Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates

by Brass; TOM

• ISBN13: 9780714644981
• ISBN10: 0714644986
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1999-09-29
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book focuses on the relationship between economic growth in Third World agriculture and the employment of bonded labour, the ways in which the latter contributes to the process of workforce restructuring/recomposition, and the implications of this for the kinds of political action undertaken by rural labour. The first half is devoted to a presentation of fieldwork data from Peru and India, while the impact of the non-/mis-recognition of unfree labour on debates about the political economy of agrarian change is considered in the second part. Much current writing about agrarian change in the Third World assumes that capitalist development in agriculture necessarily and always transforms peasants into proletarians, that the expansion and operation of the industrial reserve army necessarily leads to and takes the form of free wage labour, and that where these exist, unfree production relations such as debt bondage are archaic forms destined to be eliminated in the course of this process. By contrast,it is argued that the incidence of unfree labour is much greater than generally supposed, may be increasing in specific contexts, and that in certain situations rural employers actually prefer this kind of workforce. The bonding of increasingly landless agricultural workers in many Third World contexts amounts to deproletarianisation, and it is therefore wrong to assume that economic development in agriculture always requires the emergence of a rural proletariat, and thus to categorize unfree production relations as anachronistic.

Author Biography

Tom Brass formerly lectured in the Social and Political Sciences Faculty at the University of Cambridge and directed studies at Queens' College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(8)
Towards a Definition of Bonded Labour	9	(38)
Debt Bondage, Decommodification and Unfreedom	10	(3)
Bonded Labour as Deproletarianization	13	(1)
What Bonded Labour Is Not	14	(3)
Methodological Considerations	17	(1)
Unfreedom, the Law and the State	18	(2)
Coercion and Enforcement	20	(2)
Intergenerational Debt Transfers and Unfreedom	22	(1)
Kinship, Migration and Unfreedom	23	(1)
Work Intensity, Wage Levels and Unfreedom	24	(3)
Conclusion	27	(20)
Notes	30	(17)
PART I - Case Studies
Bonded Labour in Eastern Peru	47	(33)
Debt Bondage in Pre-Reform La Convencion	48	(2)
Debt Bondage, Labour Rent and Class Struggle	50	(2)
Debt Bondage, Feudalism and Nationalism	52	(1)
Debt Bondage in Post-Reform La Convencion	53	(2)
Patterns/Results of Worker Indebtedness	55	(2)
Actual/Fictive Kinship and the Discourse of `Reciprocity'	57	(1)
Actual/Fictive Kinship, Debt Enforcement and Local Workers	58	(2)
Actual/Fictive Kinship, Debt Enforcement and Migration	60	(1)
Bonded Labour and Agrarian Capitalist Restructuring	61	(2)
Conclusion	63	(17)
Notes	65	(15)
Bonded Labour in Northwestern India	80	(30)
Pre-Green Revolution Labour Attachment	80	(2)
Post-Green Revolution Labour Attachment	82	(1)
Attached Labour and Commercial Agriculture	82	(1)
Capitalism, Unfree Labour and Migration in Punjab	83	(2)
Bonded Labour and Capitalist Restructuring in Punjab	85	(2)
Village A, Karnal District, Haryana	87	(3)
Village B, Karnal District, Haryana	90	(1)
Village C, Rohtak District, Haryana	91	(2)
Village D, Rohtak District, Haryana	93	(1)
Village E, Rohtak District, Haryana	94	(1)
Conclusion	95	(15)
Notes	99	(11)
Bonded Labour in Northeastern India	110	(35)
Feudalism, Capitalism and Debt Bondage in Bihar	110	(2)
Bonded Labour and Migration in Bihar	112	(2)
Debt Bondage and Sharecropping in Bihar	114	(3)
Bonded Labour in Nalanda District, Bihar	117	(1)
Village A, Nalanda District	118	(2)
Village B, Nalanda District	120	(2)
Village C, Nalanda District	122	(2)
Bonded Labour in Purnia District, Bihar	124	(1)
Unfreedom, Gender and Migration in Purnia District	125	(1)
Conclusion	126	(19)
Notes	130	(15)
PART II - Debates
Neoclassical and Marxist Approaches to Capitalism and Unfree Labour	145	(37)
Neoclassical Economic Historiography and Unfree Labour	146	(3)
Neoclassical Economic Historiography, Capitalism and `Consent'	149	(2)
Marxism, Free Labour and Capitalism	151	(1)
Marxism and Unfree Labour	152	(1)
Unfree Labour and the Mode of Production Debate	153	(1)
Unfree Labour and the `Semi-Feudal' Thesis	154	(2)
Unfree Labour and Agrarian Transformation	156	(1)
Unfreedom and Labour Availability	157	(1)
The Recent History of Deproletarianization	158	(2)
Deproletarianization and Capitalist Profitability	160	(1)
Deproletarianization and Class Struggle	161	(2)
Conclusion	163	(19)
Notes	165	(17)
The Latin American Enganche System	182	(35)
Unfree Labour and Legislative Abolition	184	(1)
Debt Peonage and Coercion	185	(2)
Debt Peonage as Deception	187	(1)
Debt Peonage as Economic Security	188	(1)
Debt Peonage as Reverse Bondage	189	(1)
Debt Peonage and Physical Mobility	190	(1)
Debt Peonage as a Voluntary Relation	191	(2)
Unfreedom, Subsistence and the Company Store	193	(3)
Debt Peonage and the Class Structure	196	(1)
Debt Peonage and Class Formation	197	(2)
Debt Peonage and Class Struggle	199	(1)
Conclusion	200	(17)
Notes	202	(15)
Attached Labour in India	217	(38)
Unfree Labour as Economic Security in the 1800s	218	(1)
Attached Labour as Economic Security in the 1920s	219	(1)
Attached Labour as Economic Security in the 1950s	220	(1)
Attached Labour as a Voluntary Relation	221	(2)
Attached Labour as Reciprocity and Patron-Clientage	223	(3)
Patronage and `Patronage'	226	(2)
`Patronage' and Class Struggle	228	(2)
Assertiveness as Worker Empowerment	230	(1)
Powerful Labourers, Weak Employers	231	(1)
Assertiveness as Proletarianization	232	(2)
Conclusion	234	(21)
Notes	238	(17)
Unfree Labour, Culture and Nationalism	255	(40)
Unfreedom as Cultural Empowerment	257	(1)
Bonded Labour and Everyday-Forms-of-Resistance	258	(1)
Bonded Labour in (Postmodern) Theory	259	(1)
Bonded Labour as Empowering Cultural `Otherness'	260	(2)
Politically Non-Specific Empowerment: Arguments Against	262	(3)
Unfreedom, Semi-Feudalism and Nationalism	265	(2)
Agrarian Populist/(Conservative) Myths of Empowerment	267	(3)
Populist/(Nationalist) Myths of an Empowered Third World `Other'	270	(2)
Unfreedom and Post-War Capitalist Development	272	(1)
Divide et Impera: Unfreedom, Culture and Nationalism	273	(2)
Conclusion	275	(20)
Notes	279	(16)
Conclusion	295	(10)
Bibliography	305	(28)
Author Index	333	(7)
Subject Index	340