor power and who have enough resources to meet their own needs for subsistence. As the process of differentiation picks up steam, this class has a tendency to gradually disappear.

The opposing school of thought views peasants as rural producers who use their own or household labor to produce goods for their own consumption and for sale, though hiring and selling labor is also perfectly feasible and acceptable in peasant society. Peasants may be characterized as members of a society defined by their subordinate relationship to external markets, the state, and the dominant culture. Peasants also have some degree of independent control over the resources and machinery they use in production. The peasantry is subordinate to other classes within the state and might have to pay them some tribute. The opposing school of thought contends that despite the importance of developing commodity production, there still exists a distinct peasant economy made up of small producers who are not cut off from their means of production and who continue to have some degree of control over their land and household labor even in the face of extinction threats. Peasants are able to produce goods more affordably than capitalist farmers, which is essentially how they survive. Even though there is differentiation among the peasantry, it is the result of cyclical processes, not a long-term trend toward class polarization (Chayanov). Others, however, acknowledge the enduring disparities in peasant society and accept the possibility of a secular process of differentiation, but they continue to believe that peasants in the sense of household producers who retain some level of independent control over land and labor may survive (Shanin). Other authors have explained how, despite capitalist development in agriculture, tendencies towards the polarization of peasant classes may be weakened due to factors like the division 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. Small peasant farms may continue to exist because doing so is very beneficial to capital.

References

  1. Bernstein, Henry. "Is there an agrarian question in the 21st century?." Canadian Journal of Development Studies,Vol. 27, no. 4 (2006): 449-460. 
  2. Bhaduri, Amit. "A study in agricultural backwardness under semi-feudalism."The Economic Journal (1973): 120-137. 
  3. Chandra, Nirmal K. "Farm efficiency under semi-feudalism: A critique of marginalist theories and some Marxist formulations." Economic and political weekly (1974): 1309-1332. 
  4. Hussain, Athar, and Keith Tribe. Marxism and the agrarian question.London: Macmillan, 1983.
  5.  Lerche, Jens, Alpa Shah, and Barbara Harriss‐White. "Introduction: agrarian questions and left politics in India." Journal of Agrarian Change 13, no. 3 (2013): 337-350.
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