An Autonomist Marxist Perspective on the Peasantry, pt 2

Notes on The Contemporary Peasantry in Mexico: A Class Analysis by Ann Lucas de Rouffignac

Raises key question – how are we defining peasantry? Only as those who do not sell their labor power? Based on land ownership? Etc. I can trace the debate b/t different thinkers on this question but ultimately must also lay out my own definition of who is the peasantry.

ALR is arguing that “survival” of the peasantry does not make it a relic of a past mode of production; nor a form which has outlived its usefulness, is backwards, etc. Rather she situates the survival of the peasantry as the result of their aspirations for (and victories towards) a different type of society. In other words, the peasantry hasn’t withered away to the extent that it has successfully fought off capitalist offensives against its social relations/existence.

She makes an important point in countering the ideas of Roger Bartra and Fernando Rello. Many thinkers define the peasantry based on whether it sells its labor power for a wage or not; in other words the presence of a wage is the defining factor. Yet if that’s the case, how can these thinkers make sense of the unemployed/lumpen, housewives, children or elderly (or other categories) who are habitually or permanently unwaged? This is part of ALR’s overall point – that the wage hides other forms of exploitation that are just as vital and central to capitalism as the actual wage which marks the sale of labor power.

Important to consider how peasantry has often overlapped with “Indian” in Marxist literature, and thus perspectives that omit the peasantry as agents of class struggle will implicitly (or explicitly) omit the “Indian” as an agent of history/class struggle. Hence the key contribution of Mariategui.

Question. Thus far ALR has not defined what she considers the proletariat or working class. If it is not the wage nor the ownership of land which defines the peasantry, rather it is the social relation, then what specifically does she consider the defining social relation of the proletariat proper?


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ALR divides debate into campesinistas and descampesinistas.

A) Descampesinistas

1) Class Structure

Roger Bartra, Fernando Rello

Bartra argues peasantry belongs to non-capitalist, “simple mercantile” mode of production – a mode constituted of small commodity producers who own their means of production – and as such are not formally subsumed to capital. Any layer of peasantry that even part-time sells its own labor power is no longer peasant but semi-proletariat or rural proletariat.

Rello disagrees, argues peasant economy not a separate mode of production. Forms of production can contain elements that contain pre-capitalist modes of production but coexist with capitalist mode of production. Yet both Rello and Bartra agree that revolutionary character of the peasantry is limited by their condition as owners of the means of production.

Francisco Gómez Jara identifies 3 major social classes in the Mexican countryside, defined primarily by whether the landowner hires wage labor or not. There is the bourgeoisie, agricultural proletariat and peasant class (defined as those who have land but hire no salaried labor and includes Indian communities with communal lands who use cooperative labor and also occasionally sell their labor power).

Luisa Paré distinguishes a similar class structure (bourgeoisie, peasantry and proletariat) broken down along a quantifiable criterion of what percentage of gross income is derived from the wage. Richard Pozas identifies the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and denies the presence of a peasantry.

2) Speed of Proletarianization

Broken up into two camps: proletaristas and non-proletaristas.

Proletaristas as those descampesinistas who believe the peasantry are being transformed into proletariat and are thus a disappearing class. There are differences over how rapidly this process will happen. They point to vast number of “semi-proletarians” (peasants who still work the land but also sell labor power part time) and the large migrant rural population (true rural proletariat) as evidence of eventual disappearance of peasantry as a class. Bartra argues advanced capitalism never developed in Mexico, therefore proletarianization of the peasantry has been retarded yet eventually capitalist mode of production will destroy the peasantry.

One counterargument that ALR consistently makes in this chapter is that if there is a process of proletarianization happening among the peasantry, then why do class struggles in the countryside continue to struggle for land rather than “proletarian” demands like forming unions or better working conditions. Some authors like Gomez Jara recognize this contradiction but then explain it by saying that such demands represent a petite-bourgeois consciousness and are only reinforced by the agrarian populist manipulations and repression by the state.

Nonproletaristas disagree that the destruction of the peasantry automatically translates into the creation of a rural proletariat. Some like Luisa Pare argue that capital cannot accommodate so much labor power. Most are pessimistic and forecast a disaster-type future for the peasantry.

3) Peasant Struggle

The descampesinistas discount any peasant role in constructing an alternative/socialist society. Struggle for land is peasant, not proletarian in character. Bartra asserts peasants have no class consciousness. The proletariat and the peasantry may ally under the tutelage of the former. Gomez Jara identifies peasant struggle as only useful to the capitalist class, b/c revitalizing the ejido and distributing land are simply state efforts at stabilizing the peasantry and extracting more surplus value from the peasant economy.

ALR acknowledges that land concessions often serve to coopt political struggle among the peasantry; yet at same time the land may also be used by the peasants as a basis for more struggle against capitalist accumulation. She points out that often wage concessions by capitalists to proletarians are moves to coopt struggle among workers and spur capital to reorganize production against workers; yet these thinkers wouldn’t consider wage struggles as only advantageous to capital.

ALR also critical of Gomez Jara for emphasizing need for revolutionary party to lead peasant struggle. No need to repeat arguments here.

B) Campesinistas

1) Class Structure

Arturo Warman, Armando Bartra

Warman argues the essence of being a peasant is found in the complexity of the social relations that govern them. Entering the labor market does not indicate proletarianization. It is simply one way the peasants seek to reinforce their existence as a peasant class by bringing resources and funds back to the community. Selling labor power is simply one strategy in the struggle to survive as peasants.

Bartra argues that peasants orient their life around their parcel of land and its requirements. Peasants will work for a salary only to make up a deficit in their subsistence from their parcel of land. They are still peasant; the presence or non-presence of a wage is secondary.

ALR cites other authors such as Palerm and Stavenhagen who debate the mode of production, who belongs to it, how it functions, etc. She says she’d rather not join that debate and is instead interested in how this social class interacts with the capitalist system. She attributes some of P and S’s ideas to Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital. She summarizes the argument raised there as that capitalism needs the peasant sector (which is “outside” of capitalism) for realization of surplus value and as a source of extra surplus value for accumulation. Therefore a special relationship has evolved that constantly recreates the peasant sector instead of destroying it. [52]

2) Proletarianization

The campesinistas argue that the peasantry as a class is etiher stable or growing. They point to faulty research, false govt reporting, etc., to prove that arguments to the contrary as without basis. Some like Gustavo Esteva point to a process of recampesinización. Peasants resist proletarianization and instead reinforce their forms of social existence in their communities. In some cases, peasants who left the land or did not have any use the wage to obtain land. Meanwhile they never interrupt their participation in the community. While many migrants end up in the cities seeking a wage (which Esteva sees as peasants trying to find better economic and social living conditions), there is a tendency for this process to reverse as migrants frequently leave the cities due to problems of capitalism like unemployment. They then return to the countryside and to the land once again.

3) SUbsumption to Capital

There is a debate among campesinistas over whether the peasantry is exploited by capital in the sphere of production.

Bartra argues that peasants are exploited as producers because of their non-capitalist methods of production. The exploitation of the peasant is based in production (peasant methods of production) but realized in the market (when the surplus changes hands). He says the difference b/t the peasant producer and the capitalists is that the former produces only for subsistence, not for profit. ALR interprets Bartra’s argument to mean that he thinks the cause of exploitation is rooted within the peasantry itself; he says they are not rational, not cognizant that they are exploited by the terms of trade.

Esteva characterizes the development and expansion of agrarian capitalism in Mexico as seeking the control of the productive processes instead of direct ownership of the land. He sees a tendency toward contract agriculture, where the direct operation and ownership of land remains in the hands of individuals such as peasants, while the control of the productive processes is acquired by agribusiness. Since the bulk of the risks associated with production and the work of managing or organizing production is left in the hands of the direct producers, the fiction of apeasant class possessing its own productive factors, operating as an autonomous unit and exploiting its own members of the community (via wage labor) is maintained.

Ultimately though, these peasants are working for capital in a particular relation of production. The entire peasant unit of production (via credit, contracts, inputs, etc.) is subsumed to capital. It appears to be an economic unit relating independently with the capitalist unit b/c capital uses this form of production relations to elude paying the social obligations and benefits historically won by the working class. [57]

4) Peasant Struggle

Campesinistas offer advances (albeit contradictory) over what decampesinistas have to say on role of peasant struggle. Bartra for example disagrees with typical characterization of pathetic peasants who are too weak to do anything about their exploitation. Instead he examines how actual peasant struggles have time and again forced concessions from the Mexican state. Bartra and Esteva both see land as the main goal of struggle for both peasants and rural workers. Yet Esteva adds that autonomy from capital is what the peasantry is really seeking when it demands land.

Bartra that peasant “acquires a socialist conscience only with difficulty and by himself cannot offer a strategic alternative to bourgeois society.” [58] Peasants only have revolutionary subjectivity insofar as they participate in a worker-peasant alliance.

Warman sees peasant struggle as a class movement. He recognizes that the peasantry is not just reclaiming the past but is demanding the conditions necessary to transform the future. Esteva agrees.

This leads to the vía campesina. This represents the variety of new options for the development of society resulting from the struggles of peasants. This path is the “alternative road to postcapitalist development in the countryside.” [59] Esteva argues that the peasantry as a class can adopt social organizations of their own to advance a process of modernization that adjusts to their necessities.

“Today the vía campesina is denied both by technocrats in the service of big business and the state and by Marxists in the service of socialist orthodoxy. Both are afraid of losing control over the process of development, of being excluded from a society that may have no room for capitalists or socialists, no room for those who think up ways to extract surplus value for either capitalist or socialist accumulation.” [60]

Sources to follow up on:

Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942)

Gustavo Esteva, La Batalla en el Mexico Rural