‘Changing Before Our Very Eyes’: Agrarian Questions and the Politics of Land in Capitalism Today

Abstract

This paper endorses the criticisms of neo‐classical populism and its advocacy of redistributive land reform provided by other contributions to this special issue of the Journal, to which it adds several further points. If GKI propose a version of an agrarian question of ‘small’ or ‘family’ farming, and its resolution through a familiar (Chayanovian) path of development, much of the critique rests, in one way or another, on the ‘classic’ agrarian question in capitalist transition, in effect the agrarian question of capital in which the agrarian question of labour was once subsumed. Here the question is posed whether, in the conditions of contemporary ‘globalization’ and its tendency to the ‘fragmentation’ of labour, there might be a new agrarian question of labour, now detached from that of capital, and which generates a new politics of struggles over land (and its distribution). Even to conceive of this question is beyond the analytical and political field of vision of neo‐classical populism. Some of the dimensions of an agrarian question of labour are illustrated in a brief consideration of recent, and highly contradictory, events in Zimbabwe: a unique case of comprehensive, regime‐sanctioned, confiscatory land redistribution in the world today.

Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality

“…However, in the contemporary world an increasing number of peasants are employed in industry or services, which are often associated with the urban sector (Keyder and Yenal, 2011;Bernstein, 2003). These individuals either are employed in full-time jobs in the industrial or services sector or they work for wages part-time and pursue their traditional activities part-time.…”

Hybridity emergent: Geo-history, learning, and land restitution in South Africa

“…Zimbabwe rejected the neo-liberal approach in favour of a "fast track" (Bernstein, 2004) expropriation of white-owned land.…”

“…illustrates are emblematic of land questions that continue to rankle in other settler societies in Africa (Bernstein, 2002(Bernstein, , 2004Moyo & Yeros, 2005;Peters, 2004), much of Latin America, including Brazil (Sauer, 2001;Wolford, 2003), Central America (Kay, 2001;Bobrow-Strain, 2004), as well as in Asia (Aguilar, 2005;Borras, 2005). Evidence from studies in these places is mounting of a change in how states try to address land questions, how, in other words, they undertake land reform.…”

“…Attention has been drawn to the South African government's commitment to protecting private property rights and its promise to paying market-related prices for transferred land, hence avoiding 'fast track' expropriation such as has occurred in Zimbabwe (Lahiff and Cousins, 2001;Bernstein, 2004). Of course, completing the restitution programme requires extensive state involvement -which, as already noted, in general terms can be said of most programmes 6 affected by neo-liberal principles -and which has led some to argue that the overall land reform programme in South Africa is a hybrid case (Levin and Weiner, 1997).…”

Making social sense of aquaculture transitions

“…Agrarian scholars examine change by understanding shifts in control over capital and labor, and by assessing who wins and who loses as a result of such change processes (Bernstein 2004(Bernstein , 2010. The agrarian question concerns (1) social relations and forms of agricultural production that identify transition pathways to (de)industrialization; (2) the position of social divisions of labor in global commodity chains and markets; and (3) how places of production are shaped by the relative strength of agrarian classes in wider political structures, such as the state, and processes, such as social movements (Bernstein and Byres 2001).…”