Abstract
The current crisis of capitalism is unprecedented in its depth and breadth, signalling not just the possibility but also the necessity of its transcendence in the twenty-first century. It constitutes much more than a crisis of profitability which will eventually be overcome by technological innovation, or otherwise by the emergence of a new leading state to organize a new cycle of global accumulation. It constitutes also a food crisis, an energy crisis and a robust ecological crisis, clearly indicating that the capitalist system has reached the limits of its reproduction based on its monopoly form of production, abuse of natural resources, globalized distribution networks and polarized consumption.
All previous civilizations, in the tributary mode of production, also confronted the limits of their ecological carrying capacity, based on their own social relations of production, prevailing technologies, demographic patterns, and consumption levels. And such limits could reach the point of threatening reproduction of society as a whole, as they did in feudal Europe in the fourteenth century, prior to the long transition to capitalism. But previous societies never threatened to undermine the regenerative capacity of the planet to meet human needs. This is an entirely new phenomenon, directly related to the commodity form to which capitalism relegated human beings, labour power and natural resources, and to the transformation of the countryside into a space to be stripped of human settlement and biodiversity.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the logic of capitalism, in its monopoly-finance form, continues to clear out the countryside and destroy ecosystems. This remains the main tendency on a global scale, fuelling incessant migration, land grabs, resource conflicts and geopolitical power plays. Yet, the seeds of an alternative political economy are also being sown by an incipient counter movement of resistance, both organized and diffuse. Its protagonists are semi-proletarianized peasants and indigenous communities, joined by marginalized urban populations seeking new possibilities of social reproduction in the countryside. This counter movement constitutes the basic organic contradiction of the capitalist system, and is most evident in the countries of the South. These are the historical peripheries of the capitalist system which, since the 1980s, have undergone deep crisis and neoliberal restructuring, and whose dependence has intensified by their integration into the global agro-industrial complex, to the point even of rupturing their food self-sufficiency. More recently, the counter movement is also becoming evident in the North, among countries that are now succumbing to the same irresolvable, leap-frogging crisis, and discovering their own food and social insecurities.
If the descent into the abyss of radical climate change and systemic food shortages is to be arrested in the current century, it is not sufficient to strive to ‘regulate’ monopoly-finance capitalism. It is necessary to seek a new equilibrium between town and country, on a global scale, in terms of production, use of energy and natural resources, and patterns of distribution, consumption and, ultimately, residence. This is the challenge posed by ‘re-peasantization’, the theme of the present Special Issue. Re-peasantization should be understood as a properly modern phenomenon, not a throw-back to an idyllic past, much less to a new system of patriarchy. Re-peasantization is, above all, the process of establishing a new and sustainable equilibrium between town and country, based on new social relations of production, use of natural resources, and systems of distribution and consumption. It is a process fully consonant with technological innovation and industrial development, and a prerequisite to the resolution of the national question in the peripheries of the system. Moreover, it is a process which will not repeat the imperialist trajectory of development in the North, or ‘catch up’ to the North by imitating its own make-believe notion of modernization.
While re-peasantization is the basic organic counter tendency under capitalism today, it cannot in the long run flourish under capitalism itself. Re-peasantization will eventually establish new social and political facts on the ground, but only an alternative, post-capitalist, essentially socialist, society will permit the consolidation of this counter movement towards a new equilibrium. This also means that the long transition to socialism, if it actually occurs against catastrophic scenarios, it will be very different from that envisioned by the dominant, Eurocentric currents of Marxism. It is likely that the proletariat will have to participate in an auxiliary role to the establishment of new peasantries; and the periphery will have to assume a leadership role in the transition. Indeed, is it really possible to envision any other transition to socialism worthy of the name?
To many, this will still sound outlandish, impossible if not just undesirable. Yet, there is a solid precedent to such a transition, which is to be found in the Chinese revolution of the mid-twentieth century, which launched the first concrete alternative to Eurocentric modernity, based on a peasant path to development, self-sufficiency, and affirmation of national sovereignty. It undertook radical agrarian reform and proceeded to experiment with a new equilibrium between town and country and new and higher forms of co-operativism in the countryside. Its many contradictions notwithstanding, we may reasonably consider it as the inflection point of the long transition to socialism and, as such, deserving of attention in the analysis of this transition.
This special issue serves to both register and illuminate the dynamics of the organic contradiction that is playing out before our eyes. It is composed of five national experiences of re-peasantization in the peripheries and semi-peripheries of the system, namely those of China, Brazil, India, Chile and Zimbabwe, each with its own particularities. It includes micro, macro, and comparative studies, as well as diverse theoretical approaches, all of which, nonetheless, converge on their appreciation of this basic phenomenon of our times.
The first article is co-authored by a team of researchers, Sit Tsui, Du Jie, Lan Yonghai, Dong Xiaodan and Erebus Wong, led by Wen Tiejun. It compares China’s peasant path with the development paths of Venezuela and South Africa, highlighting two specific issues in an innovative way: the ‘sovereignty externalities’ borne by developing countries in their transition to independence; and the relation of all developing countries to the ‘currency-strategy’ of the superpower under contemporary financial capitalism. The authors illustrate how, on the one hand, China’s peasant path uniquely consolidated national sovereignty and, on the other, how manufacturing countries today, including China, by their integration into the international division of labour are bearing the costs of global financialization in a particular way. Comparatively, other countries, like Venezuela, have reaped the benefits of the new resource nationalism, while others, like South Africa, continue to be subject to negative sovereignty externalities, having remained firmly under the control of international capital. In all, the article demonstrates the challenges that diverse countries in the periphery face under financial capitalism, as they take control of their natural resources, or embark on industrialization, or remain hostage to international capital.
The second article, by Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, retraces the history of re-peasantization in Brazil, a process which has always occurred primarily through peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform. The article focuses particularly on the formation of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), the peasant movement that has most contributed to the process of recreating the peasantry through land occupations. The reality of the most recent process of re-peasantization, over the last 30 years, is demonstrated by data showing that more than a million families have been settled through agrarian reform. However, such gains have not eliminated the subordination of peasants to agribusiness, which more recently has provoked a reflux in peasant struggles. The article argues that the greatest challenge for peasant movements is the creation of a development model for their own territories which would enable them to reinitiate the process of re-peasantization.
The third article, by Ch. Priyoranjan Singh and Hanjabam Isworchandra Sharma, highlights the agrarian changes that are taking place in north-eastern India, in the state of Manipur. It shows how peasants are seeking autonomy through a process of farming intensification and diversification which is grounded in co-operativism at the community level; and how age-old tenure systems are giving way to new ones that prevent undue private expropriation. The authors argue that the neo-idiom of ‘back to the farm’ seems to be re-emerging among the peasantry, which until recently appeared to have given up farming as a primary occupation.
The fourth article, by Raúl Holz Cárcamo, focuses on Chile’s experience as an extreme case of neoliberal restructuring and argues that, despite this profound restructuring, it is still possible to observe resilient forms of peasant organization and production. The article outlines several experiences of peasant organization and production, and concludes that this recent revival indicates a necessary and possible break with the dominant agribusiness model. Nonetheless, he argues, these experiences in themselves are not sufficient to pursue a structural transformation of the food system in Chile.
The fifth article, by Grasian Mkodzongi, analyzes the Fast-Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe, implemented since 2000, and the manner in which it has allowed landless peasants to access better quality land and other natural resources. It focuses on Mhondoro Ngezi district in central Zimbabwe and shows how land reform transformed a dualistic agrarian structure inherited at independence, dominated by white-owned large-scale farms, into a tri-modal structure, in favour of landless peasants predominantly from communal areas. The article argues that the FTLRP created opportunities for landless peasants to diversify livelihoods, by allowing them greater mobility and access to land and natural resources, historically confined to a white farmer minority. The argument is supported by empirical evidence drawn from a survey conducted at district level.