Before discussing the domination of capitalism over agriculture, we should agree on what capitalism is.
It does not come within the purview of conventional economics or sociology.1 It is possible to get as far as a doctorate in social science in the United States without knowing that one lives in a capitalist society! The basic concepts of social science are ahistorical: the three ‘factors’ of production (nature of land, capital—synonymous with production equipment—and labor) are combined in an infinite number of ways, always according to the well-known technical formulas of the society under study.
Social science is not based on history, and even when history is not reduced to a direct sequence of events, it does not go beyond a comparative description of institutions and of social, moral, political, or aesthetic ideas. Sociology is grafted on to this shapeless mass; its aim is to examine, in terms of functionality, whether parts of social life, taken at random, are satisfactory or not. It is a risky proposition to study the birth and development of capitalism within this framework: if capitalism is confused with the use of the (so-called) factor capital, i.e., tools, then it has always been in existence. It is also often confused with commodity exchange. As a result, to some people a study of the development of capitalism in a particular sector boils down to a quantitative measure of the increase in capital equipment and of the expansion of trade.To have a clear understanding of capitalism we must, from the start, look at social science from a different viewpoint, based on the concept of the mode of production.[6] [7]
Here also, unfortunately, a common and highly empirical approach is too often adopted. For it is obvious from everyday experience what a capitalist enterprise is: an autonomous unit of production, privately owned and extensively equipped with production means operated by wage labor.
As we discussed in the Chap. 1, capitalism is then reduced to the sum total of these capitalist enterprises. Similarly, in agriculture, production is capitalist if it uses a large amount of capital equipment and wage labor. The extent of agrarian capitalism will therefore be measured by the size of the wage-labor force and the degree of mechanization. This is better than confusing capitalism with commercial relations, but it is still very inadequate and can lead to serious misinterpretation.Let us examine the concept of the mode of production.[8] A production mode is defined as an equation, with two opposing classes: in the case of capitalism, bourgeoisie and proletariat, i.e., owners of production means which are themselves the product of social labor (equipment which becomes capital) and sellers of their own labor power. In the capitalist mode: (1) the entire social product assumes commodity form; (2) labor power itself is a commodity (labor is mobile); (3) capital, which is a social relation, is embodied in capital goods which are also commodities (capital is mobile). From this, it can be deduced that: (1) the ideology characteristic of the capitalist mode is economism, since the extracted surplus— fruit of the surplus labor of the proletariat, or surplus value—is masked by a proportionate redistribution to fragmented capital (surplus value takes the form of profit, and capital appears to be productive); (2) hence, the alienation characteristic of capitalism is commodity alienation (especially since the domination of nature is overcome); (3) the economic factor is not only determining in the last resort but is also dominant.
In contrast, in the tributary modes of production that dominate the history of precapitalist societies, the equation opposes peasant producers (organized in communities) to a state ruling class in control of access to the land. Landownership by the peasant communities (and/or by their members) is superimposed with that by the ruling class (and/or the state and its various constituent parts).
The extracted surplus, here taking the form of a tribute (feudal ground rent corresponds to the feudal type of tributary production modes), is clearly obvious and variable, since it depends on the unequal generosity of nature (nature’s domination is indeed quite marked). It can be deduced from this that: (1) neither the social product nor the surplus (except possibly a fraction of it, if one assumes trade relations between several tributary societies), nor labor power is a commodity; (2) the dominant ideology and the alienation are of a religious nature; (3) the ideological level is dominant but the economic level is as usual determinant in the last resort.It must also be remembered that concepts of the mode of production, the most abstract in social science, form the basis of a second set of concepts relating to social formations, and of yet a third set relating to the systems of social formations linked with one another through trade relations. The social formation—a structured combination of several modes of production, dominated by one of them—implies that there is substance to the description of the ‘‘dominant mode of production.” Domination should not, under any circumstances, be reduced to the statistical predominance of one form of economic activity. The concept of domination is very precise and includes: (1) domination by the fundamental law of the dominant mode, which determines the conditions of reproduction of the entire formation (thus, for example, the law of capitalist accumulation determines both the conditions of reproduction of capitalist society, and all the complex relations between its various paj’ts, including a capitalist industrial economy and a peasant economy; (2) the consequent transfer of a portion of the surplus generated in the dominated modes to the dominant mode (thus, for example, the transformation of a portion of rent into profit); (3) the political supremacy of the dominant class in the dominant mode, the other dominant classes being, at best, reduced to the status of allies; (4) the supremacy of the ideology of the dominant mode.
We have distinguished between capitalist and precapitalist formations, pointing out that the fundamental law of the capitalist mode has the inherent tendency to bring about the disintegration and disappearance of the other modes, while this was not the case in the precapitalist formations.
The capitalist formations tended to become homogeneous, to be reduced to the capitalist mode, while the precapitalist formations remain heterogeneous. The implication is that the dominated modes in the capitalist formations, insofar as they still exist, are profoundly impaired, transformed, distorted, and sometimes deprived of their substance. It will be seen that this point is fully substantiated by an analysis of the relations between industry and agriculture or between dominant capitalist country and dominated agricultural country. As the debate between Lenin and Chayanov shows, there is a specific set of problems that results from the clash between this tendency toward homogeneity, on the one hand, and the manifestation of domination by the capitalist mode over the other modes, on the other.The social formations are, for their part, seldom isolated. There are systems of social formations. In the precapitalist world in particular, it often happens that a portion of the surplus generated in the various formations circulates; this is the root of the problem of long-distance trade which is of great import to some civilizations (e.g., Greece, the Arab world, and the Sahelian savanna). The nature and status of precapitalist commercial profits are a category of profit distinct from commercial capital.
A special feature of our contemporary world is that it constitutes a single system of capitalist formations characterized by: (1) the universal nature of commodities—in other words, the supremacy of world values (a more accurate expression than international values) over national values; (2) the universal nature of capital, i.e., its international mobility; and (3) labor markets persistently confined within national boundaries—in other words, the very limited international mobility of the labor force. In addition, we must draw an important distinction between two groups of capitalist formations: the mature, dominant, central formations, and the immature, dependent, peripheral formations.
Because of this, the question of international relations between the center and the periphery (commodity trade, capital flows, technological flows, political organization and stratification, ideological currents, etc.) must not under any circumstances be treated lightly or ‘‘in parts,” or too hastily compared with the problem of relations within the systems of precapitalist formations.
It is necessary to make one last methodological observation.
We have so far considered only two class modes of production, capitalist and tributary. There are of course many others: (1) the slavery-based mode of production, regarded as an exceptional mode, particularly within highly developed mercantile formations; (2) the simple commodity mode, widespread but only dominant in exceptional cases (for example, in colonial New England); (3) the interrelations between these modes and the dominant tributary modes of precapitalist times; (4) the range of tributary modes, those referred to as ‘Asian,’ ‘African,’ and feudal (which in my view belong to one and the same family comprising a mature central type—China and Egypt), and the peripheral types (in particular, Western European and feudal Japanese). So far, we have not mentioned a peasant mode of production (singular or plural) since it raises very important questions that will be dealt with in our discussion of peasant societies.[9]Returning to the capitalist mode, the immediate difficulty one meets in studying its relations with agriculture derives from the fact that the concept of capitalist mode does not take into account control of the soil, that is, access to the bounty of nature. In fact, in the capitalist mode there are only two classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, and two ‘incomes,’ profits and wages. In other words, in conventional economics there are two factors of production, capital and labor. Hence there are no landowners, no rent, no factor termed ‘nature’ or ‘land.’ Would this be a simplification, land being also capital, rent also profit (from ‘land-capital’), and landowners a special type of capitalist? Undoubtedly not, although the precapitalist categories in question (landed property, landowners, and ground rent) take precisely the form mentioned, owing to their distortion through domination by the capitalist mode, as we shall see.
We must first clear up one possible misunderstanding. Any agronomist would disagree, justifiably, if agricultural land were called a virgin portion of nature.
Agricultural land is the product of human labor repeated over successive generations. For the peasant, land is not different from the plough or the cow: it is an instrument of labor. Moreover, no productive process takes place in a void; it always calls into play the forces of nature: the windmill is driven by the wind, biological laws are instrumental in the growth of plants, the laws of chemistry operate to combine iron and carbon to form pig iron, etc. Finally, there is practically no economic activity that does not involve a geographical element, a necessary location: the factory takes up ground space, the doctor must have an office, and even a peddler uses the streets.But the problem does not lie here. It is not a question of knowing whether ‘nature’ exists or not; it certainly exists. There is no doubt that the forces of nature intervene in the productive process. The question is to know the social conditions that govern the right to use these forces. This right is seldom really free—even the grazing land used by a tribe of nomadic herders is forbidden to others, although the sea is open to any fisherman, and the lands of the American West were for a long time open to all those who could slaughter the Indians occupying them. In precapitalist societies, agricultural land was essential and access was strictly controlled by the society. Whether access was open to all or restricted to some (to the members of a clan, for example), whether it was free or subject to the payment of a tithe or rent of some sort, it was always controlled. In contrast, tools were rudimentary and of secondary importance. It is no longer the same with the modern capitalist farm, as we shall see.
On the other hand, in the capitalist industrial enterprise the capital equipment is essential, while the ground is of secondary importance. Moreover, if the capitalist must purchase the land or pay rent, it is because when capitalism came into being, land was already an object of appropriation and subject to rights. ‘Capital’ is essentially embodied in the means of production, themselves products of social labor. In order to understand the capitalist mode, it is essential to distinguish between Department I (capital goods production) and Department II (consumer goods production), between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between surplus value and the value of labor power, including their many deceptive forms: profits and wages or savings and consumption. How then does this abstract capitalist mode, without any historical background or territorial basis, interrelate with the production mode from which and within which it has its real historical origin? That is the question, and that is the correct way to bring land-ownership and rent into the analysis of the capitalist formation.
2.1