Dualism Debunked, Multiple Social and Economiic Relations in the Anglo-Caribbean Agricultural Sector

Agriculture and Human Values, 1987

The paper examines the social contradictions generated by patterns of reproduction of accumulation of capital, social legitimation and by present agricultural policies fostered by the State. Through a scrutiny of the role of the State in capitalism it is argued that agricultural overproduction, the widening of the gap between small and large farms, the fiscal crisis of the State associated with agricultural programs and waste of resources are the outcomes of an attempt on the part of the State to promote simultaneously accumulation and legitimation. The possibility of enhancing accumulation and maintaining legitimation clashes with the diverse socio-economic demands associated with the present agricultural production system and the general viability of the social structure as a whole.

RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2017

This paper draws on lectures given in recent years at the China Agricultural University, on author's book Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change [1] and on a recent article [3]. The author supplied as few references as possible to very large literature in English on agrarian change both historical and contemporary; there is an ample bibliography in [1], which is expanded in [2—5]. The paper outlines in schematic fashion some key concepts in the political economy of agrarian change with special reference to capitalism historically and today; some key questions posed by the political economy of agrarian change, and how it seeks to investigate and answer them; two sets of more specific questions about agrarian transition to capitalism and agrarian change within capitalism (internal to the countryside, bringing in rural-urban interconnections, pointing towards the place of agriculture within larger 'national' economies, and concerning the character and effects of the capitalist world economy). With the aid of the last group of questions, the author discusses three themes, which they are deployed to investigate: the agrarian origins of capitalism, the distinction between farming and agriculture generated by capitalism, and the fate(s) of peasant farmers in the modern world of capitalism. The author believes that one cannot conceive the emergence and functioning of agriculture in modern capitalism without the centrality and configurations of new sets of dynamics linking agriculture and industry, and the rural and urban, and the local, national and global. The three themes all feed into the fourth and final theme, that of investigating the fate(s) of the peasantry in capitalism today, which resonates longstanding debates of the 'disappearance' or 'persis-tence' of the peasantry, albeit now in the conditions of contemporary 'globalization'. The author does not deny some of the critique of the contemporary globalization, or at least its effects; his problem is the advo-cacy of 'solutions' premised on an unconvincing, pre-given and idealized 'peasant way' that lacks the analytical means (and desire) to confront processes of class formation in the countryside. This paper outlines, in schematic fashion, some key concepts in the political economy of agrarian change with special reference to capitalism historically and today. It also indicates some of the key questions posed by the political economy of agrarian change, and how it seeks to investigate and answer them. By political economy I mean the field of social relations and processes/dynamics of production and reproduction. Applied to some types of society, and notably capitalist societies, the foundational, although not

Introduction to new special issue of Journal of Peasant Studies, 2014 Co-authors: Madeleine Fairbairn, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones & K. Sivaramakrishnan

A good comprehensive book that covers all major issues of Indian agriculture, over time and space, has been missing for a while, and here is one such book by Akina Venkateswerlu which can fill that void. With broad objective to cover all issues and give a political economy analysis at one place, the book becomes little bulky, with about 22 chapters, divided into seven parts. These essentially cover a long list of issues like colonial impact, land reforms, Green Revolution, Neoliberal reforms, credit, marketing, extension, PDS, procurement, WTO obligations, GM seeds, SEZs, post-globalization agrarian crisis, and mode of production, blending critical review, data and policy issues, covering seventy years. The breadth of issues covered at one place has its advantages. The book has an implicit framework of political economy, state policy being seen as an outcome of promoting interests of contending class forces. The book purports the efforts of the state to promote growth determined by the capital accumulation, the speed and the social character of the accumulating class. The standard narrative of this approach presents the policy failures and achievements as progressive and constrained process of aiding the capitalist development. The book in its part gives precisely these aspects, locating them since colonial times to the post-independent development. Chapter 1 discusses the impact of colonial policy on Indian agriculture, its forcible commercializing, taxation policies, creating complex semi-feudal structures in land, labour, credit and output markets and the resultant long-term stagnation and misery. The book also takes us at a great length through the failures of making progressive land redistribution (chapters 4 and 5) and resorting to technological options to increase the market surplus. The book puts the assessment of green revolution, including India, as of precarious dependence on US imports under PL 480 and its influence on our policy choices of technology. In spite of criticism, green revolution is hailed for boosting area under new seeds, productivity and output and in enabling the country to overcome acute food shortage, become self-sufficient, reduce rural poverty, increased modernization, per capital availability and an agrarian change. The book takes us through the achievements, growth from mid-seventies and eighties, increasing yields, expanded area and production. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 elaborately document

Indian Journal of Human Development, 2020