From Commune to Capitalism. Zhun Xu

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СКАЧАТЬ against revolution. For example, in Peru during the early 1960s, rich tenants became reactionary after land reform; similar events happened in a number of other countries as well.² Specific factors, like the form of the state, also matter. In India, for example, although the state has tried to create conditions for capitalist development, the democratic form of the state and class alignment in the society limits the effectiveness of land reforms.³

      Both political and economic factors created the capitalist-peasant compromise in the first place. The political forces came from both internal and external class dynamics. Internally, the peasantry usually served as an important force in the revolutions, and the demand for agrarian reforms was a major part of the mobilization campaign for independence or revolution. This was the case for the newly independent states and socialist countries. External pressure was also crucial, especially in capitalist countries where the agrarian reforms came mainly from above.

      Given the strong global communist movement and the example of the Soviet Union, peasants became inspired or even mobilized by domestic communists. If the national bourgeoisie was not able to carry out reforms to appease peasants, then capitalists in the rich capitalist countries would intervene. This is what happened in the case of Taiwan, where, in the face of the appealing example of socialist China, land reform was carried out jointly by the U.S. and Taiwanese governments.

      Economic factors also played a role in the peasant-capitalist compromise. First, prereform agriculture was inefficient, so changes in agrarian relations were likely to bring a higher growth rate and national self-sufficiency. Latin America’s hacienda system was a typical example. However, in places like India, where some landlords had already adopted capitalist methods of production, the efficiency factor was not so important.⁴ Second, it was argued that a more egalitarian distribution of land would increase domestic demand; this obviously fit in with the industrialization objectives of most national governments. In socialist countries, the economic argument for collectivization followed a similar vein: collectivization would generate a higher growth rate, which would facilitate industrialization; and better industrial support would benefit agriculture in the long run.

      The political and economic factors did not work in fixed ways across countries, but for the bourgeoisie and bureaucrats in developing countries, progressive agrarian reform was a matter of necessity, not choice. Ironically, TINA—there is no alternative, the slogan promoted later by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to justify neoliberalism—was included then as an organic part of the development packages that were accepted by most national governments. However, the capitalist-peasant compromise came to an end during the 1970s. As Table 2.1 shows, all the countries that adopted progressive agrarian reforms stepped back and undid small or large portions of the previous reforms. In 1992, Mexico, the pioneer in agrarian reform, changed its 1917 constitution to allow land sales.⁵ In 1994, Cuba, as the residualsocialist state, introduced private agricultural markets and divided state farms into smaller cooperative units.⁶ In 1983, Tanzania, which had instituted the radical collectivization known as Ujamaa in 1974, published a new National Agricultural Policy to encourage commercial farming and land consolidation.⁷ The demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the rapid privatization that followed in Russia and eastern Europe needs no elaboration.

      It is worthwhile to analyze the global political and economic forces at work during this period. Political factors can be divided into two groups, internal and external. Internally, as the independence revolution faded away and bourgeoisie dictatorship strengthened worldwide, the overall capitalist order survived and more or less stabilized. Such was the case in both Taiwan and South Korea, which both enjoyed rapid growth. In socialist countries the ruling elites gradually became more pro-capitalist.⁸ Peasants as a revolutionary force were no longer needed. Instead, in both capitalist and socialist countries, the ruling class preferred a depoliticized peasantry. This set the ground for breaking down the previous compromise.

      Externally, the once strong communist threat was not there anymore; the Sino-Soviet debate, the collaboration between China and the United States in the post-Mao era, and the eventual demise of the Soviet Union greatly undermined the socialist movement. The capitalist class was largely relieved of the necessity of keeping the previous compromise and soon began to fight back. This was manifested ideologically both in academia—the decline of the Keynesians and the rise of the Milton Friedmanites, for example—and in the policies of such entities as the World Bank and the IMF. It was also enforced militarily if need be, as, for example, in the coup in Chile.

TABLE 2.1: Agrarian Changes: Selected Countries

      Sources: El-Ghonemy, 1999; Kay, 1998; Mathijs and Swinnen, 1998; Metz, 1988; Daley, 2005; Barraclough, 1991; de Janvry, Sadoulet, and Wolford, 1998; Bush, 2007; Akram-Lodhi and Haroon, 2007; wa Githinji and Mersha, 2007; Hinnebusch, 1995.

      The economic forces were also significant. First and foremost, for a variety of reasons many agrarian reforms failed to deliver the high growth rate the reformers once expected. Governments in Latin America failed to provide financial, technical, and other support to agriculture.⁹ Instead industrial accumulation often had a negative impact on internal terms of trade (price of agricultural goods relative to industrial output). In collectivization, it was common to have inexperienced leadership and poorly developed plans. In extreme cases, like the Soviet Union, grain production did not reliably exceed pre-revolution level until the 1950s.¹⁰ It did not take too long for the ruling classes to conclude that the reforms were not productive enough. Second, the debt crisis broke out in many developing countries after the American interest rate hike in the early 1980s, which left indebted national governments unable to finance agrarian reforms.¹¹ Third, with the so-called green revolution starting in the 1960s marked by usage of high-yield varieties and chemical fertilizers, there seemed to be a technological alternative to the institutional reforms. Finally, global agribusiness also played a significant role. In some cases agribusiness directly demanded the reversal of the agrarian policies (as in Guatemala). On the other hand, after the 1970s, the unprecedented development of agribusiness and globalized food markets meant national capitalists could circumvent through trade and foreign investment the problem of food sufficiency and national industrialization, which marginalized peasants even further, both politically and economically.¹²

      The gradual change in conditions led to a heightening of the inherent contradictions between the capitalist class and the peasantry. The peasantry remained silent and depoliticized, while the capitalist class became aggressive. The capitalist-peasant compromise became unsustainable, and this led to counterrevolution in the latter part of the twentieth century.

       The Agrarian Question and China

      The agrarian question refers to the transformation of the pre-capitalist countryside into a productive “modern” one: the development of capitalist or socialist relations of production in the countryside; the creation of surplus for national industrialization; and the role of the peasantry in political movements. Historically, this transformation has been accomplished in different ways. For the countries where small producers are prevalent in the countryside, there are three possible directions. The capitalist-oriented model tries to develop capitalism through differentiated peasant households. The socialist-oriented model develops collective production through organizing small peasants. The populist model tries to protect the small subsistence peasant households against commodity relations and capitalism, but without developing collectives. All these solutions agree on the need to abolish pre-capitalist agrarian relations, but they diverge after this very historical conjunction. While the capitalist path implies the development of the capitalist farmer and wage labor in the countryside, the socialist path means a significant degree of public ownership of land and other means of production; the populists in the classical sense reject both capitalist and socialist visions.

      Many СКАЧАТЬ