Surveying the agrarian question (part 2): current debates and beyond

Abstract

This two-part article surveys the origin, development and current meaning of the ‘agrarian question’. Part One of the survey explored the history of the agrarian question, elaborating its origin in the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, and Lenin, and its development in the work of Preobrazhensky, Dobb, Brenner, and others. Part Two of the survey identifies seven current variants of the agrarian question and critically interrogates these variants in order to understand whether, and if so, how, the location of small-scale petty commodity food and farm production within contemporary capitalism has been reconfigured during the era of neoliberal globalisation. Together, the two parts of the survey argue that the agrarian question continues to offer a rigorously flexible framework by which to undertake a historically-informed and country-specific analysis of the material conditions governing rural production, reproduction, and the process of agrarian accumulation or its lack thereof, a process that is located within the law of value and market imperatives that operate on a world scale.

Keywords:

• agrarian question
• agrarian change
• rural development
• rural transformation
• peasant studies
• globalisation

Notes

¹The analytical complexities of the term ‘peasant’ were discussed in Part One of this survey.

²In an even earlier, albeit more limited, attempt Byres (1977) already tackled the agrarian question in a comparative and contemporary context. For a comparative analysis of the transition to agrarian capitalism between Europe and Latin America, see Kay (1974), and between South Korea, Taiwan and Latin America, see Kay (2002).

³In addition to those already mentioned in part one of this survey (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010), see Harris (1978), Harriss (1980), de Janvry (1981), Murray and Post (1983), Cox and Littlejohn (1984), Pearce (1985), Saith (1985), Mamdani (1987), Levin and Neocosmos (1989), Watts (1989, 2002), Brass (1990), van der Ploeg (1993), Roseberry (1993), Drew (1996), McLaughlin (1998) and O'Laughlin (2009), amongst others.

⁴Important contributions to dependency theory with implications for the agrarian question and agrarian transition include Frank (1967), Emmanuel (1969), Sunkel (1969), Dos Santos (1973), Furtado (1973), Amin (1974) Thomas (1974), Palma (1978), Cardoso and Faletto (1979), Kay (1989), Larraín (1989), Weeks (1991), and Saul and Leys (2006).

⁵The mode of production debate is very much rooted in the concerns of the agrarian question, and can be considered an attempt to apply the analytical framework of the agrarian question to specific circumstances. The mode of production debate can be broadly portioned in two: the contributions of French anthropologists working in an Althusserian tradition, such as Rey (1971, 1973, 1975) and Meillassoux (1980), amongst others; and the debate over the development of capitalism in rural India, including Patnaik (1971, 1972), Chattopadhyay (1972a, 1972b), Thorner (1982) and a host of others. Important general contributions to the mode of production debate include Banaji (1972, 1977), Laclau (1977) and Taylor (1979).

⁶A good summary of Warren is found in Leys (1996). Important contributors in this tradition include Hyden (1980), Gülap (1986), Sender and Smith (1986, 1990), Berman and Leys (1993), Sender and Pincus (2006) and Kiely (2009).

⁷The reality was different. Undervalued agricultural products subsidised the growth of an urban proletariat and undermined agriculture, while this period was also marked by the rise of cheap food imports in many developing countries, which further undermined domestic agriculture.

⁸While Clapp (2009) and Ghosh (2010) stress that the entanglement of finance capital with agriculture has dramatically increased, this is not about facilitating the accumulation of surplus value but rather about reallocating existing stocks of surplus value.

⁹Some might argue that agriculture's importance to capital is now as a source of agrofuels. However, despite massive US investment in agrofuels they account for only a small share of its gasoline usage, and agrofuels do not have the potential to power capitalist production. What they do demonstrate, though, are the stark biophysical contradictions of the global food system.

¹⁰For a similar mode of analysis, see FitzGerald (1985).

¹¹For a political economy analysis of the ongoing world food crisis, see the symposium articles in the Journal of Agrarian Change 10(1), 2010.