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Takingthepartofpeasants’:
HitsandMissesHenryBernstein
Paper#1
Apirila–Abril–April24,25,262017
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Takingthepartofpeasants’:HitsandMisses
“...populist practice is concerned with two things: personal
survival andimprovedagriculture.”(Narkiewicz1976,271)
“It is up to the agriculturalists of the whole world, once they
haveunderstood their significance and value and their common
destiny,
touniteforthesakeofthewelfareofthepeople–todefendsociety,toassisttheStateonitswaytopeace,andtoupholdagriculture;thatistosay,bygrowing
food and by the character of their own existence, to fulfil
theprincipal agrarian idea in giving thepeople, the States and
thenations
afirmfoundationforalifeofmaterialandmoralwell-being.”(CentralOfficeof
the International Agrarian Bureau, Prague, 1922, quoted by
Mitrany1961,143)
Introduction
This is a preliminary sketch of parts of a larger paper in
progress which willconsider how convincingly ‘AgrarianMarxism’
andAgrarian Populism- as (socio-)economic theory,
ideologyandpoliticalproject -meet thechallengesofhittingtheir
targets, aswell as their direct confrontations and
contestationswith eachother. Themost celebrated, and
intriguing,historical lociof such confrontationsand contestations
remain Russia from the 1880s into the 1920s, and
south-easternEuropefromthelatenineteenthcentury,andespeciallytheendofWorldWar
I, until World War II. Those instances, and their contemporary
andsubsequentdebates, informmuchof this paper, andareused tohelp
structureexposition. I also aim to restrict references although,
aswill be evident, I
havebenefittedgreatlyfromre-readingtwobooksinparticular:DavidMitrany’sclassic,if
somewhat eccentric, populist work Marx against the peasant (1961,
firstpublished 1951), and Gavin Kitching’s remarkable little
critique of ‘populistdevelopment theory’, Development and
underdevelopment in historicalperspective. Populism, nationalism
and industrialization (revised edition,
1989,firstpublished1982).
‘Hitsandmisses’
inthetitlereferstothemain‘targets’associatedwithAgrarianPopulism
(‘Taking the part of peasants’) towhich this paper limits itself.
This
isimposedbyconstraintsoftimeandspace,butalsoseemsappropriatetothisICASmeetingwhichappearsfirmlyweddedto‘Peasantism’,asMitrany(1961)termsit.At
the same time, it is worthwhile to ask how much agrarian populism
todaydepartsfromthehistoricalconditionsandpreoccupationsofthe‘classic’debatesandconfrontationsindicated-andtheircomplexities.
Ofcourse,theframingby(socio-)economictheory,ideologyandpoliticalprojectisheuristic
and in practice it can be difficult (impossible?) to maintain
secureboundaries between its three components. Both analytically
and empirically(which includes historically) it is useful to
distinguish between the
‘economicsociology’ofagrarianchange,complexenoughinitsdiversityanddeterminations,andits‘politicalsociology’whichaddsfurtherdeterminations,hencecomplexities(Bernstein2010).
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1. (Socio-)economictheory
I begin with some familiar themes from political economy applied
to explorehighly varied trajectories of the development of
capitalism, a centralpreoccupation in both Marxism and classic
(Russian and eastern
European)populismandonwhichtheyclashed:analyticallyonthe
‘necessity’orotherwiseofcapitalistdevelopment,aboveallindustrialization;empiricallyonitsactuality-howfarcapitalismhadproceededinthecountriesconcerned;andprescriptivelyon
its desirability or otherwise, as establishing conditions of
possibility
of‘alternative’paths,by-passingortranscendingfull-blowncapitalism.
Centralelementshereincludeissuesofthedevelopmentoftheproductiveforcesin
farming and agriculturemore widely; economic scale; relationships
betweenagricultureand
industry/industrialization;accumulation;property;markets;
classrelationsanddynamics (exploitationandoppression);and
indeedtoday
‘feedingtheworld’.Herearesomeunavoidablybriefcommentsoneach.
The development of the productive forces in farming, and in
agriculture morewidely, was, of course, a central concern of
classical political economy and itsmodels of accumulation. To
criticize simplistic and reified notions of thedevelopment of the
productive forces in farming, and in agriculture, that
linksthemunconditionally toeconomiesof scale, to technical change
(mechanizationand‘chemicalization’),andhencetoacontinuouslygrowingproductivityoflabour–
characteristic of ‘mechanical’ Marxism – is relatively
straightforward
andnecessary.Atthesametime,thereareissueslurkingherethatagrarianpopulismignorestoitscost.Forexample,therearemany(‘capitalized’)‘familyfarmers’(inboth
North and South) who rely on mechanical and chemical technologies
topursuetheiractivitiesandtoreproducethemselves.
More generally, the productivity of labour remains a central
issue and can, orshould, not be sidestepped with reference to
inherited (‘traditional’) ways offarming, let alone celebration of
its long hours and often backbreaking labour(‘drudgery’
inChayanov’sterm),nortomodesof
‘agro-ecological’farmingwhichareacclaimedfor their labour
intensity.Thewider implications includenot leastthe returns to
farmers and farming households, signalled by ‘models of pricing’and
‘producers’ salaries’ noted in themotivation for this conference.
And
theyalsoconnectwithhowproductivitiesoflabourinfarmingbearonthefeasibilityof‘familyfarmers’feedingthe(restofthe)world.
Indeed, theneed to improve the technicalquality, henceoutput
(andmarketedoutput) of household farmingwas a constant theme in the
deliberations of theclassic (Russian and eastern European)
populists, often tied to issues of scale,whichIcommentonnext.
The agrarian populists of Russia and eastern Europeanweremostly
clear
abouttheseverelimitationsof‘backward’peasantfarming,justastheywerechampionsofthemoralqualitiesofpeasantwaysoflife.Theysaw’backwardness’asderivedfromtinyscalesoffarmingandthe‘primitive’instrumentsoflabouremployed(aswellaslowlevelsoftechnicalcultureandeducation).Economicallyunviablefarmsizecouldbehighlightedbydemographicpressure.Mitrany(1961,129)remarksthatthe‘ironyoftheeasternrevolutionwasthatthebreak-upofthelargeestates
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into millions of peasant holdings [after WWI, HB] was presided
over not byPopulists but by those who stood for the industrial
solution’, with
landredistributionfollowedbyruralpopulationincreaseofnearly30percentbetweenthe
wars in south-eastern Europe (ibid, 120), and with almost no growth
inmarketed production (ibid, 117) – itself a problem for wider
economicdevelopment.
WithlandreformafterWWIinsouth-easternEurope,the‘farmerwastobemadesecure
in his tenure, but the secure tenantwas expected to be a good
farmer’(Mitrany 1961, 110). In the populist vision of the time, the
solution was tocombine individual household farming, equippedwith
sufficient land and othermeans, with economies of scale both
upstream and downstream of farmingachieved through effective
co-operation (though some populists hoped formovement towards
collective production in farming). In short, more
‘scientific’populism (in Mitrany’s term; or ‘neo-populism’ in
Kitching, 1989, for whomChayanovwas the keypioneer)
advocatedbothmuch improved andproductiveindividual family farming,
linked with the wider economy through
supportivenetworksofruralco-operationmanagedbyfarmersthemselves.
Russian populism in the nineteenth century (until the 1880s) was
infused withhostility to industrialization on the model of
‘western’ (European) capitalistdevelopment, and the threat it posed
to an often-idealized peasant existence.Latermore ‘scientific’
populism (or neo-populism) in south-eastern
Europewasmorereceptiveto formsof
industrializationthatcouldsupportpeasant farming,that is, industry
that was smaller-scale, decentralized, used local materials,centred
on the production of means of production and consumption for
thecountryside, and was able to provide employment for peasants
according toagriculturalseasons.The lastwasexplicitlyargued
intermsofdealingwithrural‘surplus labour’, and more specifically
supplementing incomes derived fromhouseholdfarming.
Evidently, one of the principal differences between conditions
then and nowconcerns the trajectories, extent, forms and effects of
capitalist development.Russia and south-eastern Europe in the
periods noted were
predominantly‘peasantsocieties’ofakindwhichnolongerexistsinthetwenty-firstcentury.Itisnot
surprising, then, that their intellectuals were preoccupied with
paths
ofdevelopmentpreferabletothatof‘thewest’,alsoacentralmotifindebatesaboutdevelopment
inAsiaandAfricaafter independence fromcolonial rule. (This
isaprincipal themeof Kitching 1989; and is elaborated in the caseof
Russia at theturn of the twentieth century by Shanin 1985). Today,
alongside the
strong(sometimesapparentlydefinitive)veinofagro-ecologyinpopulisttheory,isthereanysystematicthoughtonindustryandindustrializationotherthanageneralizedantipathy
on one hand, and, on the other, specific critiques of
‘industrialized’agriculturalproductionmethods?Onewondersabouttheplaceofindustry,whattypesof
industry and their linkages to agriculture, andurban ‘classesof
labour’(andindeedruralproletarians),inthecontemporarypopulistimaginary.
At the same time, an enduring continuity between earlier and
contemporarypopulistsistheiroppositiontoagriculture,anditsfarmers,servingasakeysourceof(‘primitive’)accumulationfor
industrialization,whetherframedwithinnotionsof ‘national’
development (Kitching 1989) or now increasingly ‘globalized’,
aconcern brought up-to-date with reference to David Harvey’s
‘accumulation
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through dispossession’ (2003) and its often promiscuous
invocations (althoughbuildinga ‘national’ industrial accumulation
fund isno longeraprincipalgoal inthiseraofneo-liberalism).
Another key socio-economic theme centres on property, above all
peasantproprietorship of land. This is manifested in movements for
land reform (andaccess to ‘commons’), of course, then and now, in a
wide range of historicalconditions: anti-‘feudal’ movements,
anti-capitalist movements, and whetherpeasants’property rights in
landarearguedon thebasisof individual tenureorsome or other form of
‘community’ ownership. A potent thread in populistthought is the
unity assigned to ownership of land and the ‘family’ labour
thatworksit:the‘familylabourfarm’theorizedbyChayanov.ThisisacentralbeliefofMitrany(amongmanyothers),whosuggestssomewhatproblematicallythat‘theclaimtoindividualownershipmaybelogicallyrootedinthenatureofagriculturalproductionitself’(1961,125),andmoregenerallySchumacher(1973)thatthereis‘something
natural and healthy about...the private property of the
workingproprietor’(citedbyKitching1989,96).
Thisraisesvariousissuesespeciallyoncetheassumptionisdroppedthatfamily(orpatriarchal)
individual ownership of land is reproduced seamlessly
acrosssuccessivegenerationsofthesamefamiliesoffarmers–moreplausibleperhapsin
the time of Chayanov, his predecessors and contemporaries, than
today,precisely because of theways inwhich capitalism has spread
since then. If
theassumptionisrelaxed,orformulatedasamatterforinvestigation(ratherthanana
priori), then other possibilities arise, notably the outright or
implicitcommodificationof land: theemergenceof ‘formal’ (de jure)or
‘vernacular’
(defacto)commodityexchangesoflandandallthatcanentail.
Thisthenbringsus,inhaste,toanothermuch-contestedarea,thatofmarketsin‘peasant’
reproduction. The basic model of Chayanov is one of
simplereproductionof the ‘family labour farm’.Once this is
separated
fromnotionsof‘subsistence’asexclusivelyorprimarilyself-provisioning,thenitpointstoissuesofsimplereproductionsecuredatleastpartlyandoftenlargelythroughinvolvementinmarkets:toobtaininstrumentsofproduction(andalsoland,above)andcredit(indebtedness
isoneof themostwidespreadandcontinuousburdenson familyfarmers in
the different times and places of modern history), and to sell
farmproducts.Chayanovwaswellawareofthis;hismodelisnotoneof‘subsistence’inany
narrow sense. The big question then became, and remains, even more,
aconcern today: how do different forms of (necessary) peasant
involvement inmarkets help or hinder their reproduction? How might
it generate differencesbetweenpeasants?
Thereis,ofcourse,avastliteratureonsuchquestions,field-basedandempiricalaswellasmanifestedintheoreticalcontention.KitchingfollowsMarx’sresponsetovisionsofsocialismasakindofsmallproducers’(peasantsandartisans)marketutopia,citingMarx’sconclusiononProudhonandothersthat
Theyallwantcompetitionwithoutthelethaleffectsofcompetition.Theyall
want the impossible, namely the conditions of bourgeois
existencewithout thenecessary consequencesof those conditions.
(Kitching1989,32,seealso136)
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Kitching’sfifthchapteron‘Neo-populisminmoderndevelopmenttheory’focuseson
four emblematic sets of texts: those of Julius Nyerere, the ILO’s
WorldEmploymentProgrammepapersofthe1970s,MichaelLipton’sWhypoorpeoplestaypoor(1977),andSchumacher’sSmallisbeautiful(1973).HisdiscussionoftheILO
and Lipton shows, implicitly, that their versions of what might be
called‘appliedpopulistdevelopmenttheory’–appliedtoemploymentgenerationbytheILO,and
to small farmerdevelopmentbyLipton– followa
logicofneo-classicaleconomics.Whatholdsbackadvance
inthetwoareastheyaddress is, ineffect,political ‘interference’
withmarkets, attributed to ‘big leap’
import-substitutingindustrializationinthefirstcase,and‘urbanbias’inthesecond.Pro-employmentandpro-smallfarmerpoliciestohelperadicatepovertythusamounttothe‘right’politicalinterventionstorepairmarket‘distortions’thatarisefromthewrongsortof
political interventions, thereby restoring market ‘efficiency’.
(Schumacherunusuallyarguedexplicitlyforreducinglabourproductivity,alsoimplicitintheILOanalysis,andhadastrongecologicaldimension.)
This is cited not to suggest that there is any single correct
theorization, andpractice,adequatetopeasantprogress throughmarket
integration,but that the‘market question’ continues to generate
tensions and ambiguities in agrarianpopulismtoday.
I now arrive at the theme where so much of the above and its
contestationsconverge, namely class relations and their dynamics of
exploitation andoppression, including,of course,patriarchy,
andethnic and
religiousdifferencesanddivisions,oftenstronglyassociatedwithcolonialand
imperial legacies (as
inpartsofTsaristRussiaandsouth-easternEurope).
Atitsbroadest,agrarianpopulismviewsallfarmersdeemedtobe‘familyfarmers’as
belonging to a single class, or at least a distinctive social
formation withcommon interests: ‘peopleof the land’.This raises
thequestionof ‘whoarethefarmers?’ in social terms
(Bernstein2014),especiallywhenaunitary (orat leastunified) quality
(‘essence’?) is applied across the extremely diverse range
offarmers in the world today, from, say, hoe-farmers in sub-Saharan
Africa to(capitalized) family farmers inNorthAmerica. ‘Family’
farmers inNorthAmericaandwesternEuropemaybeheartenedby thebelief
that theypursue the
same(benign)‘logic’ashoe-farmersinsub-SaharanAfrica,thelatterlessso:whythenaretheyrichandwearepoor?WhattheyhaveincommonmightbetheorizedinChayanovianterms,the(simple)reproductionoffarminghouseholds,informedbytheir
striving for autonomy, at itsmost extremepostulated as a
trans-historical(which is to say, ahistorical) universal. Or
theymight share oppression by,
andresistanceto,thepressuresexertedonthembylarge-scalecapitalupstreamanddownstream
of farming, associated with contemporary conditions of
giantagribusiness (and finance capital too). Thus ‘farmer’ vs
capital, with ‘classes
oflabour’(wageworkers)tendingtodisappearfromthepictureofclassrelationsincapitalism.
As class is a relation, any claims for class or class-like
social qualities
entailmutuallyconstitutiverelationsbetweenclasses,whichchange,especiallyintheirforms,
indifferenthistoricalconditions.ForRussianandsouth-easternEuropeanradical
intellectuals, bothpopulists andMarxists,manypeasants
(themajority?)theyaddressedthroughtheagrarianquestionsoftheirtimeswerestillexploitedand
oppressed largely through ‘semi-feudal’ or ‘neo-feudal’ exactions
of landed
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property(andstates),aconditionhighlightedbythelimitedgains(ifany)formostpeasantsoftheformalabolitionofserfdom(‘emancipation’)inRussiain1861andsubsequently
elsewhere in the east, and which fed into their politics.
TeodorShanin 1986, among others, argues that the dramatic uprisings
of
Russianpeasantsinthe1905-7revolutionledLenintoafundamentalreappraisaloftheirpoliticalrole.
Nonetheless,andas iswell-known,Lenin
(1964/1899)hadearlierpioneered
theinvestigationofclassdifferentiationamongRussianpeasantsaspartofthewidedevelopmentofcapitalismthere.
Whetherhisaccountwasempiricallyaccuratehas been questioned by some
formidable scholarship, suggesting a salutarywarningabout leaping
froma shakyeconomic sociology toanevenmore shakypoliticalsociology.
However,Lenin’sanalyticcontinuestobetestedandappliedinmuchmaterialist
work on agrarian change, and indeed in ways that tend toabolish the
application of inherited notions of ‘peasant’ farming,
economy,society, and the like, to today’s conditions of global
capitalism. One approach,developed inmyownwork, is
toseethosedesignatedas ‘family’ farmers intheworld today as mostly
either petty commodity producers, constituted as acontradictory
combination of capital and labour, or rurally based ‘classes
oflabour’ whose reproduction is necessarily secured through wage
labour,
evenwhencombinedwithadegreeof‘ownaccount’farming(Bernstein2010).
Why,andhow,classdifferentiationoffarmers
isproblematicfortoday’scallstoagrarianmovementsheldtorepresentall(‘family’)farmers,‘peopleoftheland’,isconsideredfurtherbelow.However,itcanbenotedherethatissuesconcerningpropertyinland,andreproductionthroughintegrationinmarketsandcommodityrelations,
however briefly stated above, at least raise some complications
foragrarian populism. This is nicely illustrated by an incident
reported in
Venturi’sencyclopaedicaccountofRussianpopulismandsocialismfrom1825to1881.Atameetingconvenedbynarodnikswho‘wenttothepeople’inthe1870s,andwhotoldassembledvillagersofapost-revolutionidyllwhentheywouldownland,oneresponsewas‘Oh,howwonderfulwhenweshallredistributeland!Ishallhiretwoworkers
and live like a lord!’ (Venturi 1966, 505). There is no reason to
believethat peasant was typical but he was certainly familiar with
the notion, and
nodoubtthepractice,ofindividuallyownedprivatelandworkedwithwagelabour.
2. Ideology
Thesketchsofaralreadypointstoelementsofideology,whichincludestrugglesforsocialandenvironmental
justice;otherphilosophicalandcultural issues;andthe matter of whose
interests ‘alternatives’ (to capitalism) are imagined
orconstructedtoserve.
Socialandenvironmentaljustice
The declaration from the Central Office of the International
Agrarian
Bureau,basedinPrague,in1922,quotedattheheadofthispaper,servesaswellasany,as
a brief statement of a global ideological vision Indeed, it could
serve as thecharterofLaVíaCampesina today,apart fromsome traces
characteristicof itshistoricalmoment,notably itsreferenceto
‘theState’and ‘States’,andwiththetopicladditionof
thevirtuesofagro-ecologypracticedbyat
leastavanguardof‘peasant’farmers.
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Otherphilosophicalandculturalissues
This is unfortunately expressed here as a kind of residual and
cannot be takenfurther in this paper. Rather its serves to signal
the many, rich and
eclecticphilosophicalandculturalideasinwhichpopulismaboundsthroughoutitsvariedhistories,sometimesattheexpenseofanyplausible(socio-)economictheory,asVenturi(1966)arguesformuchRussianpopulisminthenineteenthcentury(andKitching1989doesfor‘populistdevelopmenttheory’generally).Thatwaslargelya
product of the intelligentsia, both resident (often in prison and
internal exile)and emigré. Venturi traces the ideas of, and
contestations between, thoseinfluencedatdifferent
timesbyGermanromanticism, theworkofProudhon,byother socialist
currents and increasinglyover timebyMarx, byMarx’s
anarchistopponents, of whom Bakunin and Kropotkin were leading
figures, and so on.Moreover, there were influences of Slavophil
historians on notions of peasanttradition in Russia that bore on
heated disputes concerning the obschina
orRussianpeasantcommune,itsfortunesinthefaceofcapitalistdevelopment,andits
prospects for the future. Arcane as some of these debatesmay seem,
theyprovide linkswith some persistent tropes of populist discourse
today, not
leastclaimsoverlandandwaysoflifeofindigeneity(includingintheBasquecountry?),and
issues of ‘community’ as an organizing principle of farming and
social life(below).
Inwhoseinterests?
The declaration from 1922 quoted above is striking in its belief
that‘agriculturalistsofthewholeworld’arethepotentialsavioursofhumanity.Thisisechoedinsomepopulistbeliefstodaythatagro-ecologicalfarming,togetherwith‘foodsovereignty’andthelike,
istheprimarykeytosavingtheplanetandall itspeople from the social
injustices and ecological destructions of capitalism. Eventhough
‘people of the land’ are no longer amajority of theworld’s
population,unlikewhatpopulistscouldargueacenturyorsoago
(Mitrany1961,148), theycarrythepromiseofa ‘world-historicalsubject’
forourtimes.
Ineffect,theyarepromotedtothestatusoftheuniversal‘class’oncebestowedontheproletariatinMarxian
socialism. This moves from the plane of the ideological to my
thirdcomponent,agrarianpopulismasapoliticalproject.
3. Politicalproject
In many ways, this can be regarded as the crux of the matter,
and a centralconcern of themotivation of this conference, at which
I expect to learn aboutcurrent formsof thinkingandactivism
inthepursuitof thatproject
fromotherswhoknowfarmoreaboutthemthanIdo.InviewofthatIlimitmyobservationsinthissection.
Politicalproject(s) includethefamiliar
issuesofthekeyclasses/groups‘targeted’for mobilization; ‘community’
as a basis for solidarity and action; politicalalliances;
strategies and tactics. It is the terrain on which Marxist
agrarianprogrammes have at best a varied historical record. Has
agrarian populism
abetterrecord,and(or)doesitpromisemoreintoday’sconditions?
Constituencies
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In principle, ‘people of the land’ - producers of food - is the
encompassingconstituency of contemporary agrarian populism, as
remarked above. As allpeople are also consumers of food (albeit
divided by class and culturaldifferences), they have, or can and
should have, an interest in the food that isavailable to them:how
it is produced,where it comes from, its variety,
quality,cost,andsoon-keyconcernsoftheprojectof‘foodsovereignty’.
A central feature of this project is (and should be) the
recognition that not allfarmers are committed to the practice of
agro-ecological and autonomousactivity,and indeednotall ‘family’
farmers.Leavingasidecapitalist
farmers,and‘family’farmerswhopursuespecializedcommodityproductionandaccumulation(forwhomitmightpromiseameasureof‘autonomy’),thosecommittedtoagro-ecologyarelikelytobea‘vanguard’inthevastlydifferentplacesandconditionsof‘family’farming–indeedforsomepopuliststhisisamatterof‘choice’byfarmers(and
thosewhowould support them). Thepurposeof theproject,
indeedwhatmakes it a project, is to demonstrate to ‘family’ farmers
the virtues of agro-ecological production, and to enlist them in
themovement. If the ‘art of (agro-ecological) farming’ is used to
construct apolitical (rather than socio-economic)definition of
‘peasants’ as those committed to it, then they constitute
thespearhead(‘vanguard’?)oftheprojectwhichdrawsinmoreandmore‘peasants’,old
and ‘new’, as it advances: a valid characterisation of the project
of La VìaCampesina?Thematter remains,ofcourse,ofhowtobasetheproject
insocio-economicconditionsandtheiranalysis,necessarytoassessingitsfeasibility.
This perspective may be conceptualized, and classified, in terms
of a series ofwidening concentric circles, from working with small
groups of farmers inparticular locales, with all their ecological
and social (including market)specificities, to regionaland
‘national’organizations,programmesanddemands,to the formation and
activities of a strategically ambitious transnational
socialmovementlikeLaVíaCampesina.
Community
‘Community’ is oneof themostpromiscuouslyused terms in social
scienceandindeedpublicdiscourse,hencealwaysneedstobeinterrogated.Ittypicallymeanscommunity
of identity, sometimes described as ‘community of fate’,
orcommunity of interest, or, ideally for certain purposes, not
least in agrarianpopulism,aunityofthetwo
‘Community’ isawidespread tropeofagrarianpopulismtoday,and
isespeciallysignificant as it seems to point a way beyond working
with
(socio-economic)modelsofindividualhouseholdfarming(whichisthecoreofChayanoviantheory).Invocationsof‘community’signifytheclaim,orhope,thattherearesolidaritiesofruralgroups,sufficientlyhomogenousandequal
intheir
internalsocialrelations,thatcanbedrawnontofacilitatetheagrarianpopulistprojectatlocallevels–orthatcanbeconstructedforthatpurpose.Theformerrestsonnotionsofpre-given(‘traditional’)qualitiesandcapacitiesofruralcommunity(typicallyembeddedinaculturalfoundation)asabasisofco-operation,and,asnotedabove,receiveditsmostintenseattention,andcontestation,inthecaseoftheRussianobschina(ormir).Thiswasacorporateentity
responsible forallocating land
fromacommonstocktoitsmemberhouseholds,ideallyaccordingtotheirneeds,notleastfamilysize
and location in the cycle of household reproduction, highlighted in
the
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Chayanovian notion of demographic differentiation (as opposed to
classdifferentiation). The obschina also exercised other functions
of village
self-government,andwasresponsibletothestatefortaxesandotherobligations.Itisworth
noting here the interest in the obschinaof the lateMarx, as part of
hismoregeneralconcernwith‘primitive’communityanditsplaceinsocialevolution.(seeShanin1983forthevariousdraftsofMarx’scorrespondencewiththeRussianrevolutionarypopulistVeraZasulich,andanumberofcommentaries).
However,thesecondkindofuseindicatedabovemaynotneedtoclaimsomeorotherpre-givenqualityasabasisofpeasanteconomicorganization(co-operation,mobilization)butfocusesratheronhow‘community’canbeconstructedaspartof
the political project, by farmer activists, outside sympathizers,
or somecombination of the two. This then entails some conscious
effort to overcomedivisions internal toparticular ‘communities’ –of
class, gender, generation,
andotherdifferentiation–toachievethegreatergood.Thisisanareaofwhichthereare
‘emblematic instances’, as I called them elsewhere (Bernstein
2014), in theliteratures of La Vìa Campesina and ‘food sovereignty’
and no doubt moreexampleswillbepresentedatthisconference.
Politicalalliances
Beyond alliances between farmers constructed through the
diffusion of andeducation in agro-ecological farming, and of the
means to establish it, andthrough activism and organizing within
and between ‘communities’, there
areissuesofconnectingwithnon-farmers:‘classesoflabour’inbothcountrysideandtown.
Some scholar-activists are more sensitive to class differences in
thecountryside(forexample,EdelmanandBorras,2016),buthaveyettoformulateapoliticsofdealingwithit?Thisappliessimilarlytoconnectingwithurban‘classesof
labour’,whosefrequentconditionsof
immizerationandinsecuritymeansthattheyaredriventoobtainfoodatthelowestpossibleprices(andlowestqualities).There
are many instances in the histories of agrarian populism when it
waspresented, across a wide ideological spectrum, as the
alternative to bothcapitalism and socialism, and to political
formations based on the interests
ofcapitalandlabour.Arethereexamplesofthistoday?
More directly (and pragmatically?) there is the pursuit of
alliances
withenvironmentalmovements,insomecaseswithpoliticalpartiesandgovernments,and
lobbyingactivity indifferent typesof
internationalarenas,plusadistinctiveprocessoftryingtogetadeclarationof‘Peasants’Rights’adoptedbytheUN.Thisconnectsthenwithissuesofstrategiesandtactics.
Strategiesandtactics
While aware of strategic positions and tactical practices in
agrarian
populismtoday,Iprefertoleavetheirdiscussionatthisconferencetothosewhoarebetterinformed
about them than I am, and indeedwho are committed to developingand
advancing strategy and tactics of greater and lesser scope and
ambition(across the concentric circles noted above). Much of this
political work isnecessarily pragmatic much of the time – what
works? what works better?
inwhatconditions?–andpresentsamovingtarget,ofcourse.
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4. Agrarianpopulism:hitsandmisses
Agrarianpopulismthenandnow
Theconditions,formsandtrajectoriesofagrarianchangeintheworldsoftoday’scapitalismdifferagreatdeal
fromthose
thatpreoccupiedearliergenerationsofpopulistthinkersandactivists,notleastinnineteenthandearlytwentiethcenturyRussiaandfurtherafieldineasternandsouth-easternEurope.Akeybaselineforinvestigatingandunderstandingdifferencesbetween(‘family’)farmersacrosstheworld
today ishowtheyare incorporated in–and ‘resist’ -
theongoingunevendevelopmentofcapitalismanditsalwayscontradictorydynamics.
Itstrajectoriesare highly diverse, of course, with deep historical
roots, although the commonthread – the general theme from which
different histories weave complexvariations (to
paraphraseGilsenan1982) – is the commodification of
productionandreproduction(elaboratedinBernstein2010).
Today commodification has proceeded, however unevenly, at every
site fromvillages to the global capitalist economy. ‘Peasant
societies’ of the nineteenthcentury, and well into the twentieth
century in some zones of the world,
andwhichhadstartedtobindpeasantsintocommodityrelationswithincontinuing(ifchanging)
forms of ‘semi-feudalism’ and ‘neo-serfdom’ – of endogenous
andcolonial provenance – no longer exist. Perhaps the most common,
and
leastimplausible,applicationof‘peasantsociety’todayistothevillageorrurallocality,and
(moreof a stretch, analytically) inChayanoviannotionsofwhat
constitutespeasant‘behaviour’(and‘choice’?).Itisnowimpossibletodesignateas‘peasantsocieties’
national entities shaped only marginally by industrial production
andurban concentrations, and by other (non-agrarian) classes,
whether stronglyevidentwithincountriesand/or for
thepoorestcountrieseffectedthroughtheirintegrationininternationaleconomy.
Populist rediscoveries and reconstructions of the ‘family’
farmer thus have toplace her and him in the diverse and mutating
conditions of contemporarycapitalism.Moreover (asabove) ‘family’
farmersareno longeramajorityof theworld’s population, and even less
so if (i) many so designated are
betterunderstoodasrurallybased‘classesoflabour’,(ii)onlyaminority(the‘vanguard’)exemplify
agro-ecological farming with family labour (and are surplus
foodproducers?).
Therearesomeothermorespecificdifferencesbetweenagrarianpopulismthenandnow.Perhapsthemostsignificantisthestrong,almostdefinitive,framingofagrarianpopulismtodaybyitsecologicalconcerns.Interestingly,this
isbuilt
intotheappealofLaVíaCampesinatosomefarmersintheNorthaswellasSouth(adivision
that, in any case, the notion of ‘new peasantries’, argued from
aChayanovian perspective, would transcend). This certainly marks a
break from‘classic’ populism; despite the appeal to a
globalmovement of
‘agriculturalists’quotedabove,the‘Peasantleaders[ofsouth-easternEurope,HB]neverassumedthat
that theirviewshadanyvalidity for industrializedcountries’
(Mitrany1961,156).
Finally, there are, of course, vastly different circumstances of
political
context.Thenthereweremoreandlessintensestrugglesbetweencontendingideas,andthe
political forces organized around them - agrarian populist and
(Marxian)socialist – in conditions of Tsarist autocracy and the
incomplete and extremely
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fragile new ‘democracies’ of eastern and south-eastern Europe
afterWWI. Thecourseof such struggles, as always, tookmany twists
and turns,
unexpectedbythetheoriesandstrategies,practicesandtactics,ofthoseengagedinthem.NowthereislittleinthewayofseriousMarxianpoliticalorganizationandactivismonlarger
scales, but a variety of ‘anti-capitalisms’ including agrarian
populism andradicalenvironmentalisms.
Tosummarize,thereareseveralstrategicdifferencesbetweenagrarianpopulismthenandnow.Oneistoday’secologicalframingwhichfocusesattentiononfarmproductionandhowitisdone(adeparturefromtheprimacyofdistributionoverproduction,
argued to be characteristic of populism by Kitching 1989,
amongothers). Another, somewhat counter-intuitively, is relatively
less emphasis onproperty rights in land, despite its centrality to
some topical concerns, notably‘land-grabbing’ which is a major
theme in agrarian populism, and despite theongoing commodification
of land and its effects for ‘peasant’ reproduction
anddifferentiation,whichisnot.AthirdisthatLaVíaCampesinaisnotpreoccupiedinthesamewayswithachievinggovernment,letalonestate,power,howevermuchitmightstrivetoinfluencepolicyandhowitisconducted.
Socio-economicrealities
On one hand, the major ‘hit’ of agrarian populism today is its
critique ofcontemporary capitalist farming and agriculture
(comprising all the linkagesupstream and downstream of farming,
dominated by agribusiness andincreasinglyfinancecapital), inwhich
itoverlapswith(some)materialistanalysis(e.g.Araghi2009,Empson2014,Moore2014).Ontheotherhand,its‘miss’isthatthisisprobablystrongeronecologicalgroundsthanintermsofsocialrelations,totheextentthatthelatterareframedtheoreticallyaroundChayanoviannotionsofthe
individual ‘family’ farm and its internal ‘logic’, or politically
by appeals to apotentialunited‘peopleoftheland’.
Someofthereasonsformyscepticismaboutboththese‘framings’wereindicatedabove,
and have been elaborated elsewhere (Bernstein 2014, 2016). Central
tothis are the various, and admittedly complicated, issues
concerning theformations, andmutations, of class relations in the
countryside, ofwhich
someagrarianpopulistsareawarebuttendtoavoidconfrontingevenwhentheysignalthem.
This no doubt stems from agrarian populism as a political
projectcommitted to constructing a unity of (most) farmers,
transcending whateverdifferences might exist between them,
requiring then an awareness of classalliances and their challenges.
One major challenge is that the
potentialconstituenciesofagrarianpopulismarelocateddifferentlywithincapitalism,withdifferentstrainsontheirreproduction.Thisis,insignificantpart,amatterofclassdifferences
between farmers, whether at local levels or far apart
(mediatedthroughthefunctioningoftheinternationaleconomy),whichcanberegardedasubiquitous,ifvaryingwidelyintheirmechanisms,forms,degreesandeffects.
Togiveonetypeof illustration:therearerelatively few,
ifany,ruralhouseholdstoday that are able (or wish?) to reproduce
themselves wholly through
theirfarmingactivity.Thishaslongbeenaconcern,includingamongagrarianpopulists,as
shown above: the issue of rural ‘surplus labour’ as well as
earnings fromfarming inadequate for reproduction. The celebration
of ‘part-time’ farmers(engaged in ‘pluriactivity’), deemed to be
otherwise (or because) committed to
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‘the peasant way’, is not convincing as an overarching
generalization (ordeductionfromfirstprinciples). (As Ihave
longarguedinconversationswithJanDouwevanderPloeg, thismaybe thecase
for some farmers in
someplacesatsometimes,butnotformanyothers–inshort,itisanempiricalquestion).Atthevery
least, the prospects of success of ‘part-time’ farmers rest on
theopportunitiesofandreturnstoworkoutsideoftheirownfarming,hencetothewiderconditionsofeconomicgrowth,andspecifically
labourmarkets,especially‘informal’ labour markets, and above all
for ‘footloose’ labour from
thecountryside(inJanBreman’spotentterm).
Afurtherfactorhereisthedemographic.InotedearlierMitrany’sconcernabouttheeffectsof
ruralpopulationgrowth insouth-easternEurope in the1920sand1930s
following land redistribution but without marked improvement
inproductivity, marketed product, and rural seasonal
(non-agricultural)employment.Theremaywellbeviablefuturesforsome‘family’farmers(aspettycommodity
producers) but hardly for all currently engaged in some or
other(small)scaleoffarming,letalonetheirchildren.Indeed,itseemstomethatmanyof
themore positive ‘emblematic instances’ of small-scale farming
provided
byagrarianpopulismtodaynecessarilyentailconditionsthatapplytoonlyaminorityof
‘peasants’ –whetherdeploying agro-ecological ‘alternative’methods;
able
toexploitorconstructnicheactivitiesand‘nested’markets;toeconomizeoncertain‘inputs’;todiversify(eco-tourismandgastronomy),andthelike–howevermuchenergy
and ingenuity they devote to them.What works for some according
tolocationandactivityinwidersocio-economiccontextswillnotworkforall.
Ideological
ThisislistedforthesakeofcompletenessalbeitIhavelittletoaddheretowhatI’ve
sketched already, including the lacuna (‘miss’) of agrarian
populism in notconfronting capital-labour relations in today’s
capitalism,with all their
variationacrosstheglobaleconomy.‘Classesoflabour’arehardlyrestrictedtothe‘classic’industrial
proletariat but encompass all engaged in the pursuit
oflivelihood/reproduction throughwage employment across different
sites of
thesocialdivisionoflabour,traversingcountrysideandtown,andsooftencombiningwageworkandpettyproduction.
Politicalproject
A final illustration fromMitrany’saccountof
south-easternEuropebetween thewars concerns his explanation for the
defeat there of agrarian
populismwhichgeneratedsomemajorpoliticalpartiesandledorparticipatedingovernmentforshort
periods. Apart from the rivalry with socialist currents and parties
(whoseagrarianprogrammeswereoftenverysimilar,Mitrany1961,171,173)hepointsto
a kindof ‘premature’ formationofpolitical parties -
‘theeasternpeasantriesfound themselves called upon to act as
parties before they had been
educatedpoliticallyandphilosophicallyasamovement’(ibid,142);totheferociouspowerof
reactionwhichcrushed theaspirationsandgainsof
thepeasantparties;and,interestingly, to a kindof anticipationof
‘weaponsof theweak’: ‘Thepeasant’spower lies not in action but in
resistance; that is why he so often proves
anendlesspuzzletorevolutionariesandreactionariesalike.’(ibid,155)
Itisnotformetopronounceonthepoliticalproject(s)ofagrarianpopulismtoday,especiallytheirpoliticalrecordof‘success’and‘failure’(‘hitsandmisses’)onthe
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differentscales/arenaswhichagrarianpopulism‘targets’andinwhichitoperates.I
can only note that unavoidably the actions of agrarian populism
vary in theirradicalism, their scale, and their feasibility, and
itwould bemost interesting
tolearnhowsuchdifferencesareexpressedwithinagrarianpopulismandenter
itsdebatesaboutstrategyandtactics.Further,thearenasinwhichsuccessesmaybeclaimed,
from local experiments and networks in agro-ecological farming
and‘alternative’marketstoinfluencinginternationalarenasandorganizations,saytheFAO,varygreatly,asnotedearlier.Thisisinparttheproblemofthe‘emblematicinstance’:successinonesmall-scaleprojectinagivenplaceatagiventimeshouldnotbeexaggeratedassignifying
thesuccessofwhathappenselsewhere,norofthelargerproject.
Itisnothelpfultocountertendenciestotriumphalisminthestancesandrhetoricof
contemporary agrarian populism with a dismissive stance—there are
only‘misses’-butitisalwaysnecessarytoaskabout,andinvestigate,theclassbasesofparticularfarmers’movements,theirdynamicsandtheirpractices.
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NazioartekoHizketaldiaELIKADURARENETORKIZUNAETANEKAZARITZARENERRONKAKXXI.MENDERAKO:
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LAGUNTZAEKONOMIKOA/APOYAN/WITHSUPPORTFROM
