The Resurgence of Rural Movements under Neoliberalism

Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros

A central feature of the development of capitalism in the twentieth century has been the rapid expansion of the world's labour force. Beginning with the national development projects of the postwar period, most notably the green revolution, and continuing with the structural adjustment programmes of the neoliberal period, this expansion has been accompanied by the creation of an international reserve army of labour of an unprecedented scale. By and large, this labour force is located in the periphery of the system and, moreover, it remains in a state of semi-proletarianization, straddling town and country, and reproducing itself, in part, outside the circuit of capital — the process known as underdevelopment.

While the process of proletarianization has been the natural consequence of the transition to capitalism worldwide, its truncated nature has been the result of a historically specific type of transition to capitalism, characterized by the absence, or incompleteness, of industrial transformation in the periphery — that is, resolution of the agrarian question. The further consequence has been the failure of peripheral states to fulfil national sovereignty, the principle established as a universal right upon the abolition of race as a principle of world order (formal imperialism).

The prevailing wisdom in the last quarter-century has claimed otherwise: in conceptual terms, it has claimed that the agrarian and national questions have been resolved and/or become irrelevant; in concrete terms, that the development and diversification of national productive forces has in fact proceeded apace satisfactorily by means of foreign direct investment, or that they need not proceed apace, that finding 'comparative advantage' in agriculture suffices for development. Such claims are in fact highly ideological, and indeed essential to the conduct of imperialism in the neoliberal period. What is worse, the conceptual structure of these claims has infiltrated the forces of 'opposition' to neoliberalism, including international trade unionism and the anti-globalization movement.

The latter event is itself a continuation of the historical contradictions within 'labour internationalism', which, deriving from the centre-periphery relationship of the states-system, are marked by the persistent failure of the working class as a whole to commit to the fulfilment of national sovereignty in the periphery. To be sure, the burden of neoliberal restructuring has been carried by the working class in both centre and periphery — even eroding the democratic rights historically obtained in the centre. But the resulting 'human rights' and 'post-national' discourses of contemporary internationalism have conveniently submerged the agrarian and national questions. It is no coincidence that the bulk of the crisis of the 1970s has been displaced, by means of structural adjustment programmes, outside the borders of central states, such that the social reproduction of the working class as a whole has continued to rely on the development of underdevelopment in the periphery.

In this book, we inquire into the socio-economic and political dynamics of underdevelopment in the course of neoliberal restructuring. Socio-economically, we find that the peasantry has not entirely 'disappeared', but that semi-proletarianization has continued to absorb the costs of social reproduction, as these have been systematically 'expelled' by capital. Politically, we find a diversity of rural movements: these range from the more organized to the more spontaneous; they have different modes of mobilization; and they exhibit notable divergences in ideology, strategy and tactics. However, they share the same social basis in the semi-proletarianized peasantry, landless proletarians and urban unemployed; they are militant on land and agrarian reform, most often employing the land occupation tactic; and, in the most organized of cases, they have become the leading forces of opposition to neoliberalism and the neocolonial state, at the same time as trade unionism has suffered disorganization and co-optation. The conclusion at which we arrive is that the nucleus of anti-imperialist politics today — and hence of genuine labour internationalism — is to be found in the countrysides of the periphery.

The National and Agrarian Questions under Neoliberalism

The period following the crisis of the 1970s has come to be known as that of 'globalization'. Originating in the profit squeeze of the late 1960s, it has been characterized by the restructuring of industrial capital and its financialization, the deregulation of the global monetary and financial systems, and ultimately the collapse of the welfare-state compromise at the centre and the national development project in the periphery. Globalization has certainly entailed a 'rupture' with the past. But precisely what kind of rupture? This remains a matter of dispute.

The national question under neoliberalism

On one side of the debate are those who have insisted that a 'convergence' has been taking place between North and South, by virtue of the restructuring and relocation of capital. Some have even concluded that the lifting of barriers to capital, or otherwise the deepening of transnational social and political networks, has led to the redundancy of the state. The general implication has been that capitalism has been fulfilling its historic destiny, that the centre-periphery inheritance has been superseded, and that the national question is itself redundant. Such positions have not...