Measuring the incidence of rural capitalism: An analysis of survey data from North‐East Brazil

Abstract

Patnaik's concept of ‘net hired labour ratio’ is used to examine the agrarian class structure in North‐East Brazil. This analysis goes beyond Patnaik's original contribution by using discriminant analysis to test the mean difference between social classes with respect to variables representing access to means of production, family size and participation in commodity production. The basic result obtained is that the incidence of agrarian capitalism in the ‘peasant’ universe of North‐East Brazil is relatively high. This empirical result contradicts two current notions: (1) that the ‘homestead’ population is homogeneous with respect to labour market participation, and (2) that capitalism only dominates agriculture in an ‘indirect’ way, confined to the circulation sphere.

Notes

Assistant Professor of Economics, Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York. The author wishes to acknowledge research support from PNPE/INPES (Rio de Janeiro, 1981).