Forms of Organisation of Agricultural Production and Land Tenure
The forms of organisation of agricultural production and land tenure are too varied in Asia and Africa for one single formula of ‘alternative peasant social construction’ to be recommended for all.
By ‘agrarian reform’ we must understand the redistribution of private property when it is deemed too unequally divided.
It is not a matter of ‘reforming the land tenure status’ since we are dealing with a land tenure system governed by the principle of ownership. This reform, however, seeks to meet the perfectly legitimate demand of poor and landless peasants and to reduce the political and social power of large landowners. Yet, where it has been implemented, in Asia and Africa after the liberation from former forms of imperialist and colonial domination, this has been done by non-revolutionary hegemonic social blocks in the sense that they were not directed by the dominated poor classes in the majority, except in China and Vietnam, where, in fact, for this reason there has been no ‘agrarian reform’ in the strict sense of the term but, as I have already said, suppression of the private ownership of land, affirmation of state ownership and implementation of the principle of ‘equal’ access to the use of the land by all peasants. Elsewhere real reforms dispossessed the only large owners to the eventual benefit of middle and even rich peasants (in the longer term), ignoring the interests of the poor and landless. This has been the case in Egypt and other Arab countries. The reform under way in Zimbabwe may face a similar perspective. In other situations such as in India, South East Asia, South Africa and Kenya, reform is still on the agenda of what is needed.Even where agrarian reform is an immediate unavoidable demand, its long term success is uncertain as it reinforces an attachment to ‘small ownership’ which becomes an obstacle to challenging the land tenure system based on private ownership.
Russian history illustrates this tragic situation.
The evolution begun after the abolition of serfdom (in 1861), accelerated by the revolution of 1905 then the policies of Stolypine, had already produced a ‘demand for ownership’ that the revolution of 1917 had consecrated by means of a radical agrarian reform and, as we know, the new small owners were not happy about giving up their rights to the benefit of the unfortunate cooperatives created at the time in the 1930s. A ‘different approach’ based on peasant family economy and generalised small ownership might have been possible but it was not tried.Yet what about the regions (other than China and Vietnam) in which the land tenure system is not (yet) based on private property? We are, of course, talking about inter-tropical Africa.
We return here to an old debate. In the late 19 th century, Marx, in his correspondence with the Russian Narodniks (Vera Zassoulitch among others), dares to state that the absence of private property may be a major advantage for the socialist revolution by allowing the transition from a system of the administration of access to land other than that governed by private ownership but he does not say what forms this new system should take and the use of ‘collective’, however fair, remains insufficient. Twenty years later, Lenin claimed that this possibility no longer existed and had been destroyed by the penetration of capitalism and the spirit of private ownership that accompanied it. Was this judgment right or wrong? I cannot say on this matter as it goes beyond my knowledge of Russia. However, the fact remains that Lenin did not consider this matter of crucial importance, having accepted Kautsky’s point of view regarding the Agrarian Question. Kautsky generalised the scope of the modern European capitalist model and felt that the peasantry was destined to ‘disappear’ due to the expansion of capitalism itself. In other words, capitalism would have been capable of ‘resolving the agrarian question’. Although 80 % true for the capitalist centers (the Triad: 15 % of the world’s population), this proposition does not hold true for the ‘rest of the world’ (85 % of its population!).
History shows not only that capitalism has not resolved this question for 85 % of the people but that from the perspective of its continued expansion, it can resolve it no longer (other than by genocide! A fine solution!). So it fell to Mao Zedong and the Communist Parties of China and Vietnam to find a suitable solution to the challenge.The question resurfaced during the 1960s with African independence. The national liberation movements of the continent, the states and party-states that arose from them enjoyed, in varying degrees, the support of the peasant majority of their peoples. Their natural propensity to populism led them to conceive of a ‘specific (‘African’) socialist approach’. The latter could certainly be described as very moderately radical in its relationship both with dominant imperialism and the local classes associated with its expansion. It did not raise the question of rebuilding of peasant society in a humanist and universalist spirit to any lesser extent. A spirit that often proved highly critical of the ‘traditions’ that the foreign masters had in fact tried to use to their profit.
All—or almost all—African countries adopted the same principle, formulated as an ‘inalienable right of state ownership’ of all land. I do not believe this proclamation to have been a ‘mistake’, nor do I think that it was motivated by extreme ‘statism’.
Examination of the way that the current peasant system really operates and its integration into the capitalist world economy reveals the scale of the challenge. This management is provided by a complex system that is based both on ‘custom’, private ownership (capitalist) and the rights of the state. The ‘custom’ in question has degenerated and barely serves to disguise the discourse of bloodthirsty dictators who pay lip service to ‘authenticity’ which is nothing but a fig leaf that they think hides their thirst for pillage and treachery in the face of imperialism. The only major obstacle to the expansionist tendency of private ownership is the possible resistance of its victims.
In some regions that are better able to yield rich crops (irrigated areas and market garden farms) land is bought, sold and rented with no formal land title.Inalienable state property, which I defend in principle, itself becomes a vehicle for private ownership. Thus, the state can ‘provide’ the land necessary for the development of a tourist area, a local or foreign agribusiness or even a state farm. The land titles necessary for access to improved areas are distributed in a way that is rarely transparent. In all cases the peasant families who inhabited the areas and are asked to leave are victims of these practices which are an abuse of power. Still, the ‘abolition’ of inalienable state property in order to transfer it to the occupiers is not feasible in reality (all village lands would have to be registered with the land registry!) and if this were attempted it would only allow rural and urban notables to help themselves to the best plots.
The right answer to the challenges of the management of a land tenure system not based on private ownership (as the main system at least) is through state reform and its active involvement in the implementation of a modernised and economically viable and democratic system for administering access to land that rules out, or at least minimises, inequality. The solution certainly does not lie in a ‘return to customs’, which would, in fact, be impossible, and would only serve to accentuate inequalities and open the way for savage capitalism.
We cannot say that no African state has ever tried the approach recommended here.
In Mali following independence in September 1961, the Sudanese Union began what has very wrongly been described as ‘collectivisation’. In fact, the cooperatives that were set up were not productive cooperatives, production remained the exclusive responsibility of family farms. It was a form of modernised collective authority that replaced the so-called “custom” on which colonial authority had depended.
The party that took over this new modern power was clearly aware of the challenge and set the objective of abolishing customary forms of power that were deemed to be ‘reactionary’ even ‘feudal’. It is true that this new peasant authority which was formally democratic (those in charge were elected) was in actual fact only as democratic as the state and the party. However, it had ‘modern’ responsibilities, namely, to ensure that access to land was administered ‘correctly’, that is to say, without ‘discrimination’, to manage loans, the distribution of subsidies (supplied by state trade) and product marketing (also partly the responsibility of state trade). In practice, nepotism and extortion have certainly never been stamped out. The only response to these abuses should have been the progressive democratisation of the state and not its ‘retreat’ as liberalism then imposed (by means of an extremely violent military dictatorship) to the benefit of the traders (‘dioulas’).Other experiences in the liberated areas of Guinea Bissau (impelled by theories put forward by Amilcar Cabral) in Burkina Faso at the time of Sankara have also tackled these challenges head on and sometimes produced unquestionable progress that today people try to erase. The creation of elected rural collectives in Senegal is a response whose principle I would not hesitate to defend. Democracy is a never ending process, no more so in Europe than in Africa.
What current dominant discourse understands by ‘reform of the land tenure system’ is quite the opposite from what the construction of a real alternative based on a prosperous peasant economy requires. This discourse, promoted by the propaganda instruments of collective imperialism—the World Bank, numerous cooperation agencies and also a number of NGOs with considerable financial backing—understands land reform to mean the acceleration of the privatisation of land and nothing more. The aim is clear: create the conditions that would allow ‘modern’ islands of (foreign or local) agribusiness to take possession of the land they need in order to expand. Yet the additional produce that these islands could provide (for export or creditworthy local market) will never meet the challenge of the requirements of creation of a prosperous society for all which implies the advancement of the peasant family economy as a whole.
10.4