Lecture: Peasantry and Its Problems, Eric W. Wolf, 1966
Keywords: Ceremonial Funds, Civilization, Economic Sociology, Economy and Society, Eric W. Wolf, Peasant and Farmer, Peasant Society, Peasants and Primitives, Problem of Peasant Society, Social Surplus, Surplus Production
Bachelor of Arts
University of Delhi
Economy and Society
Reading to be covered: Wolf, Eric W., 1966, Peasants, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Chapter – I, Peasantry and Its Problems, pp. 1-17
Course Structure
Important Points to be kept in Mind While Studying the Article
Expected Outcome
<Introduction>
<Lecture in Detail with Comment and Clarification>
The Peasant Dilemma
Peasants and Primitives
Different Between Peasant and Farmer
Peasant and Primitive
Civilization
Why Caloric Intake is so Important
Social Surplus
– Ceremonial Fund
– Funds of Rent
The Role of the City
The Place of Peasantry in Society
Peasant Dilemma
Russian Economist A. V. Chaianov on Peasant Society
Important Points to be Kept in Mind While Studying the Article
How the divisions of labour and surplus production are changing the economic and social life of society?
How the surplus production of food is important for economic, social and cultural life as well as social and cultural change in the society?
Think about why food security is important for any society?
Think why food-rich region/ society have also cultural rich region/ society?
Try to relate Emile Durkheim’s theory of Division of Labour and Karl Marx’s theory of Surplus Production. (Please Note: the article is not talking about this however I had taught you in the class. Please remember that.)
Expected Outcome
Students will be able to understand the difference between the peasant society and farmers and how these societies evolve, developed and why? What is the impact of these kinds of economy and society on the larger social structure?
Students will also be able to relate with Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim with Peasant and Farmer Society. This is not clearly written in this article however students should be able to relate this socio-economic structure with the Karl Mar and Emile Durkheim. It will be discussed in the appropriate place.
Lecture in Detail with Comments and Clarification
The Peasant Dilemma
This chapter is talking about the peasantry society. The chapter is explaining why the study of peasant society is important for the anthropologist. What is the continuity and change in the peasantry society in the world including India? The European and American society have no or the negligible number of peasant society however the Indian subcontinents, China and African country have the peasant society.
We will see in detail here about the peasant society from different perspectives.
Peasants and Primitives
The first question by the anthropologist is to distinguish peasants from the primitive.
The peasant is the rural cultivator who rises the crop and livestock in the countryside, not in greenhouses in the midst of the cities.
At the same time, the peasants are not farmer or agricultural entrepreneurs as we know in the USA.
Different Between Peasant and Farmer
The American farm in primary a business enterprise, combining factors of products purchased in the market to obtain a profit by selling advantageously in the market of a product. The peasant, however, does not operate an enterprise in the economic sense. The peasants are running a household, not a business.
Peasant and Primitive
Peasants are also primitive people who live in the countryside and raise crop and livestock. What then is distinguishing mark of the peasant, as opposed to the primitive culture? We can say that peasant is the part of the large society where the primitive band or tribe does not. But this is not an appropriate answer because of many societies which we that they are living in isolation they too have good relations with the neighbours. In fact, there are no societies who completely live in isolation. The distinction between primitive and peasant thus not lie in the greater or lesser outside involvement of one or the other, but in the character of the involvement.
Marshal D. Sahlins has characterized the economic and social world of primitives as follows:
“In primitive economies, most production is generated to use of the producers or to discharge of kinship obligations, rather than to exchange and gain.”
Therefore in primitive society, producers control the means of production, including their own labour, and exchange own labour and its products for the culturally define equivalent goods and services of others. This leads the Cultural Revolution and which lead the surplus production and labour.
In primitive society, the surplus is exchanging directly among groups or members of groups; peasants, however, are rural cultivators whose surplus are forced to a dominant group or rulers that use the surplus both to underwrite its own standards of living and distribution the remainder to groups in society that do not farm but must be for their specific goods and services in turn.
Dear students, here we can understand the argument of the article in simple words that the division of labour is increasing the production efficiency and production and at the same, this also led the surplus of product and labour. The more we have the division of labour, the more we have surplus production and the society with more division of labour and surplus are consider as more advance and modern (economic) society.
Civilization
The full-fledged cultivation was established around 1500 BC. What is the reason for the development of civilization? One of the reason was the development of agriculture. But moreover, the development of agriculture, the division of the labour was responsible for the rise of civilization, also the modern civilization. As we know that Emile Durkheim has spoken about the division of the labour is necessary to move society from simple to complex. Or we can say that when society moving from simple to complex or primitive to civilised society than the division of labour become inevitable. This division of labour is responsible for the complex social orders which have started from agriculture. Thus we can say that the division of labour and surplus production is responsible for the development of civilization.
Caloric Minima and Surpluses
For sustaining the function of the division of labour between cultivators and rulers is a simple consequence of the capacity of a society to produce a surplus above and beyond the minimum required to sustain life.
Normally we need 2000 to 3000 calories per person per day for a healthy life.
In 1960 only 3/10 of the population was able to get 2275+ calories. Indian had 1800 calories per capita per day consumption. Only the USA, Russia, Britain, Western Europe had higher than 2750 calories per capita per day consumption. Now only France is become fortunate to have 3000 calories per capita per day consumption.
Why Caloric Intake is so Important?
For sustaining the division of labour we need sufficient surplus food grain production. And that is not for consumption but for other work too. One farmer need to produce the food grain for self-consumption, for seed for next year, for adequate feed for their livestock. A farmer needs another surplus for their agricultural tools, to repair, depression or purchase. They also need surplus for the other expense to keep the agricultural works keep live. Therefore we need a huge agricultural surplus for the sustaining society.
FOR ADVANCE STUDY ONLY: OTHERWISE NOT NECESSARY Dear students you may remember that during teaching the last chapter/ article I had told you in the class about vire of Karl Marx on surplus production. Without the division of labour and surplus production, modern society cannot exist.
Social Surplus
1.1 General Fund
Men are social in nature. They were social even in those days when they were self-sufficient in foods and goods. They had certain relations out of society. They must marry outside the home where they born. Because of these requirements, they must have social contacts with people who are their potential or actual in-laws. At the same time, they also need other support from society.
However, the social relation cannot be completely based on material utilitarian and instrumental.
Each (person) is always surrounded with symbolic constructions which serve to explain, to justify, and to regulate it.
Thus, a marriage does not involve merely the passage of a spouse from one house to another. It also involves gaining the goodwill of the spouse-to-be and of her kinfolk; it involves a public performance in which the participations act out, for all to see, both the coming of age of the marriage partners and the social realignments which the marriage involves, and it involves also the public exhibition of an ideal model of what marriages- all
The emotional fund of society- and hence the ceremonial fund of its members- may be large or small. Size is once again a relative matter.
The ceremonial funds are large in the more surplus calorie countries or societies compare to the budget caloric country or societies.
The person from the great surplus expends more in social commercial to maintain and make to social relationship alive, and also for maintaining social solidarity.
Everywhere it is established that the ceremonial fund depends on the surplus production.
Peasant always exists within society. They too have the division of labour but due to the less amount of the surplus production, they do not have enough to exchange in the society. Or we can say that the unit of food produced by the cultivator and units of goods produces are not exchanged. They have less exchange network, because of low surplus, thus they have less purchasing power.
Now we can say that those who have more surplus production have more ceremonial funds than those who have budget surplus production.
The meaning of ceremonial fund is very simple. It means fund for the social ceremony, which is derived and depends on surplus production. If the society is producing more surplus than they have more funds for ceremonial expenditure, where is society producing less surplus than they have less among for ceremonial expenditure?
Please also note that the article is only talking g about agricultural or food surplus. However, if you study the article carefully then it will be clear that all other surplus is depending on the agricultural products.
1.2 Funds of Rent
There is another way to produce surplus beyond the caloric minimum and replacement level. If the cultivator is unable to produce sufficient food to maintain the minimum calories than they have another option which is forced option that they have to consume their own livestock.
This peasant then was subject to asymmetrical power relations which made a permanent charge on his production. Such a charge paid out as the result of some superior claim to his labour on the land, we call rent, regardless of whether that rent is paid in labour productivity, or in money.
WORD MEANING: asymmetrical = adjective, having parts which fail to correspond to one another in shape, size, or arrangement; lacking
When someone exercises an effective superior power, or domain, over a cultivator, the cultivator must produce a fund of rent.
It is this production of a fund of rent which critically distinguishes the peasant from the primitive cultivator. This production, in turn, is spurred by the existence of a social order in which some men can through power demand payments from others, resulting in the transfer of wealth from one section of the population to another.
Dear student here sees the different from the last section. In the last section, we have seen that surplus production is needed to sustain the division of labour. The last section also explaining that surplus production promotes new possibilities. However, this section emphasizes how the lack of surplus production to sustain the division of labour transforming peasant society from primitive societies.
The Role of the City
The development of the civilization has commonly been identified with the development of cities; hence the peasant has commonly been defined as a cultivator who has an enduring relationship with the city.
It is certainly true that in the course of the Cultural Revolution, the rulers have commonly settled in special centres which have often become cities.
The history of the world cities is saying that the evolution of cities is not always the product of increasing the complexity of society.
Sometimes it is a settlement in which a combination of functions are exercised, and which become useful in time great efficiency is obtained by having these functions concentrated in one site.
Indian has developed very different kinds of cities. For example, we have evolved many cities because of the centre of different purposes like religious centre, education centre, pilgrim, etc. so some times the cities are not developing because of the increasing complexity and division of labour in the society.
Thus this is the crystallization of executive power which serves to distinguish the primitive from the civilization, rather than whether or not such power controls is located in one kind of place or another.
Not the city, but the state is the decisive criterion of civilization and it is the appearance of the state which marks the threshold of transition between food cultivators in general and peasants.
Thus, it is only when a cultivator is integrated into a society with a state – that is, when the cultivator becomes subjects to the demands and sanctions of power-holders outside hi social stratum that we can appropriately speak of the peasantry.
Thus we can say that the process of civilization and state-building are multiple and complex. Different areas were integrated into states in markedly different ways and at different times.
The Place of Peasantry in Society
Our world contains both primitive on the verge of the peasantry and full-fledged peasants, but it also contains both societies in which the peasant in the chief producer of the store of social wealth and those in which he has been neglected to a secondary position.
In many societies, peasantries still exist in large number with traditional tools and furnish the funds of rent and profit. These economic activities are responsible for the entire social structure.
However, in the industrial societies and farming societies, the peasant is occupying the second position in the society. Or we can say that they have a secondary position in the wealth creation process.
In advance societies, the agricultural worker is paid as industrial workers. In this society, the peasant has a secondary position because they are secondary in wealth creation.
The Peasant Dilemma
Outside of the peasant society, they are thinking that they can do anything with them. They can pull out their production at any time.
However, this is very hard for them to maintain the caloric minimum.
They also need replacement and ceremonial fund to maintain the social order and cultural activities.
These above needs are making two societies different from each other.
The peasant society is working as a subgroup of and for the outsiders.
The peasant have to maintain the balance between the own demand and demand of the outsider.
However, the outsiders are treating them as a source of labour which increases his fund of power.
However, this is also true that the peasants are both acting as the economic unit and home. It means that they are not producing professionally and they are the owner of the production and at the same time s/he is also a worker. Where in the advance societies the big agriculturist is behaving as a factory owner and they are recruiting the agriculture labour.
Here the peasant society is not only the producer or a productive unit but also a consumption unit. And this is also true that they are consuming most of their product in unit. They are not producing enough at the market level, rather their primary aim to sustain their life and basic needs.
The peasant society has less production and they too have to take care of the children and sick family member. In general these things have done by the female member.
For these, she and the family have paid the cost. These costs are not in the form of money or kind but in the form of labour cost. It simply means that when the female member of tacking caring for the children and sick people, she cannot work for the production. It means she have to pay in the form of labour lose.
FOR EXAMPLE, see your class or college. All of you are studying here because you can bear the cost of the study. You have bear the cost of study even college have zero fees and you have your own home in the Delhi including free ridership for women. Or even your college has just five munities walking distance. Your family will have to pay in the form of labour lose. It means when you are attending the class your family is losing the one labour force. IMAGINE that your family has agricultural work. You are helping your family. Or your family is running a small shop or business or engaged in the household production and you suppose to help your family in the production process.
IN ABOVE EXAMPLE, if the college has zero free and you can walk to the college within the five minutes it not mean that you have nothing to pay. You have to pay in the form of labour lose in the family. Therefore you need to have enough earning to sustain in this situation.
We can take the SECOND EXAMPLE that why many children are not going to school in rural area, even the government if providing free education. The reason is that in the peak agricultural session the children are helping their family if they belong from the small farmer, peasant or the labour class. And they CAN NOT EFFORT THE ONE LABOUR LOSES to send their children to the school.
The same things happening when a woman is staying at the home for tacking caring of the children and the sic people.
HOPE YOU HAVE SEEN that the daily wage labour women are also taking their children at the workplaces.
IT NOT MEANS THAT SHE LOVES HER CHILDREN but she cannot bear the labour loses for caring her children.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: Government has shut down except the essential services this is also called LOCKED ON. This is very easy to say to WORK FROM HOME. But CAN THE DAILY WAGE LABOUR survives in this situation?
Dear students I think you have understood the meaning of the cost of labour. If not then feel free to ask the clarifications and question.
Russian Economist A. V. Chaianov on Peasant Society
(A. V. Chaianov: REMEMBER PREVIOUS CLASS FOR THE DOMESTIC MORE OF PRODUCTION for DETAIL, or IF NEED FOR CLARIFICATION let me know)
Russian economist A. V. Chaianov has said about special kind of peasant economics. His concept is-
# First fundamental characteristic of the peasant economy is that this is family economy. The system determined by the size and composition of the peasant family.
# Capitalist concept of profit cannot be applied to the peasant economy. (Dear students you may go to the first class for detail that in peasant economy they are not producing for the market rather for the sustaining their life.) In the capitalist society or production, profit is computed by the subtracting all the expense of production from th total income. And we can apply this in the peasant society.
When traditional peasant societies are expending by tie up with the fellow society then the power structure in society is changing.
When some farmer overreaching the power then they are weakened many tradition social ties also lose their particular sanctions.
This also led to the rise of the wealthy peasant which further cause the violation traditional expectations of their neighbors.
The alternative strategy is to solve the basic peasant dilemma by curtailing consumption. The peasant may reduce his caloric intake to the most basic items of food.
This article is also saying that they may cut his purchase in the outside market to a few essential items only.
This will also support the maintenance of tradition social relations and the expenditure of ceremonial funds required to sustain them.
The traditional peasant societies are expanding themselves with expending its economy by a tie-up with the other society.
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Image Description: Peasant. Photo Credit: Treeaid, Flickr ID 53871588@N05, Photo ID 5464050241, Dt. 01112008, License CC2.0
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