3

Critique of Anthropology, 1978, 11 :3-18

Peasants as Proletarians*

by William Roseberry
A recurrent problem in the anthropological study of peasants is the
conceptualization of peasants as part of larger social, political, and
economic wholes. Most of us recognize that the people we study do not
exist in isolation and that the social processes which most affect them
cannot be explained in terms of local interactions. While we have widened
our methodological frameworks, however, our concepts reflect antiquated
notions of peasantries. We continue to discern local units and treat them
as if they were indeed discrete (i.e. we reify them). This conceptual
impasse is implied by our terminology. Many scholars (including some
marxists) continue to talk of peasant or agrarian ’communities’,
’societies’, ’economies’, or ’modes of production’ which articulate
with larger ’regions’, ’nations’, ’complex societies’, or ’the capitalist
system’. Yet if peasants act within social cohtexts which necessarily
include non-peasants, it makes little sense to create artificial conceptual
distinctions between them and other people within their social milieu and
then treat those differences as real (i.e. as a problem). This essay does
not suggest that we abandon microsociological studies of peasant producers,
but it does contend that we must drop all notions of peasant society or
economy. If peasants exist within larger societies, let us begin with
those societies, examine the social, political, and economic processes
of development (or underdevelopment) which are at work in them, and then
analyze rural regions in terms of those larger processes. The problem of
’articulation’ disappears because we are no longer talking about two dis-
crete units which somehow are related but about a total society.

This point hardly a new one, even to anthropologists (see e. g. Wolf

is
1966,1969; Mintz
1973,1974). Recent contributions to peasant studies are
making this point even more forcefully (see e. g. Enew et al 1977; Harrison
1977). Unfortunately the point is often lost on the best of writers.
Stavenhagen (1969), for instance, sets up a theoretical conceptualization
of social class which would make even the most orthodox marxist smile.
While he notes that class analysis must be based on an examination of
a total society rather than its parts (ibid: 23), however, his own treatment
of class divisions in rural regions of Mexico and Central America (ibid:
89-103) is surprisingly traditional. It simply divides the agricultural
population (by no means a social whole in itself) into strata according to
how much land they do or do not own.

*
Paper presented in the Symposium, ’Class and Class Conflict in
Agrarian Societies’, American Anthropological Association Annual
Meeting, 2 December 1977
4

It is, of course, for class analysis that this perspective has its most
important implications. Any analysis of class and class conflict in rural
regions must not simply add rural proletarians and/or semi-proletarians
to traditional concepts of peasantries. We must analyze the process of
production and reproduction of the social formation as a whole and the
position of rural regions (and social groups within those regions) in the
total society. This at once makes our analysis more fundamental and
complex. It requires a higher level of theoretical abstraction and greater
sophistication and precision at the empirical level. Following Lange
(1966: 104-08), we must move back and forth between abstraction and
progressive concretization. In this essay I will adopt the approach to
class analysis outlined by Teotonio dos Santos (1970). This requires
specification of the mode of production which characterizes (dominates)
a particular social formation. While the determination of a dominant mode
requires familiarity with the concrete society and therefore involves
empirical work, the analysis of the mode of production is necessarily
theoretical. The concept itself is not spatially limited. Upon determining
the structure and internal logic of the mode of production at an abstract
level, we must then turn our analysis back toward more concrete pheno-
mena and processes: as dos Santos expresses it, we must turn toward
particular social structures and social situations. While this too implies
theoretical analysis (i.e. the specification of complex and articulating
relations between dominant and subordinant modes of production in a
particular social formation), it also implies an analysis of ’empirical
data of historical, demographic, sociological nature’ (dos Santos 1970:
177). Finally, though dos Santos does not mention it, we must then turn
our attention back to the astract level of mode of production so that our
movement from abstraction to progressive concretization is itself
’dialectical’.

In this essay I consider a case with which most of us are familiar: one
in which rural cultivators live in a capitalist society and produce commod-
ities for sale to intermediaries who in turn sell them within capitalist
spheres of circulation. The form of capital which enters the region is
mercantile, and producers are not expropriated or ’proletarianized’.
Maintaining formal control over land and other means of production, they
continue to appear as ’peasants’. Yet capital is beginning to dominate the
production process. In the most general terms, then, my problem is the
penetration of peasant production by merchant capital. Proper conceptual-
ization requires theoretical argument, and much of what follows is abstract.
Nevertheless, the problem occurred to me in the process of analyzing a
particular situation, to which I will turn after the theoretical argument.
Because that situation coloured my conceptualization, however, it is best
that I note from the beginning that I was examining merchant capital
penetration in the Venezuelan Andes with investment in coffee production.
Coffee being a perennial, it doubtless made for a stronger hold over pro-
ducers by particular merchants. In addition, Venezuelan developments -
especially in this century - have created a special situation which has
coloured the specific class structure that emerged. While my theoretical
argument may be of general utility for social scientists concerned with
 5

the penetration of peasant production by merchant capital, my analysis of

the class structure is specific to Venezuela.

The mode of production (1)

In analyzing peasant production in relation to merchant capital, we must
be sensitive to the relationship of capital to both circulation and production.
To address it I must briefly summarize Marx’s analysis of capital accumul-
ation and apply it to both production and circulation. Marx begins with
commodities, or more precisely the circulation of commodities, which is
’the starting point of capital .. the historical groundwork from which it
,

rises’ (Marx 1967a: 146). The simplest expression of commodity circula-

tion, assuming the development of money, is: C-M-C; when C is a
commodity and M is money. Assuming (for simple circulation) that the
producer is the owner and seller of the commodity he has produced, he
sells that commodity (C), e, g. corn, for money (M). This forms the first
movement of simple circulation, the sale: C-M. The producer then buys
another commodity, e. g. shoes, with the money received in the sale.
This forms the second movement of simple circulation, the purchase:
M-C. The two movements are treated as the basic circuit or formula of
simple circulation: C-M-C. In this case the producer is selling in order
to buy and buying in order to consume. The basic circuit is in fact one of
a series of transactions, not limited to the original commodities or their
buyers and sellers, which can be expressed as a chain: C-M-C-M-C-iVi-C ...

Now, since C-1V1-C can be expressed as a chain, and since every C -Nl is
simultaneously an M-C (depending on whether we are examining the trans-
action from the point of view of the buyer or the seller), we could also view
the movement as: M-C-M. Money, originally developed to facilitate circula-
tion, can become the object of exchange itself. In other words one person
may buy a commodity (M-C), not for the purpose of consumption but for
resale (C-M) for more money than its original purchase price. In this
case the person is buying in order to sell and selling in order to realize
a profit. Here money (M) has ’gone through a characteristic and original
movement, quite different in kind from that which it goes through in the
hands of the peasant who sells corn, and with that money thus set free
buys clothes’ (ibid: 147). It is through this circuit, in which more money
is withdrawn at the end of the process than was present at the beginning,
thus creating ’surplus value’ or profit, that money is converted to capital.
This can be expressed as M-C-M’, where .M’ includes the original quantity
of M plus an increment, which is ’the general formula of capital as it
appears prima facie within the sphere of circulation’ (ibid: 155).

Here profit is realized and capital is accumulated in the circulation

process. Surplus value is captured but is not necessarily created or
produced, as no value can be created in the process of circulation (ibid:
163). In the formula M-C-M’ there is no necessary relationship between
capital (money capital or 1VI) and production other than the fact that the
commodity (C) has to be produced somehow. The buyer may realize an
accidental profit (and accumulate capital) by buying cheap and selling
6

dear. Or the buyer may realize a profit because the producer is constrained
somehow (e.g. slavery, feudal relations, etc). The merchant may therefore
be a ’capitalist’ and accumulate capital on the basis of non-capitalist pro-
duction relations. While a merchant is engaged in capital accumulation,
producers who place commodities in circulation are producing primarily
use values. In this case, M-C-M~ depends on commodity circulation, but
it does not necessarily alter the mode of production.

For Marx, capitalist production required that capital could be accumulated

(M-C-M·) even if commodities were bought and sold at their values. In other
words, value would have to be created or produced. This takes us out of the
circulation process alone and into the production process. Nevertheless,
while Marx discards mere circulation as a creator of value, he observes
that capital cannot be explained outside of circulation (Marx 1967a: 165-66).
The explanation must therefore look to a particular commodity, bought at
its exchange value in the circulation process (M-C), the use value of which
would create more value. Thus further transaction, selling at value, would
realize a surplus value, incorporated in M’. He finds such a commodity
in labour power. With the ’use value’ of labour power, Marx moves outside
the sphere of circulation and into production. ’Labour power’, according
to Marx, is the ability or potential for labour which the worker possesses,
including skills necessary for specialized jobs. This labour power has a
value determined by the amount of labour required to produce and sustain
it. The worker sells this labour power to the capitalist at its value, and
the capitalist then uses it in the production of a commodity which has an
exchange value. This use of labour power, or the use value of labour power,
is labour itself. Marx assumes that the use value of labour power in the
form of labour will produce more value than labour power itself is worth.
The capitalist, then, after buying labour power at its value, would use it
in the form of labour to produce commodities with a greater exchange value
than the value of labour power, and would sell those commodities at their
value realizing a surplus value or profit. Strictly speaking, then, this
particular process should not be expressed as Marx does in 0apital :
M-C-M’, but as b1-C-C’-Mt, The commodity (C) bought by M in the unit
M-C (labour power) is consumed, and is both quantitatively and qualitatively
different from the commodity produced through the use of labour power,
which is sold in the unit C-M·. The proposed unit C-C’ (which, by the
way, is how Marx expresses it in the Grundrisse) would imply a production
process in which labour power is converted into other commodities.

Money therefore becomes capital, in its ’modern standard form’ (ibid:

165) (i.e. industrial capital), when itencounters the commodity labour
power in circulation. For labour power to be a commodity, Marx claims
that two conditions must be met: (1) the labourer must possess his labour
power, and thus have the power to sell it freely as a commodity (i.e. he
cannot be a slave); and (2) the labourer must not be able to freely sell
commodities in which his own labour is embodied (i.e. he must not control
means of production and therefore the product of his own labour), and is
thus obliged to sell his own labour power as a commodity, in order to
survive (ibid: 168-69).
 7

Marx’s concept of capital therefore implies a precise social relationship

with labour, or labour power as a commodity. Of course he based his
analysis of capitalist production and capitalist accumulation on a particular
form of capital and production, i.e. the industrial form. I will attempt to
show that as capitalism expands and develops, forms of capitalist produc-
tion may emerge which satisfy Marx’s requirements for accumulation
through production but which do not necessitate industrial capital. For
now we must simply recognize the fundamental distinction between
capitalist circulation (M-C-M·) and capitalist production (M-C -C’ -.1.B11’)
(cf. Kay 1975: 63-72). For capitalist production, capital must be
inextricably tied to the production process itself (C-C’).
Thus far we have a precise distinction between industrial capital, with
which accumulation can occur in production (M-C-C’-M’); and merchant
capital, with which accumulation can occur in circulation (M-C-1Vt·), While
such a distinction is useful in outlining an historically specific capitalist
mode of production and examining the emergence of capitalism in Western
Europe, it is not particularly useful in analyzing capitalist penetration in
the underdeveloped world during the 19th century. For one thing, after
industrial capital had established dominance in the 19th century, capitalist
investment in the underdeveloped world utilized merchant capital (cf. Kay
1975: 96-124). In this sense, merchant capital was no longer simply a
pre-capitalist or ’antediluvian’ form of capital; it was an ’agent’ or ’aspect’
of industrial capital (ibid: 100-01 passim). This meant that merchant
capital was no longer limited to the circulation sphere but began to establish
control over the production process itself (2).

To analyze the manner in which merchant capital was able to penetrate

the production sphere, we must briefly consider the other antediluvian
form of capital mentioned by Marx: interest-bearing capital. In pre-
capitalist modes, interest may constitute a portion of surplus product
extracted; it may also form the entire surplus product. Interest-bearing
capital may, like merchant capital, exist outside of a mode of production,
claiming a portion of surplus product appropriated by other means; it may
also enter into relations with direct producers, becoming the primary
mechanism for the extraction of surplus value. Though Marx never con-
siders interest a social relation of production, I will attempt to demon-
strate that in the latter case (relations with direct producers), it must
be considered a production relation.

In its pre-capitalist forms, usurers’ capital is like merchant capital in

that it requires no presuppositions for its existence other than commodity
circulation and money (Marx 1967b: 593). In addition, like merchant
capital, it originally relates to a mode of production externally, impover-
ishing it without necessarily affecting its structure (3). Usurers capital
differs from merchant capital in that, while it too requires commodity
circulation for its existence, it is not limited to the sphere of circulation.
It may enter as well into the sphere of production.
8

Marx points to two ’characteristic forms’of usury: ’Usury by lending

money to extravagant members of the upper classes, particularly land-
owners ; secondly, usury by lending money to small producers who possess
their own conditions of labour’ (ibid: 594). While interest in the first case
is merely in an external relation to another mode of production, the second
case represents the active involvement of usurers’ capital in production.
Usurers’ capital may enter into direct relations with producers when the
economy is based on small scale production units, with means of produc-
tion under the partial control of direct producers themselves. On this
form, Marx notes that ’in the form of interest, the entire surplus above
the barest means of subsistence can be consumed by usury ... ’ (ibid:
...

595). Nevertheless, Marx does not feel that interest changes the mode of
production:
Usurer’s capital in the form whereby it indeed appropriates all of
the surplus-labour of the direct producers, without altering the modes
of production; whereby the ownership or possession by the producer
of the conditions of labour.. is its essential prerequisite; whereby,
,

in other words, capital does not directly subordinate labour to itself,

and does not, therefore, confront it as industrial capital - this
usurer’s capital impoverishes the mode of production, paralyzes
the productive forces instead of developing them, and at the same
time perpetuates the miserable condition in which the social product-
ivity of labour is not developed at the expense of labour itself, as in
the capitalist mode of production.
(ibid: 595, 596)
We must place Marx’s claim that interest does not ’alter the mode of
production’ in perspective. He means here that production is not placed
under the direct sway of capital, that it does not necessitate the separa-
tion of producers from means of production. He is simply saying, then,
that usurers’ capital is not industrial capital, but he is not addressing the
problem of interest as a social relation of production in this context.
Where interest is the primary method for extracting surplus value from
the direct producers, the usurer has imperfect control over production,
not unlike the control exercised by the landlord who rents out a portion of
his land. In both cases the producer is identified with means of production,
and in both cases control of those means is not, precisely speaking, the
producer’s. In other words, the producer has not been separated from
means of production, but those means have been alienated from him to a
certain extent. Moreover, this alienation may lead to separation if the
creditor forecloses or if the landlord expropriates.

It isthrough usurers’ capital that merchant capital can move beyond the
sphere of circulation into production. While the two types of capital
(merchant and usurers’) can be separated conceptually, in practice they
are often united in the same persons. Both require the accumulation of
money wealth. The merchant/money-lender may use one form of capital
to aid in the accumulation of capital through the other form. For instance,
the merchant as money lender may use credit and interest relatioazs to buy
 9

cheap and sell dear, thus establishing what Marx called a ’system of
robbery’ (ibid: 331). Where scattered producers own or control means
of production and are producing commodities and the merchant/money-
lender enters into direct relations with the producers rather than with
upper class members, the merchant may loan money for the production
or consumption expenses of the production unit (i.e. for its reproduction).
The loan will be repaid in the form of commodities, by two methods:
(1) the loan is a pre-sale of the commodity, i.e. the producer ’sells’ a
specific quantity of, e. g., corn before it has been produced, accepts
’payment’ in advance, and delivers the corn at a later date; or (2) the
loan is repaid at interest in the form of the commodity produced at a
price to be determined on the date of delivery. In the first case interest
is hidden in the commodity price received by the merchant when he sells
the commodity on the open market. Both methods can occur in all petty
commodity economies in which merchant capital (wedded with usurer’s
capital) is becoming increasingly important. The relation becomes more
systematic where the commodity produced entails the use of means of
production which necessitate the long range investment of capital (e. g.
coffee production). The merchant, as the principal source of money capital,
may move directly into production by loaning the amount necessary for the
investment and collecting interest on that loan. In that case the means of
production would be possessed by the producer, but would be under a lien
to the merchant/usurer. In other words, they would be alienated.

If we examine u.3 identification of merchant and usurer’s capital in terms

of capital accumu!7%tion, it is apparent that this form closely approximates
the method of exploitation of industrial capital. Formally, the merchant
is purchasing a commodity below its value in the original loan (M-C).
That commodity is delivered at a later date and sold by the merchant at
its value for the realization of a surplus value (C-M’). The original
purchase of the commodity, however, was only formal. The loan was
necessary to meet the reproduction costs of the production unit and was
therefore necessary to release labour in production. It is possible, then,
to view the original movement of capital (M-C) as a means of purchasing
labour power. The merchant then has an undeniable claim to the commodity
produced by that labour power, set in motion as labour. The merchant
purchases one commodity, labour power, with the initial outlay of money,
and receives another commodity (e. g. corn, coffee) in the final transaction
(C-M’). Between the two transactions is a production process (C-C’) which
creates value. In other words, merchant/usurers’ capital initiates a move-
ment (M-C-C’-M’) similar in formula to the movement (M-C-C’-M’) of
industrial capital. It is only possible because the producer, identified with
means of production, does not completely control them and must turn to
a merchant/usurer who is taking control over production. In this manner,
the merchant (as merchant and usurer) imitates the industrial capitalist.
The case can therefore be made that this is a form of capitalist production.

We may therefore claim that the mode of production in question is

capitalist rather than pre- or non-capitalist. We must, then, begin our
analysis with capital and capitalists rather than peasants (4). What
10

implications does this analysis have for class analysis ? In an important

essay, Banaji examines a similar situation and maintains that the direct
producer is receiving a ’concealed wage’:
When we regard the simple commodity enterprise articulated to
capital no longer as an unit of production imposing its
independent
own laws of motion on the process of production, but as a quasi-
enterprise with the specific social function of wage-labour (in the
strict sense, value-producing labour); the ’price’ which the
...

producer receives is no longer a pure category of exchange, but

a category, i. e., a relation, of production, a concealed wage.
Behind the superficial ’surface’ sale of products, peasants under
this form of domination sell their labour-power.... Finally, sub-
sistence production now figures, under this system, as the specific
form of reproduction of labour-power within a capitalist process of
production. It becomes misleading, therefore, to regard it as a
specific, separate mode of production (e. g. a ’domestic mode of
production’) in a system of modes of production dominated by
capitalism.
(Banaji 1975: 25-26)
On this level there is substantial agreement between Banaji’s position and
my own. There are some problems with the conception of a ’concealed
wage’, however. If ’peasants’ are receiving a concealed wage, then we
must not talk of peasants at all but must treat such producers as proletar-
ians in disguise. But does such a conclusion necessarily follow from our
conceptualization of a capitalist mode of production? Must we adopt a
dichotomous theory of class structure? To answer this question we must
leave the abstract level and turn to a particular social formation.

The social formation (5)

Thus far I have presentedan abstract analysis which maintains that
peasants may act direct producers within a capitalist mode of production.
as
At the level of the mode of production, then, peasants may occupy a struct-
ural position comparable to that of proletarians. As we move toward a
concrete analysis, however, a more complex picture emerges: it is in-
sufficient to talk of peasants as ’disguised’ or ’concealed’ proletarians.
I will address this issue with reference to the Andean region of Venezuela
and its position within the Venezuelan social formation. While the analysis
is geographically specific, however, it is less confined by time. I begin
my argument with the 19th-century penetration of production by merchant
capital and examine the class situation of the peasantry during that period.
I then move into the 20th century, during which merchant capital was dis-
placed from its dominant position by industrial capital, and look at class
relations in a more complex situation. Because of space limitations,
however, in neither case have I gone into the kind of depth the question
requires. What follows is simply a preliminary indication of the type of
analysis necessary for the specification of class relations.
 11

The Venezuelan Andes served as the nucleus for a coffee boom in 19th-
century Venezuela. In a variety of senses, the economic organization of
coffee production was a creation of this 19th-century development. Merchant
capital invested in the region came from trading companies located in the
port city of Maracaibo. All were foreign (German, Italian, and British),
though in some cases the owning families had long been resident in
Venezuela. They invested in production by making loans to local Andean
merchants - many of whom were themselves southern European (Spanish,
Italian) immigrants. These local merchants in turn offered credit to
producers. In investing in coffee production, the merchants created new
forms of property. Aside from municipal (ejidp) and church lands, two
dominant forms of property had been inherited from the colonial period:
possessions (indivisible tracts of land sold or granted to Europeans in the
colonial period); and reserves (community lands granted to Indians). While
the possessions had represented a form of private property, they had been
indivisible during the colonial era. With the passing of centuries (and
generations) communities of heirs possessed rights to the possessions.
In a sense, then, farmers in both the possessions and reserves were
socially comparable by the late 18th century. Agricultural production was
based in family farms while ownership rested with larger collectivities:
a ’community’ of heirs to possessions, or a ’community’ of Indians in
corporate reserves. With Independence in the 19th century came legal
instruments for the parcelization of the old possessions and reserves.
As producers turned to coffee production, pressure grew for the dissolu-
tion of community property for the simple reason that credit was needed
for a perennial crop like coffee, and it was not forthcoming unless the
producer could offer something alienable as a guarantee. The result was
the creation of small-scale private property, which simultaneously enabled
the accumulation of property by merchants who accepted newly created
small holdings as liens. At the same time migrants from other regions of
Venezuela moved into and established coffee farms on abundant nationally
owned lands. As squatters, they entered into direct credit relations with
Andean merchants. With 19th-century coffee production, then, a dynamic
opposition was set up between merchants and small producers. The
economic tie between them was credit, necessary for the small farmer
to grow coffee. On a theoretical level, I have argued that such a situation
signifies the dominance of a capitalist mode of production. In what sense,
however, may we consider credit relations as a ’disguised wage labour
form’ and coffee growers as ’proletarians’? While the credit relation
was capitalist (i.e. merchant capital was necessary for the creation of
value in production), it was not wage labour in disguise. And coffee
growers were neither fully peasant nor fully proletarian.

As peasants, they still maintained some control over the means of

production even though those means had been alienated by long term
credit ties with merchants. In spite of such alienation, the final separa-
tion characteristic of industrial capital had not occurred, and producers
maintained some control over the production process. In fact, ownership
of land by direct producers was a creation of the merchant capitalist mode.
Direct producers were tied more closely to means of production rather
12

than being separated from them. While this situation was in the interest
of the merchants themselves (i.e. it meant that they could maintain and
even expand their position while assuming little risk), it also allowed for
a level of accumulation by producers which would be inconceivable under
the rule of industrial capital. While merchant capital linked with usurers’
capital is more efficient in extracting surplus value from producers than
either form was acting alone, it is still not as efficient as industrial
capital. Under industrial capital the producer controls no means of pro-
duction but must work for those who do own them in return for wages.
The wages tend toward a socially defined level of subsistence, and all
the capitalist (who, as owner of means of production, possesses the
product) has to do to capture all surplus value is sell the product at its
value. A peasant, on the other hand, as a controller of means of produc-
tion, surrenders a portion of his total produce - which he nominally
possesses - to non-producers. The claimants of peasant surplus will
attempt to capture as much of it as possible (in this case, through credit
ties), but their lack of complete control of means of production restricts
their control of the total product and makes the exploitation relationship
inefficient. If we assume unequal access on the part of peasants, some of
the peasant producers will therefore be able to retain a portion of their
own surplus product and accumulate resources (cf. Roseberry 1976).
Such unequal access characterized the coffee economy in the Andes.
’Peasants’ included both dependent sharecroppers and ’independent’ land-
owners and squatters. Moreover, among the owners and squatters, there
was differentiational access to land and resources (e. g. processing equip-
ment and transport). This meant that processes of production and circula-
tion brought peasants into contact with each other and allowed those who
owned processing equipment and/or mules to accumulate more goods.
Of course in this case richer peasants were simply acting as brokers
between producers and merchants and imitating the exploitative techniques
of the merchants. As such they represented no threat to the power of the
merchants or the stability of the social structure. But they did act as a
buffer between larger merchants and direct producers and made the
control of merchant capital less direct and efficient.

Our analysis of coffee farmers as peasants is further complicated by the

fact that coffee farmers occupied a privileged position in the local economy
in comparison with farmers who simply produced minor crops. Coffee was
a commercial crop, the object of investment. Through such investment,
some small producers - acting as ’entrepreneurs’ - were able to
improve their lot.
As proletarians, coffee farmers were caught in a productive relation
with capital which allowed for the production of surplus value. Even if
exploitation was not as efficient as it might have been, the exploitative
relation was not accidental but structured (M-C-C’-M·), In spite of
differentiation, producers occupied a similar position vis-a-vis capital.
Moreover, coffee was worthless to producers unless it was sold on the
world market. Given the isolation of Andean communities, they could
only realize the value of the commodities they produced through a small
 13

group of merchants with oligopsonistic privileges. Does this mean that

the coffee economy represents a disguised wage labour form? This would
imply that capital invested in the Andes was really industrial capital, and
it was not. It was merchant capital moving into production, imitating
industrial capital, establishing control over the economy. Whether it would
be able to become industrial capital was problematic, and a more exhaust-
ive analysis would have to examine that potential (see Roseberry 1977a,
1977b, 1977c). For now we must simply note that coffee farmers were not
proletarians in disguise. But neither were they peasants, in spite of
appearances. They were family farmers investing in commercial production.
In the process of investing they were forced to enter into a relation with
capital which meant they could no longer be considered peasants. While
some, as entrepreneurs, might prosper and accumulate resources, most
had embarked on a process of proletarianization.

We must now move beyond the simple opposition of merchant and direct
producer of the 19th century to the more complex situation of the present.
Glossing over much detail, we may note that the coffee sector has ex-
perienced a decline in this century which has corresponded with the rise
of the petroleum sector and concomitant industrial and service sectors.
As the agricultural sector has declined, urbanization has accelerated.
According to the most recent census (1971), the urban population accounts
for 77.2% of the total; according to the most recent estimates, it accounts
for over 80%. This process has occurred even in the Andes, where over
50% of the population is now considered urban. Needless to say, the
’peasant’ (loosely defined) is of decreasing significance in the national
economy: according to the most recent census, agriculturalists (only some
of whom can be called ’peasants’) account for only 20.3% of the nation’s
economically active population. ’Peasants’ are no longer the most import-
ant direct producers in the economy. They exist alongside and in conjunction
with proletarians, and in truth the two ’roles’ often coincide. Even in rural
regions some wage labour opportunities are available to family farmers -
either on newly developing capitalist farms or in commercial and public
sectors. People may maintain their own farms and work on other farms
or in nearby towns.

In this century, then, industrial capital has displaced merchant capital -

even in rural regions. It must be noted further that the Venezuelan state,
investing income from the petroleum sector, has become the most
important actor in the economy. In coffee production, the government
has displaced private merchants as the principal creditor and coffee
buyer (even though private merchants have not completely disappeared).
The government is active in the industrial and services sectors as well.
This is particularly true in rural regions, where the government has
become the most important single employer of wage and salaried labour.
In such regions, then, both agriculturalists and wage earners contend
with the same ’capitalists’ - through the action of multiple state agencies.

Finally it must be noted that with the long decline of the coffee sector,
the returns which poor and middle level coffee farmers can expect from
14

their coffee farms are very low. Furthermore, the government has set
a minimum wage in both agriculture and industry which, if paid to full-
time workers, adds up to significantly more than poor or middle level
coffee farmers can reasonably expect to gain from their farms. On the
ground, then, there is a very real difference between ’peasants’ (whose
returns are low and whose options are limited as the commodity they
produce declines in importance in the national economy) and ’proletarians’
(whose returns, while low, are significantly higher than those available
to small farmers, and whose options are more numerous as they are
linked to a form of capital which is still in expansion). Full proletarian
status, then, far from representing the peasants’ impoverishment through
the robbery of means of livelihood, would represent a marked increase
in their standard of living and a change in their position in the national
social structure. This is a direct result of the fact that peasants existed
in a relationship with capital which impoverished them without turning
them into wage workers. In this sense small Venezuelan coffee farmers
represent an example of a process Marx outlined theoretically.
In discussing the control of direct producers by merchants, he says
that merchant capital

... only worsens the condition of the direct producers, turns them
into mere wage-workers and proletarians under conditions worse
than those under the immediate control of capital...
(Marx 1967b: 335)
This, of course, is precisely ’peasants’ have become in this situa-
what
tion : neither fully peasant fully proletarian, they are super-exploited
nor
workers in a capitalist society (i. e. ’mere wage-workers and proletarians
under conditions worse than those under the immediate control of capital’).
This has important implications for class consciousness. Many Venezuelan
’peasants’, long members of capitalist society, do not perceive their
liberation in terms of going beyond that type of society, acting with wage-
workers in a revolutionary movement. Rather their personal liberation
is perceived in terms of moving into full proletarian status. A perceptual
distinction is made between workers and peasants, and workers are seen
as more fortunate. Even ’semi-proletarians’, small farmers who occa-
sionally or seasonally work for others in return for wages, see themselves
as peasants, many of whom would like to find permanent work elsewhere.
One therefore attempts to find work in the rural region or migrates to
urban centres. As me informant (a farmer who works for the Ministry
of Public Works) exaggerates:

Today a fixed in public works, is better than a farmer.

worker,
Much better. Because he has savings. He is working but he has
savings. He has fifteen, twenty years of service and already has
thirty thousand or twenty thousand Bolivares saved up (here he
exaggerates - WR) The ones who get ahead nowadays, in working,
...

are the labourers. Now each worker makes at least fifteen Bolivares,
each worker ...
 15

Rather than opposing the system in which they live, then, peasants attempt
to improve their position within that system. Or, put in more structural
terms, one has a stake in and supports the transition to industrial
capitalism. This is particularly important when we consider that the
government is the most important employer of wage labour in rural
regions. In order to obtain work (or in order to obtain agricultural credit)
there is often a tacit requirement that one must be a member of the
political party in power. That party - through the government - becomes
the most important source of patronage. The peasant, then, in attempting
to improve his position, has a stake in the maintenance of the system and
the positions of the people who dominate it. This is not to argue that
peasants will always be non-revolutionary (though in Venezuela the question
is somewhat moot as the peasantry has declined in economic importance).
Indeed, if the government (which increasingly is coterminous with capital-
ist power as it extends its control over the economy) fails to meet the
expectations of peasants and proletarians for improved living standards,
its system of patronage will represent a weaker hold on the loyalties of
its clients. This, of course, is the hope of various socialist movements
in Venezuela. I am simply arguing that regardless of revolutionary
potential, peasants will continue to see themselves as different from
proletarians. Their perception is not without foundation in the social
structure.

We are forced to conclude, then, that peasants are not proletarians in

disguise in Venezuela. A simple abstraction of mode of production
might lead us to see peasants and proletarians occupying similar
structural positions in a dichotomous class model. In this sense they
would be paid a ’concealed wage’ in their interaction with merchants.
Peasants, then, would be proletarians. A more concrete analysis, how-
ever, suggests that they occupy and perceive different structural positions.
Moving from the concrete to a more abstract analysis, we see that this
complexity in the social structure reflects an incomplete process of
transition from a merchant capitalist to an industrial capitalist mode
of production. With this sort of analysis we are able to see that both
peasants and proletarians may act within capitalist society but that their
inter-relations are complex and cannot be specified at the level of mode
of production alone. This should not surprise us. As capitalism has
expanded to incorporate various social formations, or as various
technical and social requirements of commodities produced and circulated
within the system have required particular relationships, or as the
developmental process has been uneven or irregular, producing great
wealth in one region or for one class and great poverty in another region
or for another class, capitalist evolution has been multi-faceted. We
must at once be sensitive to variation and analyze processual regularities.
This requires constant movement between abstract and concrete levels
of analysis in the attempt to understand particular societies.

As a final note, it should be clear that I regard attempts to provide

general definitions of peasants or proletarians with something less than
enthusiasm. To the extent that such definitions are removed from real
16

situations, theycreate false distinctions which are applicable to all

concrete situations and illuminate none of them (cf. Godelier 1972).
In a recent essay on plantation slaves and proletarians, Mintz concludes:

... it is not analytically most useful to define either ’proletarian’

or ’slave’ in isolation, since these two vast categories of toiler
were actually linked intimately by the world economy that had, as
it were, given birth to them both, in their modern form. I have
not aimed here at assimilating either category to the other, but
at suggesting instead why a purely definitional approach leaves
something to be desired.
(Mintz 1977: 21)
If we add ’peasants’ to our list of traditional categories, I could not agree
more.

Notes

1 This section is based on a portion of my doctoral dissertation

(Roseberry 1977a: 76-80, 115-21).
2 In an important review, Bernstein points out that Kay (1975) does not
sufficiently appreciate this development:
’... the rise of industrial capital required a new pattern of trade -
no longer a trade in luxury items but a constant supply of
...

commodities in bulk as industrial raw materials. This change in

the composition of trade could not be effected without intervention
. Changes in
in the production of the new commodities required
production had to be carried through on a massive scale, either
through direct investment to establish mines and plantations or
indirectly through ways of controlling the production of millions
of peasants’ (Bernstein 1976: 57; emphasis in the original).
3 ’Usury, like commerce, exploits a given mode of production.
It does not create it, but is related to it outwardly. Usury tries
to maintain it directly, so as to exploit it ever anew; it is
conservative and makes this mode of production only more
pitiable’ (Marx 1967b: 609).
4 ’In all forms of society there is one specific kind of production
which predominates over the rest, whose relations thus assign
rank and influence to the others. It is the general illumination
which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity
In bourgeois society
... Agriculture more and more becomes
...

merely a branch of industry, and is entirely dominated by capital

Capital is the all-dominating economic power of bourgeois
...

society. It must form the starting-point as well as the finishing

point, and must be dealt with before landed property’(Marx 1973:
106-07).
5 This section is based on data gathered in Bocono, Estado Trujillo,
Venezuela between October 1974 and August 1976, under the institutional
sponsorship of the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cientificas.
 17

Research was supported at various stages by an NSF Graduate Fellow-

ship, Doherty Fellowship for Latin American Studies, and an NSF
a
Dissertation Improvement Grant (SOC75-18655). Drawing general
conclusions from a specific case, it ignores regional variation.
More specific information can be found in Roseberry 1977a, 1977b.

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18

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