Classical Agrarian Question

• This article offers a specific viewpoint on the classical agrarian question within Marxian political economy
• It addresses the myth of industrialization as the primary goal of transformation
• The concept originated in the late 19th century among European thinkers
• It solidified as a principle during the Cold War
• It resurfaced in the neoliberal era through a specialized field of agrarian studies

Critique of Prevailing View

• The prevailing perspective fails to recognize the historical significance of the national question
• It disregards land and peasant elements that cannot be simply reduced to industrialization
• The piece emphasizes national sovereignty's role in the classical agrarian question
• National sovereignty is a foundation for various aspects, including gender equity and ecological sustainability

Keywords

• Core concepts encompass the classical agrarian question
• Industrialization figures prominently
• The national question is relevant
• The land question is significant
• The peasant issue is central

Introduction

• The world faces a new agrarian question, as no country can assure its people's future food security
• Major investors are focusing on agriculture and natural resources, and international organizations show concern

Contrary Solutions

• Grabbing land and natural resources is not a viable solution for most people
• This approach could lead to civilizational catastrophe in the long run
• It's imperative to develop creative alternatives and reconsider the basics of modernity to avoid barbarism
• Established conventions and myths about the past must be avoided

Myth of Industrialization

• Industrialization is essential for human advancement
• Industrialization cannot occur on the anti-popular and militaristic terms of monopoly capitalism

Critique's Requirement

• A critique of Eurocentric and economistic tendencies, which have resurfaced in Marxian political economy, is needed
• These tendencies pronounce the classical agrarian question as obsolete because it no longer serves industrialization
• These approaches do acknowledge the national question and its land and peasant components
• The national question and its land and peasant components is basic to autonomous, democratic, equitable and sustainable development
• The national question marked the peak of the classical agrarian question
• The national question remains the cornerstone of contemporary agrarian questions

Industrialization Myth

• The text traces the development of the industrialization myth
• It aims to clarify the nature of the classical agrarian question
• It suggests the classical agrarian question is relevant today

Making of Classical Myth

• The agrarian question became central to Marxian political economy in the late 19th century
• Terry Byres identified three senses of the agrarian question: the Engels sense, the Kautsky-Lenin sense, and the Preobrazhensky sense
• Marxist discourse evolved in relation to the theme of backwardness and industrialization
• Backwardness was seen as the main issue, and industrialization as the solution and remedy

The Binary

• The binary of backwardness/industrialization became the basis of latter-day myth-making
• The senses referred to political, social, and economic dimensions of backwardness
• obtaining modern industrialized outcome converge in their underlying concern
• England had obtained this outcome earlier - ahead of her 'great power' rivals

Early Theorists

• The agrarian question was essentially the agrarian question of industrialization
• It allowed perspectives on the politics and economics of industrialization
• It did not transcend the political and ideological limitations of turn-of-the-century Europe

Post-WWII

• Backwardness/industrialization gained new life and evolved in different directions after World War II
• It moved toward radical reinterpretation or conservative rendition, often reducing industrialization to a technocratic exercise
• It accentuated Eurocentric distortions. At the crux of the matter were deeply political issues such as land concentration and what to do with a mass peasant population

Axiom

• The backwardness/industrialization binary became an axiom with strongly conservative tendencies
• In its most conservative rendering, backwardness was posited as an innate quality to non-European societies
• Industrialization was framed as an end left to trained economists and development planners
• This formulation was consecrated during the Cold War in development economics

Development Economics

• Development economics was defined by W.W. Rostow and Arthur Lewis in terms of 'stages of growth' and 'dual economies'
• A Marxian discourse of Soviet vintage ran parallel to this
• The Marxian discourse propounded a 'stage' theory based on a stagnant 'imperialist-feudal' alliance in the non-European world

Land Reform

• Land reform was recognized as an obstacle, but radical alternatives or a peasant path were not supported until the Chinese divergence
• ‘Western Marxism' drifted away from political economy towards philosophy, due to growing disenchantment and social democracy
• A new generation of theorists emerged, more organic to the peasant struggles of the Third World
• Backwardness was viewed as a dynamic process intrinsic to imperialism and industrialization as a strategic objective: national liberation
• Knocking down obstacles, such as land monopolies, or mobilizing the peasantry was seen as necessary to unlocking liberation's energies

The Bifurcation

• The bifurcation between the Eurocentric convention of Right and Left and the radical critique was pronounced in the political and ideological struggles of decolonizing nations
• The struggles of decolonizing nations synergized in the 1960s with the Sino-Soviet split
• It also influenced a new generation of Marxists in the West who re-engaged after 1968

North-South Dialogue

• Hindsight: The North-South dialogue remained problematic and superficial
• The radical critique could easily be dismissed as passé
• Marxists in the West returned to political economy
• Intellectual thought on the agrarian question became professionalized and confined to academia

The Agrarian Question

• The AQ obtained a new level of sophistication once professionalized
• The AQ could not easily shed its Eurocentric and economistic heritage or avoid political self-absorption
• A new conceptual fabric was woven with threads from earlier European thinkers, all the while their dialectical method was eroded
• The Eurocentric convention was reinforced, widening the gap between intellectual trends and political struggles against neoliberalism, especially in the South

New Wave

• A new wave of rural movements emerged to bring the land and peasant questions back to the agenda
• Marxist scholars responded by waging ideological war against land reform, due to not meeting their high socialist standards
• The collision was similar to that of the 'two lefts' of the previous period

Intellectual Professionalization

• The South embarked on its own intellectual professionalization, but in a different sort
• Under structural adjustment, university infrastructures and salaries faced assault and research was subordinated to 'project funding'
• The detachment characterized the North finally spread to the South

Rural Movements

• New wave of rural movements evolved at a distance from the traditional national intelligentsia
• Research was vulnerable to the co-optation strategies of donors, governments, and North Atlantic learning centers
• The agrarian question was kept alive by rural movements and their 'peasant intellectuals'
• The backwardness/industrialization axiom was resurrected in Marxian political economy

Drift

• The drifting apart of research and praxis explains this outcome
• As the Cold War came and went, Terry Byres insisted on the importance of 'backwardness' to the Agrarian Question
• Terry Byres evaded mention of land reform and spoke of socialism
• Byres stated an unresolved agrarian question is a central characteristic of economic backwardness
• He also stated the unresolved question has been formulated with respect to incomplete capitalist transition and certain political consequences of that incompleteness, the agrarian question is now also part of the debate on possible socialist transition in poor countries

Essay's Diversity

• This accompanied an essay on the diversity of agrarian transitions, in which industrialization was defined as the benchmark of 'resolved' agrarian questions, regardless of the fate of the countryside
• If the agrarian question is resolved in such a way that capitalist industrialization is permitted to proceed, the agrarian question no longer holds serious implications
• There is no longer an agrarian question in any substantive sense

New Level of Sophistication

• Speaking of a new level of sophistication, such as on the question of historic transitions
• Lenin raised this question with programmatic purpose, to defend the American path against the Prussian path
• Lenin also left open the possibility of a wider spectrum of transitions

Marxist Scholarship

• Subsequent Marxist scholarship elaborated on the diversity of transitions in the South
• Diversity of transitions in the South was constituted by contingent agrarian structures, the nature of the state, linkages with non-agricultural sectors, and insertion of the particular country in the world economy
• Byres distinguished between six paths of capitalist agrarian transitions in Asia, adding to a corpus of research already established in the South
• The South include socialist transitions in Asia and the capitalist transitions in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean
• Industrialization was being reinstated as an end in itself, by scholars

Two Problems

• Two important and related problems arise from linking the agrarian question to the backwardness/industrialization axiom
• The 'export' of the AQ from the North to the South must carry the burden of transition alone
• Banalization of industrial transition, abstracted from its relations with monopoly capital, its militarism, and social, political, and environmental consequences

Relationship Scrutinized

• The relationship between agrarian transition and industrialization has been scrutinized toward different conclusions
• At the center: the historic role of global primitive accumulation in the transition to industrial capitalism
• Global primitive accumulation, rather than an incidental affair, was a basic determinant of industrial transition in England and Europe

Europe Example

• The original English and European paths of industrialization were not an endogenous affair, much less did they entail an 'agricultural revolution' in Europe
• Slave labor and other types of forced labor in the old colonies, and the markets they sustained, were sources of surplus appropriation
• These were fundamental to capital accumulation in leading countries, which sustained investment in manufacturing

Influx

• The subsequent influx of tropical food goods was crucial to capital accumulation in leading industries
• It reduced the wage bill and compressing competing demands in the new colonial territories
• This relationship did not rupture after decolonization, and re-intensified under neoliberalism
• The agrarian question of advanced capitalism has never been resolved
• Economic progress has been a congenital ailment that parallels economic backwardness

Gravest

• The gravest consequence of connecting the agrarian question to backwardness has been the displacement of the debate over politics and policy from North to South
• This absolves the North of any transformative obligation, other than aid to the South or removing subsidies to help the poor
• Even the early European thinkers converged around this objective of moving the debate from politics and policy from North to South
• Divergent views varied: Advocates of capitalist or socialist industrialization existed, varying with degrees of fast or slow, light or heavy

Bernstein's Work

• The tendency has reached new extremes, particularly in the work of Henry Bernstein
• Bernstein has declared the classical agrarian question resolved on a global scale, independently of industrial transitions in the South
• The notion holds that a significant spurt in agricultural growth happens alongside early to middle stages of modern economic transformation

Minimalist Version

• A minimalist version may specify changes in economic and social relations of production within agriculture
• These changes are needed for productivity and investible surplus to facilitate a successful transition toward capitalism
• Once the logic of capitalist social relations in agriculture is firmly in place (e.g., agrarian capital and agrarian proletariat), it may be said that the Agrarian Question has been addressed

Years in Recent

• Bernstein has been the most spectacular recent advocate of such a minimalist view, assuming a harder line than Byers
• Bernstein provided a 'stylized' outline highlighting what he considers to be the core dimensions of the classic agrarian question
• The classic agrarian question, he suggests, is the agrarian question of capital
• The question's logic of agrarian transition succeeded in accomplishing social transformation and technical development and contributes to the growth of the labor class.

What Is Needed

• Bernstein's classic agrarian question hinges on what he considers to be the necessary economic and social launch toward capitalist development
• He suggests the logic of capitalist development subsumes the 'agrarian question of labour'
• This implies absorption of dispossessed producers from agriculture in industrial and non-agricultural sectors
• Bernstein argues that the changing material and social conditions underlying capitalist trajectories imply expectations and demands for the resolution of the agrarian question in specific contexts

Countries in Africa

• Bernstein suggests the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America had already been permeated by capitalist reproduction
• Unlocking the critical constraint of capital investments would enable their capitalist economic transformations
• If Agrarian Capital diversifies and expands, then clearly the critical restraint may be diluted both for the capitalist transformation of agriculture, as well as towards its contribution to industrialization

Globalization with Capitalist Agriculture

• In contemporary 'globalization' with capitalist agriculture, the centrality of the 'classic' agrarian question is no longer significant for international capital
• In this sense, there is no longer an agrarian question of capital on a world scale, even when the agrarian question as a basis of national accumulation and industrialization—has not been resolved in many countries of the 'South'...
• Per Bernstein, given the possibility of large capital inflows for developing countries, the classical agrarian question is dead
• The issues presented with the lack of the agrarian question are misleading
• It also misreads the classics
• Labor and capital questions were viewed in a dialectical manner
• It was not the case that the question of labor was simply subsumed by that of capital

Capital Mobility

• The claim that the mobility of international capital implies the 'end' of the AQ is a travesty of the theme
• There is no automatic/organic connection between the flow of capital and successful capitalist transitions in agriculture and elsewhere
• Land grabs have been steadily escalating in the South throughout the neoliberal period
• This demonstrates that capital accumulation remains closely integrated with agriculture

Eurocentrism Clarified

• The presentation has clarified how a Eurocentric and economistic version of the AQ has sustained a myth around industrialization
• The idea was born among the European vanguard amid power rivalries
• It was then consolidated as a convenient axiom among Cold Warriors
• It was resurrected by a highly professionalized discipline of 'agrarian studies' in the neoliberal period

Classical Myth-Making

• Classical myth-making has drawn on the earlier European generation, but 'purified' it
• Yet, the classical agrarian question did not end with Preobrazhensky
• The original European vanguard did not have insight on, or organic experience of, the struggles and transitions in the South
• The periodization of the classical AQ determines its content
• This in turn demands a justification of our method of periodization

Periodization's Relationship

• Periodization must correspond to the phases of imperialism, which have defined the challenges of the whole of humanity
• The stage of imperialism dominated by monopolies, finance capital and militarism, took hold in the late nineteenth century, presented challenges to both metropolitan and peripheral societies
• Challenges in question did not mature simultaneously, nor were they identical; nonetheless, they were continuous and dialectical

European Challenge

• The classical category integrates two sets of agrarian questions: industrialization and national liberation
• The European vanguard confronted unequal development called upon respond to industrialization
• The nationalist vanguard who were dominated by imperialistic were presented liberation as a task
• The few European Marxists, with special mention of Rosa Luxemburg, grappled with the character and consequences of capitalist expansion in the peripheries

Maturation

• The Organic response to wait for the maturation of anti-imperialist nationalism
• As this spread, the agrarian question evolved, reaching its most robust expression first in Maoism
• Political, social and economic dimensions of the AQ, which the European vanguard articulated, were restructured
• These dimensions were submitted to the cause of national liberation.

Liberation Question

• The great feat was to incorporate industrialization without surrendering to it; it thereby created political space for the elaboration of new agrarian questions
• The difference between the AQs of industrialization and liberation is that the latter has articulated the requirement of sovereign industrialization
• Sovereign industrialization or the safeguarding of the capacity to determine one's own external relations and internal balances

New Questions Enabled

• The posing of new agrarian questions in a universal way, namely gender equity and ecological sustainability was enabled
• Gender equity and ecological sustainability are the dimensions that have defined the contemporary AQ-as well as the debate on 'regional integration'
• AQ of liberation has been the common thread between the classical and contemporary AQs
• It consists in the maturation of the former and cornerstone of the latter

Contemporary AQ Liberation

• Liberation remains at the heart of the contemporary Agrarian Question
• Fate influences over the fate of gender relations, ecology, or regionalism
• Neither can be expected to progress under the tutelage of monopoly capitalism
• This justifies exclamation; long live the agrarian question!
• National liberation constitutes the mature form of the classical; The three methodological points are in order with regards to their dialectical continuity, the structure of imperialism and the political subject of the AQ
• Dimension of the has consisted not in rupture, but a continuous restructuring of the previous dimensions

Re-Qualification

• The re-qualification helps apply to the agrarian question without creating boundaries
• The qualifications sheds light on the arbitrariness of confining the classical question to boundaries
• Engels did not suppress the political dimension of Lenin
• Mao began to condense the political and social dimensions of the AQ into a 'national revolution' and submit them from imperialist domination
• Contemporary gender, ecology and regionalist dimensions, have not entailed a mere addition, but a restructuring of the relationship and meaning of all dimensions involved.

Distinct Challenges

• AQ are differentiated most clearly by the phasing of imperialism and the distinct challenges which each phase has imposed
• Liberation altered the coordinates of political action on a world scale, by wresting political sovereignty from monopoly capital
• It did not oust monopoly capital, the capital regrouped into a 'collective imperialism' (Amin 2003) to regain the political initiative
• The ongoing consolidation of monopoly-finance capital and the new scramble
• Monopoly control over the planet's resources
• The attempt reverse against the reverse gains of national liberation
• The key issue is no longer the conquest of political sovereignty, in a generalized sense, although colonial questions do persist and even expanding
• The defense and deepening of the already conquered regime is the most key concern
• This is without a gendered understand and obligations North and South coordinated agro-industrial integration.

Political Shifts

• The subject of the has undergone progressive shifts in a single stream thought and continuity as a virtue of the Marxian grammar used
• The tradition: Began with the privileging of the proletariat, and the disparaging of the peasantry,
• The tradition: Recognizing the peasant land cause as a question in proletarian revolution
• The tradition: Embracing peasantry Mao Fanon Cabral

Marxian Indicication

• Stream the maturation which is indicative of of the the that is whereby the universal challenge of national finally obtaining its most political subject
• The dimensions of politically social economic not already articulated present
• The social appears in analysis class life accumulation peasantry pillaging
• Arguably distortion secular variable proceeding its the capitalization
• Arguably intervention feudal or parasitic
• The peasants verdict exploitation system supervision and indigenous either backward to was progress

Engels Contribution

• contribution analytical refinement tools France programme
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Theories and practices

• The two theories his political tendency self determination
• By self internationalism vanguard

The Liberation Theories

• Economic dimensions include chayanov
• The post revolutionary transformed society achieve colonialism colonization
• The the tribute Implausible
• Accumulation from Bukharin Soviet alliance the Soviet