Transcript Week 15 Review Peasant Economy and Peasant

Peasant Economy ad Peasant Economy Theories
Part-1
Course name: Peasant Society-Soc 405, 2014-2015
Dr. Kazi Abdur Rouf
Department of Sociology
University of Chittagong
Room #401
Faculty of Social Sciences
Traditional peasant economy and commercial peasant economy
• Traditional economy is voluntary economy that is risk for modern
commercial sustainability.
• Commercial peasant economy is profit oriented surplus agricultural
production economy
• It is in person agricultural production , but in commercial modern
agriculture has absentee land lords
• It has simple agricultural means of production , but commercial agriculture
is about mechanized agriculture
• Traditional agriculture treated backward agriculture having less agricultural
production /productivity compare to modernized agriculture
Traditional peasant economy and commercial peasant economy
• Traditional agriculture nurtures soil fertility and balance ecology
• Modern agriculture uses chemical fertilizers and hybrid seeds that are risk
for sustainable agriculture
• Peasant family unit is the production unit and unit of consumption where
household economy is in separable from production activity
• Here consumption is inseparable from production
• Single family, extended family is the integral part of production strategy for
survival in the traditional peasant society
Peasant family and peasant economy
• Classical rural sociology-peasant society (unit) is characterized by a total
integration of the peasant family’s life and its farming enterprises (T.
Shanan)
• The family provides the work team for the farm. Agriculture enterprises
(ferme) and the household economy (menge)
• Chyanov states that the family economic unit has not hired labor, but the
composition and size of the family is one of the main factors in organizing
the peasant economic unit
Entrepreneurial peasant society
• The entrepreneur can regulate the labor in his unit of production at will ,
but it dictates market
• Modern agriculture is about trade agriculture and commercialization of
agriculture
• However, the head of the family in a peasant unit mainly uses his family
members as labors of his agriculture production
• S. H. Franklin highlights: the head of the peasant unit lacks the freedom of
action (capitalist entrepreneurs) to regulate the labor force.
• It is inhuman force available to find productive employment for all of its
members
• It is challenging to find alternative job opportunities
• However, the main task in traditional peasant society is to maximize the
labor input rather than profit or other indicators of efficiency.
Labor intensity and Chaynov’s declaration
• If the amount of land available increases, the number of working days per
hector will tend to fall
• In the peasant economy, the dominant forces of substitution is between
land and labor
• In contrast, commercial agriculture has dominant capitalist feature
• Here (commercial agriculture) the substitution (exchange) is occur
between capital and labor and between capital and land
• Here resources are land , labor forces , other means of production and so on
• Production technology (production know-how) and mechanisms are the
features of commercial agriculture, but the peasant economy peasant is
self-exploitation of labor force (Chyanov).
• However, peasant is unable to retain distinct agricultural economy through
agricultural production in Bangladesh
The capitalistic and feudal peasant economy
• The capitalistic and feudal peasant economy becomes remnant/rapidly
disappear because of rapid growth of commercial agricultural and
manufacturing
• The commercial agriculture encourages modernization
• Neo-classical economist, do not consider peasant family unit distinct from
agricultural enterprises, but the difference observed based on scales of
production and availability of other factors
• What, how ad how much to produce were considered and governed by the
ratio between the marginal productivity and price factors
• Economic analysis mentioned that subsistence production of peasant is fall
down
The capitalistic and feudal peasant economy continue-2
• Moreover, its social analysis reexamined in terms of traditional agriculture
has less agriculture productivity
• Here two dichotomy-traditional and modern; feudalism and capitalism
• Traditional agricultural economy lack of organizing production (A.V.
Chaynov)
• Criticisms are dualism create a view-peripheral section split into two
section: the traditional, semi-feudal or feudal sector and pre-capitalist
regarded as historical object of a colonial past; and
• Modern, dynamic or capitalist sector-whose task is to absorb and consume
products.
• Modern agriculture creates consumerism in the society
Traditional economy
• Traditional economy, peripheral economy-neglects universal rationality,
maximize of the neoclassical type
• Two types of peasant economy:
• Peasant agricultural economics and
• Commercial of capitalist agriculture
• In Bangladesh context, insertion (inclusion)/articulation of peasant
economy need o be considered within the major main economy-peasant
agricultural economy
• Agricultural farming and agricultural processing industries can generate
rural employment in the villages
• Peasant agricultural economy could reduce rural- urban migration
• Rural peasant economy could reduce rural unemployment, balance ecology
of the villages
• Rural peasant economy could develop sustainable agricultural /green
development in Bangladesh
Specific Characteristic of the peasant economy
• The concept of the peasant economy encompasses domestic agricultural
activity where family type agriculture (units) engaged in the process of
production
• This is in the cycle of reproduction of peasant living and working- peasants
are reproduction of agricultural producers
• Its main character is the subsistence of production for all family members of
peasant-replacement of the means of production used in production cycle
and to deal with family illness
• What, how and how much to produce and what to do with the product
obtained is to move to substantial agriculture or commercial agriculture
Specific characteristic of the peasant economy continue-2
• However there are contradictions among theorists how much to produce to
for maximizing rates of profits and accumulations.
• Traditional and commercial agriculture also classified by scale of production
• ‘Factor cost’- market price of inputs, land rent, wages of family wages, value
of input purchased from market.
• Neo-classical term-purchase of land-pay more than the value expected rentthat discounted internal rate of return on capital that encourage an
entrepreneur to invest.
The partially market-oriented nature of peasant output
• Peasant economy ceases to be a ‘natural economy’
• It is about a simple ‘mercantile economy’. The market economy is on-thespot consumption economy : peasant economy is about self-sufficient
economy
• The partially market-oriented economy is about final consumption of
goods, must be acquired from the market, using money
• USA farmers are commercial nature; however, the family unit generally
comes to market in its capacity as a producer
• The decision what to produce is based on the marketability of the product.
Partially market-oriented nature of peasant output continue-2
• Selling products what has produced is part of peasant economy
• Market identify how much will be sent to market.
• Partially market-oriented peasant economy depends on ecology nature or
socio-economic nature of the peasants
• Now peasant production depends on purchased inputs and goods for
agricultural reproduction decision made by the market.
The indivisibility of the family income
• In traditional peasant family, total family income (gross or net; in cash and
in kinds derived from the joint efforts of its numbers of the family unit.
• As a result it is not possible to separate the product from wages or profits
(Chaynov).
Comments/Questions
Next class Peasant more economic theories
Peasant Economy ad Peasant Economy Theories
part-2
Course name: Peasant Society-Soc 405, 2014-2015
Dr. Kazi Abdur Rouf
Department of Sociology
University of Chittagong
Room #401
Faculty of Social Sciences
The nontransferable nature of a portion of family labor
• One special feature of the peasant society is that it makes use of labor force which
would not create value in other production sector
• The children, old people, women and the head of the family and his adult childrenall are working unsystematically
• This is one reason for the family unit bring product to the market at lower prices than
communal and commercial productions and prices
• Marginal labor force is using in the traditional agriculture, but they are not regarded
labor force in commercial sector
The special type of risk internalization
• Risk internalization is to co-opt with entrepreneurial behavior of profit and
accumulation of resources
• Entrepreneurs have risk or uncertainty in their profits. Hence these uncertainty
views as probability functions
• They calculate this risk of proportionality between profit and risk
• Peasants view it “ survival algorithim” (Lipton) which lead them to avoid risks despite
the potential profits
• They internalize this risk and uncertainty through they generate lower incomes. Here
they do not cultivate certain high yielding crops to avoid complex marketing
mechanism.
Labor intensive technology
• In local market peasant tendency is to reduce the purchase
• As a result, the intensity of means f production per worker or purchase inputs of
products are generally well below those of commercial capitalist agriculture
• Decision regarding what to produce is guided minimizing purchase or hired inputs
and means of production.
Membership of a land group
• Peasant society becomes a part of a larger society and shares a common
territorial base
• Apearse defines “land group “ a group of families forming part of a larger
society
• Tepieht calls it is the “protective shell of the family economy”. They depend
on no-market exchange
• A Warman says, “ Family unit cannot remain to produce without capital and
without accumulation and cannot subsist without reserves or savings in the
dominant capitalist society and without support of a larger groupings
• Hence peasant needs to form an agrarian community for their preserving
rights and peasant economy.
Commercial agriculture: Principal construct
• In commercial society, there is a separation between capital and labor
power
• Profit, wages and even land rent are categories between owners of means
of production, land owners and sellers of labor power.
• Kinship production is exclusively not market oriented, little left to allow for
local internal consumption
• Production is unrelated to market what the producers produce
• Rather they produce what their families consume
• Risk and uncertainty arise strictly in terms of probabilities
• Producers internalize in the decision-making processes as ratios between
profit expected and probability associated with each level/scale/ amount/
magnitude.
• The principal aim of production is to secure at least average profitentrepreneurial phenomenon.
Articulation and break up of peasant agriculture
• There is a positive effect/position of the peasant economy in the national
society/economy
• However the question is how two societies characterize in influencing the
peasant economy in the national society
• The concept of articulation: Relationships (system of relationships) with the
rest of the economy, forming an integral whole economy
• Articulation takes the form of exchange of goods and services (or values)
between sectors: capitalist agriculture and urban industrial complex
• Market relations among markets are for products, inputs, labor and even
land.
Articulation in the market for products
• An initial form of articulation in the market for products to the peasant is
come to sell part of his outputs and to buy inputs and goods for his
reproduction
• However, trade-prices of what he buys and what he sells, are always been
systematically unfavorable to him- “Primordial”-undervaluation of peasant
products (between peasant production and capitalist production)
• Reproduction of the economy is crucially dependent on relationship
between food prices; wage levels, the rate of profit, but in this process
there exit inequality in exchange of food prices and wages of labors
• Hence there needs a mechanism-raise and fall of market depending on the
greater or lesser bargaining power (social power in the market).
Articulation in the market for products
• The small peasant landowner behaves neither like the owner of property
nor like the capitalist entrepreneurs
• He contents himself with the equivalent of a wage, without raising the
question of rest or even the question of profit
• The small peasant behaves exactly like a wage paid price worker
• Commercial farmers invest in farms for their agricultural production in a
larger scale
• They are not like family agriculture-not self exploitation of family labor
• Here states subsidies directly through the medium of low prices for puts and
products and credit at low interest rates and
• Through the financing of infrastructure for the beneficiaries that are not
charged.
Articulation of labor market
• Labors engaged by the commercial sector at wages lower than their cost of
survival or reproduction
• The commercial agricultural economy accumulates resources by exploiting
labor low wages
• The average rate of profit prevailed in agriculture and industry would lead
to higher agricultural prices on wages, profits and accumulation
• The labor force employed in commercial agriculture originates from peasant
economy, permits a reduction of the wage bill by wages paid per day
worked lower than in other section
• Moreover, payment paid only for days actually worked
• Rural and migration from areas of peasant agriculture to areas of
commercial agriculture confirmed this interdependence.
Articulation of labor market continue-2
• However, labor power in less wages can be increased and achieveddepends on exclusively on the bargaining power between the parties• Wage labor and employers of production and reproduction of the
peasant economy
• There are two articulation mechanisms- (1) product market and (2) labor
market have common basis.
• Here both undermine the peasant production capacity and undervalue its
working time
• This capacity is the source both of the peasant’s strength in the sense of
working and its weakness in the sense of a force working for its breakup.
Comments/Questions
Next class Peasant more economic theories
Peasant Economy ad Peasant Economy Theories
part-3
Course name: Peasant Society-Soc 405, 2014-2015
Dr. Kazi Abdur Rouf
Department of Sociology
University of Chittagong
Room #401
Faculty of Social Sciences
Break-up, Recovery and Persistence
• Liberalism schools of thoughts are liberals-proper rationalists, positivists,
Marxists, and so on)
• They assume the transitional nature of the peasantry- bourgeois,
• Rest converted into proletarians-as a result of the vigor of capitalist
development
• Peasantry societies were considered cultural and social relies from former
times
• In developing countries, the peasantry remains one of the largest groups
and they are in transitory has been very lengthy.
• To prevent disappearance of the peasantry, it is important to create peasant
forms of organizations of production where they do not exist.
Break-up, Recovery and Persistence
• Break-up of the peasant mean the process which permit the family unit to
survive using its own resources
• Peasants loss their abilities to generate volume of outputs and means of
production
• Recovery means the processes which reverse the above mentioned trend
and lead to the creation of peasant units in areas where they did not exist
before.
Conscious actions of the commercial sector from demographic and
ecological factors
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Action by the State
State policies involve subsidies to the peasant sector, such as credit at
preferential rates, support prices, minimum wages and so on
These are actions tend to limit or check the break-up of the peasant unit by
trade, would be achieved in free market conditions
Agrarian reform and new settlement theory and policies impede the breakup of peasant units
These programs encourage the creation of subdivision of larger geographical
units and the development of legislation and action to protect the units
created.
Action by intermediate elements
• Moreover, public investment in irrigation, or improving communications
and prospects for the export of produce, has frequently led to increased
imposition commercial agriculture
• However, these processes have increased peasants vulnerability
• Action makes by intermediate elements means various types of mechanism
for intermediation
• Link the peasantry to the rest of the economy and permit the extraction of
surpluses at the level of distribution and exchange
• These intermediary persons and or institutions make possibilities opened
up new peasant economy
• However, these are derived from lesser bargaining power between peasants
and the intermediaries monopoly of the channels.
Classified functions of the intermediary elements by A. Warner
• Material adaption of products- scaling down the peasant product and
scaling up that leaves the peasant sector for the rest of the economy
• Conversion of symbols, involving “translation” into the peasant language of
the external norms of trade and accounting
• The physical movement of the products- enter or leave the peasant
economy from and to the external world
• The mobilization of finance by fully integrated in the market is for consumer
goods or inputs
• It is possible if he sold his products or labor power himself
• These functions make it possible to extend market relations in the process
of reproduction of the peasant economy and
• To integrate it in the rest of the national and international economy.
Enterprises actions
• Enterprises actions are responsible for processing and intermediation
• This is the contracts make between large agro-industrial or agri-business
enterprises and the peasants of specific regions
• These contracts have tendency to abandon direct control of land and the
processes of primary production and
• Replace them by financial and commercial control network of small and
medium-sized “independent Producers”
• This has happened by creating peasantry economically attached to them’,
but business agriculture would not accept to them
Enterprises actions contiue-2
• This criterion can be used to distinguish at least three important categories
within the peasant agriculture sector
• The infra-subsistence segment, or “poor peasant’ segment, made incomes
from outside minimum subsistence income
• This segment appears fastest growth in Bangladesh
• The stationary, “simple reproduction” or “average peasant” segment, made
up of the peasantry whose product is sufficient to cover the fund for family
consumption
• The surplus-producing or “rich” peasant segment are those who have their
resources, more or less systematically generate a surplus over and above.
Consequence of demographics
• There is deterioration in the land/man ratio- decline in the productive
potential of the existing land
• This is a force which contributes the break-up of the peasantry and
fragmentation of land
• It is the result of the sub-division of plots as a consequence of population
growth
Consequences of commercial agriculture
• The commercial agricultural process rises in the fragility or vulnerability of
the peasant economy
• Within the peasant segmentation, polarization- minority of the units not
only served in the preventing break-up
• However, it turns the intensification in market-oriented relations and
create accumulation
• Majority of peasants or members of the family go outside of the plot to
obtain incomes
• In this process, there developed the heterogeneity differentiation among
them and stratify the peasant segment.
• Here the important distinction is production unit and the land group
• This criterion can be usedt o distinguish at least three important categories
with the peasant agriculture sector.
Classification of societies in terms of means of agricultural production
• Wolf classified societies onto three categories:
(A) Primitive Society
(B) Peasant Society
©Industrialized unban Society
• Society becomes polarized from primitive society to industrialized unban
society
• Primitive society is a hunting and food gathering society, but later urban
life developed by division of labor
• In primitive society, people have limited social and economic activities
• Primitive society is totally isolated from other tribes or distance society
they live. They have nomadic life move in group.
Classification of societies in terms of means of agricultural production
continue-2
• Surplus production absent in peasant society and primitive society, there
was no production incentive
• Peasant produce crops for his family need and preserve seeds for next year
agriculture
• Crop production for market is secondary for the peasant, but commercial
agriculture main target is trade and commerce; sale in the market
• There is no business or profit motive like commercial agriculture exist in the
primitive society and peasant society
Classification of societies in terms of means agricultural production –
continue-3
• Peasant society has subsistence agriculture, but in commercial agriculture,
farmers produce surplus production for profit
• Peasants often ignore food security and food for market
• Peasant society is different from primitive society and urban society
• Peasant society uses animal power, manual power for agricultural
production and utilize natural resources
• In primitive society, there is no land owning system- lord and landless, big
farmer, middle farmer and land less people rather all have equal access to
land within their own community.
Classification of societies in terms of means agricultural production –
continue-4
• According to Eric Wolf peasant involved in surplus production for carrying
their expenses of ceremonial fund where all need to contribute to
annual/other fests and ceremonies
• Peasant produce extra crops for paying his land tax
• Moreover, land rental system developed as land ownership is unequal in
land tenure society. Peasant has to pay tax for cultivating land.
• Agricultural tax could be either in cash, or crops or in labor
• Land owners, tenants, and share croppers etc division of classes created in
the land tenure society
Questions/comments