Jacques Chevalier

There Is Nothing Simple About Simple Commodity Production Marx and many of his followers, such as Kautsky and Lenin in his early works, I tended to forecast the imminent or inevitable eradication of those forms or relations of production which were alien to the logic of production founded on capital and wage-labour. Frank's well articulated rejection of theories of economic dualism was initially welcomed as an insightful critique not only of bourgeois theories of economic growth, but also of the 'suffocating orthodoxies of Marxist evolutionary theory'", Much like early marxists, the dependentistas (and world-system theorists) have insisted upon the historically determining role of capitalism as the main path of the 'modern wheel of history.' In a sense, it is the latter shared assumption which has led Frank, Cardoso, Dos Santos, Wallerstein, and many others;' to a broader reformulation of the marxian discourse, or to a redefinition of underdevelopment from being a direct effect of the economic backwardness of poorer countries to being an immediate consequence of capitalist growth. Instead of confronting the marxianperception of capitalism as the all-pervasive force of the capitalist world with the actual complexities of the so-called modern era, they have chosen to redefine capitalism on the basis of a much broader conception of its historical unfolding, such that all forms of underdevelopment in the world economy could be seen as intrinsic to the functioning of capitalism itself. 'For Frank, as more recently for Wallerstein, there is but a single "world-system"; and it is capitalist through and through;"

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As Laclau? and other Althusserian-marxists have pointed out, the dependency approach led to the unfortunate development of conceptual underdevelopment within a marxian-like framework. The dependency approach was shown to lack rigour in so far as it reduced the structuring of capitalism to the recursive unfolding of a single, and relatively simple, principle: the hierarchical differentiation between metropolis and satellitets), or between central and peripheral economies, and the profitoriented exploitation of the latter, at both intra-national and international levels, through market mechanisms, a complex sectoral division of labour, and a conjunctural myriad of economic and political relations of domination and subordination. In short, every relation of production or exchange which could be seen as contributing to the world-wide accumulation of capital (and the resulting development of underdevelopment) was to be treated, almost automatically, as an integral part, or internal articulation, of capitalism itself. Many critics of dependency have strongly objected to the latter combination of vulgar historicism and an unsophisticated concentric formalism as applied to the understanding of capitalism and of its Polymorphous ubiquity. Their suggestion is that we view underdevelopment as resulting not from the internal connections and polarizations of a world-wide capitalism, but from the articulations of capitalism to its outside world, that is, precapitalist modes (or forms) of production, those based upon primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, or any other noncapitalist set of productive practices. In the words of Rey, if feudalism, and notably its determinant relation of production, the extortion of ground rent, continues to play a role in the transition towards capitalism among those societies which were formerly dominated by it, then we can expect the exploitative relationships of another specific mode of production to play a similar role during its transition to capitalist domination. This is one of the central questions to be raised in the study of any social formation where capitalism establishes its domination over one or several modes of production.;

Structural marxists have thus stressed both the structural specificity and 'homoficence' (or parallel action) of capitalism as a mode of production sui generis, with its own set of forces and relations of production, and the historical and geographic variability of capitalism's articulation to other modes or forms of production within concrete social formations. The preceding problematic has paved the way for studies of either 'modes of production' and their formal/historical properties, or their complex articulation and interaction, usually in the context of capitalism's own historical expansion. 7 The analysis of 'plural' economies is by no means a new concern within historical materialism and may be 90

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seen as a methodical reformulation of Trotsky's law of uneven and combined development, or the notion that pre-capitalist or semi-capitalist modes of production may serve an important function in the multi-linear evolution of capitalism. The possible reproduction of older forms of production for reasons pertaining to the development of capital has also been discussed by Lenin, and by Marx himself, who recognized that such forms can 'survive and reproduce themselves as transitional sub forms within the framework of capitalist production'. 8 Similar positions surfaced more recently in studies of Latin American underdevelopment, and in various debates on the historical relationship between feudalism, colonialism and capitalism."

Yet the contribution of the recent 'articulationist' school is an important one since it has permitted us to go beyond the treatment of noncapitalist modes of production as passive horizons of capitalism, that is, as historically given environments which simply furnish some of the elements (raw materials, labourers, markets) needed for the growth of capital accumulation. Rey's characterization of Luxemburg's approach to non-capitalist environments applies quite well to most of the earlier discussions of uneven development within a marxist perspective: In short, non-capitalistmodesof productionare dealt with only in terms of those elementswhichcapitalismneedsand is able to steal from them, never as structured systemsand evenlessas entitiescapable of resistingtheir dissolution by the action of capitalismand of being articulated to the latter. On the whole, Rosa Luxemburg's thesis, although positing the impossibilityfor capitalismto survivewithout an externalworld, can do without the study of what lies outsidecapitalismitself. Other modes of production are reduced to a distant horizon of capitalism, one which is constantly pushed back by its forward march. 10 It is not possible to examine the 'mode of production' literature in detail here, let alone the numerous debates generated by, or within, this relatively new paradigm. It is, however, important to situate the theoretical argument which follows in relation to the fundamental issues mentioned above. There are several basic generalities that will guide us in our discussion of simple commodity production, all of which have direct bearing upon the claims and counterclaims of divergent streams of neomarxian thought. Firstly, it is imperative that we retain one of the most fundamental insights of world-system theorists, which is the complexity (or polymorphous development) of capitalism as seen from within its own internal dynamics, and that we avoid reducing the latter to the unfolding of a narrowly defined set of formal invariants. Proponents of 'economic

artlculauonism' have tended to view the logic of capital as centred upon formal constants which permit few internal variations; 'what is variable, therefore, must be the other half of the articulation, viz. the pre-capitalist 91

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modes of production. II The danger of such formalist views is that they thrive upon a rigidified conception of capital, which reduces all those elements that take on appearances other than capitalistic to so many manifestations of other modes of (non-capitalist) production. Yet the internal variations of capitalism need to be theorized on the basis of a rigorous conception of capital, one which is often lacking in macro-studies of the modern world economy, or unduly restricted to a discussion of the sectoral division of labour, and the unequal exchanges between polarized departments of production or unevenly developed economies. In the analyses which follow, I shall attempt to show how a definition of capitalism as a polymorphous structure of variable relations of production may permit a better understanding of certain relations which deviate, at least on the surface, from the productive logic of the CMP (capitalist mode of production). The preceding approach is by no means incompatible with a theoretical recognition of the other half of the articulation, which involves the complex connection of capitalism to social relations other than its own. On the contrary, the development of a capitalist economy presupposes the practical differentiation between capitalism and a noncapitalist environment (which may comprise practices of both capitalist and non-capitalist societies), and their structured intersection in concrete historical contexts. The latter point is indeed a crucial one, for it enables us to move beyond the constraining views of economic reductionism as applied to the study of social formations dominated by capital. This issue, however, will not be tackled in the discussion that follows; rather I shall concentrate on the development of a conceptual problematic which avoids two extreme notions of capitalism: one which embraces all relations of production and exchange found in the world system, and other which produces a rigidly-eroded model to which everything else is externally articulated. More precisely, my wish is to locate some specific forms of simple commodity production as variations of capitalism integral to its logic while at the same time offering a methodical account of their subsumption under capital. The purpose of this paper consists therefore in making a tentative contribution to our rethinking of class relations in the CMP, or to the resolution of an important riddle in marxian theory: namely, the status of simple commodity production (SCP) in the development of 'modern underdevelopment.' My contention is that the 'simplicity' of this form of production comes mostly from without, that is, from a tendency to oversimplify the social structuring of capitalist relations of production. While world system models have treated SCP as a merely contingent form in the forward march of capital, structural marxist accounts of the same relations have failed to avoid what might be called the teleological 'BC knowledge effect': by this I mean the precapitalist (or 'Before Capitalism') attributes which are mechanically imposed upon the latter form of self-employed work and which represent a convenient way of

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expelling, from within the narrowly defined boundaries of capitalism, these anomalous practices which are not reducible to the uniform appearances of the capitalist mode of production. The marxist account of SCP as the embodiment - distorted or wellpreserved - of an older form of precapitalist production is usually presented as follows: much like independent subsistence workers, simple commodity producers own their means of production; unlike them, however, they do engage in commodity transactions and are dependent upon the corresponding market mechanisms for the acquisition of those goods and services which they have not produced but need. Thus they sell what they produce and do not use and buy what they need but do not produce. The resulting circuit is depicted in the following manner: Personal & Product-------

ive Consumption

.•.• ~C

Selling

M ~

Buying

EXCHANGE

Personal & Product~ C'

ive Consumption

~

Those commodities (C) engendered through the productive consumption of raw materials, labour-power, and instruments of production, are sold in exchange for the money (M) needed to purchase commodities (C') that will enter into subsequent acts of personal and productive consumption. The chief concern of the producers is not to enlarge, but rather to reproduce their means of personal and productive consumption, all of which are treated as necessary use-values. In order to do so, however, they must be able to produce use-values that may be converted into objects of market exchange, and therefore into exchange-values, or concrete objects which possess the 'abstract' property of being quantitatively comparable to often commodified goods. In short, they must create those commodities that will enable them to reproduce their means of exchange and conditions of subsistence. The essence of SCP is thus constituted by its resistance to what Marx has called the twofold subsumption - formal and real- of labour under capital; hence a limited development of both the forces of production and the appropriation of commodified factors of production by agents of capital. In the discussion that follows, I argue that the preceding characterization of SCP fails to do justice to this not-so-simple form of production. More precisely, I shall try to show how the model given above hinges on the acceptance of four misleading theses which result in an artificially consistent portrayal of SCP as a form partly or fully governed by a precapitalist logic of its own. The four theses in question lay emphasis on I.

the exclusion of simple commodity producers' labour-power from the sphere of monetized exchange, and therefore from the process of labour's formal subordination to capital;

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ii.

the worker's ownership of some means of production, which is another expression of the non-realization of the formal subsumption process;

iii.

the maintenance of some artisan control over the production process and the corresponding absence of the real sub sumption mechanism;

IV.

the alleged subsistence-mindedness, or simple-reproduction rationale, of simple commodity producers.

My intention is certainly not to exhaust each of the preceding subjects. I merely wish to offer a tentative outline of an alternative view of both SCP and the process of labour's subsumption under capital, with special reference to role of agriculture in the context of capital-dominated economies. This will involve an attempt to specify the general conditions under which SCP may be fully governed by the logic of capital, without ever being transformed into what is strictly defined as proletarian labour. Finally, the questions at issue must be dealt with from three complementary angles: (a) the exigencies of capital accumulation, (b) the contradictions and limitations inherent to capitalism, especially those pertaining to the confrontation between 'central' and 'peripheral' economies, and (c) the active struggle of the working classes against their full exploitation by all agents of capital. Needless to say that this paper should be read not as a full elaboration of this threefold argument, but rather as a hopefully useful contribution to its development. Formal Subsumption Through Commodified Labour In the originally planned Part Seven of Volume 1 of Capital, entitled 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production,' Marx introduces a distinction between two mechanisms of subsumption of labour under capital, both of which are indispensable for capitalist production to establish itself as a 'mode of production sui generis'. The first process of subsumption is called 'formal' and consists of two mechanisms: the monetization of all factors of production, and the dispossession of workers from all means of production. It implies not only the monetization of labour-power (wage-labour exchanges do occur in the medieval guild system), but also the purchase of labour-power by capital, which presupposes the employer's monopoly of the workers' 'objective conditions of labour (the means of production) and the subjective conditions of labour (the means of subsistence).' The distinctive character of the formal subsumption of labour under capital appears at its sharpest if we compare it to situations in which capital is to be found in certain specific, subordinate functions but where it has not emerged as the direct purchaser of labour and as the immediate owner of the process of production, and where in consequence it has not yet succeeded in becoming the dominant force ... 12

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Marx recognizes that the confrontation of merchant capital (or usurers) and simple commodity producers is the locus of an effective exploitation of the latter by the former, but under conditions which do not yet involve the formal subsumption of labour under capital since labour-power is not yet purchased or directly exploited by capital. The development of a specifically capitalist mode of production implies therefore the generalized purchase of labour-power by owners of capital. As already mentioned, dependency and world system theorists have adopted a much broader conception of capitalism, one which allows for a greater diversity of productive relations in the process of capital accumulation, but which fails to account for the structural specificity of social relations in a capitalist economy. Conversely, other marxists have preferred to adopt a stricter definition of capitalism, and to explain the observed plurality of productive relations as the manifestation of a historical process of transition, which involves either the rapid transformation and eradication of older and non-proletarianized forms of labour (as early marxists would argue), or the uneven, protracted and combined development of capital in the context of mixed economies. Most marxists, with the exception of the dependistas, would tend to agree on at least one thing: the non-capitalist (or pre-capitalist) nature of non-monetized forms of labour and the absence of a formal subsumption process (as described by Marx) within all forms of simple commodity production. In the words of Mollard: In all forms of petty commodity production - and notably in peasant agriculture - the process of accumulation retains features characteristic of primitive accumulation: - Variable capital does not exist as capital since labour-power not a commodity and thus has no exchange-value ( ... ).

( ...

) is

In other words, primitive accumulation 'which produces the separation of labour from its external conditions' is not only the starting point of capitalist production, but also a contemporary element of it as long as all forms of precapitalist production have not been dissolved. 13

In short, the labour-power of a simple commodity producer is never purchased by capital and is ipso facto the locus of a non-capitalist relation of production; whether the latter is dominated by a feudal or a capitalist economy (or any other social formation) is of course another matter. 14 The position I wish to adopt differs from the latter thesis, or from the dominant conception within the marxist literature, of what is meant by the commodification of labour-power. My contention is that there are some cases of so-called SCP which are fully subsumed, although in their own particular fashion, under the logic of capital. One question which

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then immediately arises concerns the ways in which the formal penetration of capital can assert itself without resorting to the direct purchase of labour-power, a question which seems almost self-contradictory. To put this enigmatic question differently: can labour-power be commodified without ever being exchanged? According to Marx, a commodity has a twofold mode of existence: it contains a particular use-value which has the qualitative property of satisfying a concrete need, and a particular exchange-value, or a definite quantity of exchangeable and commensurable wealth. By exchange value, however, is not meant the actual act of exchange, but rather the quality of measurable exchangeability which such an act presupposes. 15 This distinction is quite crucial, for it implies the possibility of not realizing the exchange value of a commodity through the act of monetized exchange. Marx is quite explicit about this when he says, in Notebook III of the Grundrisse, that In no moment of the production process does capital cease to be capital or value to be value, and, as such, exchange value. Nothing is more ridiculous than to say, as does Mr Proudhon, that capital changes from a product into an exchange value by means of the act of exchange, i.e. by re-entering simple circulation. 16 The presupposition

of a self-preserving

exchange value comprises the after its consumption as usevalue in the productive process, re-enters into circulation as a commodity and an exchange value, such that the product obtains a price and is realized as such in money. Marx adds immediately, however, that the fate of an exchange value within circulation 'may be to be realized in money, or it may equally be that it does not realize itself in money; i.e, that its exchange value becomes money or not.'!"

possibility that capital (e.g., raw materials),

The presence or production of barriers to the realization of value is in fact inherent to production founded on capital. Capitalism is constantly engaged in a struggle to realize the value of what it produces. In this sense, the necessity of 'evening-up' supply with demand presupposes not only their 'uneveness' but, more generally, "the disharmony and hence the contradiction ( ... ) between capital as directly involved in the production process and capital as money existing (relatively) outside of it." Credit, over-trading and over-speculation represent various ways of 'expanding and leaping over the barrier to circulation and the sphere of exchange'. More generally, the greater the expansion of the total mass of products, the greater 'the difficulty of realizing the labour time contained in them - because the demands made on consumption rise' without there being an equivalent increase in the workers' exchange capacity;" The failure to exchange an exchange-value is usually treated by Marx as resulting from a difficulty in realizing the price of a commodity, for the latter is 'realized only when it is exchanged for real money, or in its real 96

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exchange for money'. The development of capital requires that exchange values be ideally transformed into money by means of prices or that commodities by ideally measurable in terms of accounting money (or 'money in the mind'); but the realization of such exchange value presupposes its transformation into 'real' money. 19 The labour-power of a simple commodity producer, although productively consumed, is never purchased by capital or exchanged for real money. It is therefore without an exchange-value, and cannot be realized as a commodity. In this sense the specificity of SCP would reside in its resistance to its formal subsumption under capital. To be sure, Marx and most of his followers adhere to the latter views quite consistently throughout their works. Thee is, however, some indication that Marx did adopt, in the analysis of the 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production,' a slightly different - and less constraining understanding of the valorization of capital process. In his discussion of 'commodities as the product of capital,' Marx states that the transformation of money into capital requires that the working population cease to enter the market-place as the producer of commodities. Instead of selling the products of its labour it must sell that labour itself, or more accurately, its labour-power. Only then can it be said that production has become the production of commodities through its entire length and breadth.?"

He adds that capitalist production destroys the basis of independent individual production and the exchange of commodities between owners (and the corresponding exchange of equivalents). In short, the 'formal exchange of capital and labour-power becomes general. '21 Yet Marx goes on to say that the form under which the conditions of capitalist production enters into the labour process is immaterial to the valorization process. For instance, it matters little whether, as in the case of seed in farming, a portion of the product is at once employed by the producer as the means of labour, or whether it is first sold and then converted back into a means of labour. (... ) all the means of labour that have been produced now also serve as ingredients in the valorization process. 22 Unsold commodities may be converted into accounting money and used as exchange values and may therefore transfer an element of calculable value to the product to which they are productively added. To the extent agriculture, for example, produces commodities for the market, so too, and to the same degree, it calculates its costs, treats each item as a commodity (regardless of whether it buys it from another or from itself; i.e.• from production.Ir' 97

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Via the valorization process, products and their conditions of production are thus treated as commodities and as calculable sums of accounting money, the realization of which may be performed by means other than their direct sale on the market. The value of the ingredients which a capitalist produces and buys from himself may be transferred on to other products and valorized in the process of producing an optimum amount of exchange value. This argument has an up-to-date ring if we consider those phenomena of complex integration which have marked the development of the labour process within advanced capitalism. My contention, however, is that this more flexible approach to circuits of capital accumulation implies unforeseen possibilities, which have yet to be theorized, and which may have a direct bearing upon our conception of SCPo These implications can be summarized as follows: any factor of material consumption can be commodified, and its exchange-value realized - without ever entering the sphere of real market transactions. This occurs whenever the calculable value of the ingredients directly appropriated by the worker (his own labour-power included) is transferred on to other products sold on the market and valorized in the process of creating maximum profits for productive capital and the corresponding conditions of labour's own subordinate reproduction. The realization of the exchange-value of what might be called subsistence commodities - those immediately consumed by the worker - is thus subjected to the determinate action of market calculations (on the part of both labour and capital) and the measurable weight of precise conditions of market transactions in labour and other factors of production. In negative terms, all cases of SCP which fail to respond to the influence of the latter capital-dominated market can be seen as effectively resisting the mechanism of formal subsurnption. Consider the following situations. Self-employed workers may buy their own labour-power from themselves and be able to evaluate its approximate worth (or exchange value) thus treating it as a commodified condition of production. This may be done by calculating the market value of those commodities which are necessary for personal consumption (some of which may be bought from their own reproduction) or the equivalent sum of money which goes into the reproduction of their labour-power. The resulting amount may be part of an overall budget that must be minimally balanced if the worker's 'enterprise' is to survive. The budget may take account of many roughly estimated costs and benefits, such as the revenue that must be ploughed back in the simple or enlarged reproduction of their means of production, the wage earnings which the producers could or must derive from the sale of their labourpower on the labour market (agricultural or industrial), or the income which they could or must spend in order to purchase the labour-power needed to replace or supplement their own. It is on the basis of such market-determined calculations that a smallholding unit may decide not to sell its labour-power or to sell only part of it in order to maximize its limited revenue and to secure the reproduction of its means of production.

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By purchasing its own labour-power, a household (or farming population) can be attempting to reach a calculable optimum in the employment of its commodified means of livelihood. The same can be said of its produce, which it may buy from its own production, rather than selling it for an amount of money which could be exchanged for fewer equivalent goods. The value of its own subsitence consumption is thus realized through mechanisms other than exchange, but for reasons which pertain to their rate of exchangeability and the corresponding determinations of markets in labour-power, credit, products, and means of production. It is important to note here that the latter calculations do not occur only within a context of unlimited access to market information and high mobility of factors of personal and productive consumption. A farmer may have very little choice in the allocation of his limited resources; this, however, does not mean that he can dispense with at least a rudimentary estimation of what alternatives he has and a rational elimination of those strategies that would prove fatal to his enterprise. Nor am I sugesting that these elementary forms of SCP accounting be accorded a high degree of causal weight in the effective subordination of self-employed labour to capital; rather the point is that they can be seen as an integral moment and indicator of what is truly a generalized commodification process. Another point should be made in regards to the basic category of abstract labour which is directly associated with the formal subsumption principle and, according to Marx, becomes a practical fact in capitalist economies only.>' The labour-power of a self-employed worker is commodified - and therefore given an 'abstract' value - only if its consumption can be shown to be affecting or directly affected by a wider market in both fixed and variable capital; failing this, his labour-power cannot be the object of an 'abstract' cost/benefit treatment and is consumed under non-capitalist conditions which bear little resemblance to the capital-dominated forms of SCPo The implications of this argument for a general theory of SCP are quite obvious: the notion of a distinctly recognizeable form or mode of SCP conceals a multiplicity of radically different practices which cannot be theorized in isolation from their variable economic contexts. Finally, SCP may be the locus of a calculated response of some workers to the predatory pressures of capital while at the same time constituting an immediate effect of capital's strategy of profit maximization in settings ranging from the wealthiest to the poorest regions of the world economy. There is now a relatively vast literature which demonstrates (a) how merchant, industrial and financial capital can derive appreciable benefits from its domination over simple commodity producers in both developed and underdeveloped economies; and also (b) how the internal contradictions and limitations of capitalism may cause the dependent reproduction of certain forms of SCP - especially those found in peripheral economies - which impose severe constraints upon the overall appropriation of relative surplus-value. 25 99

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There is considerable disagreement among neo-marxian theorists regarding the relative importance of (a) and (b). My position is that both are part of the same fundamental question: namely, the exigencies and contradictions of capital accumulation. As shall be shown later, the preceding issue is directly relevant to any discussion of variations in the observed forms of capital-dominated SCPo Suffice it to say for the moment that these two aspects (a and b) of SCP's subjection to the logic of capital can be equated with an effective realization of the more flexibly defined law of 'formal subsumption.' Formal Subsumption Through Dispossession According to Marx, the formal subsumption of labour under capital involves more than the commodification of all factors of production. It also presupposes a twofold process of dispossession: the exclusive ownership of the means of production by capital, and the concomittant appropriation of (absolute) surplus-value by the latter. The more completely these conditions of labour are mobilized against him as alien property, the more effectively the formal relationship between capital and wage-labour is established, i.e., the more effectively the formal subsumption of labour under capital is accomplished ... 26

Our understanding of SCP in developed and underdeveloped economies requires that we rethink the latter thesis in light of a crucial distinction which is all too frequently blurred in the marxist literature or simply left out in the analysis of self-employment practices among workers exploited by capital. I am referring to the distinction between the legal process of property ownership and exchange and the actual relations of material appropriation and economic control. As argued by Althusser, Poulantzas and others, marxist studies of the political economy of capitalist societies must avoid the notion that there is an unproblematic correspondance between legal and economic mechanisms of appropriation. The conclusion reached in the preceding section regarding the formal subsumption process can be seen as a direct application of the latter principle to our reexamination of SCP in a capitalist context. The formal domination of labour by capital can occur without the legal sale of the worker's labour-power to capital; more precisely, the labour-power of a self-employed labourer can be commodified and effectively exploited if it is subjected, through the purchase of his means of (personal and productive) consumption and the sale of his produce and / or a fraction of his labour-power, to the predatory forces of a capital dominated market. In other words, formal subsumption is operative wherever the process of capitalist circulation and production 'becomes in effect the precondition of his production'{'. The labour-power of this not-so-independent producer may never enter the sphere of legal circulation and yet be economically purchased by capital. This occurs whenever it becomes a calculable ingredient which enters into the products that are purchased by

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capital either directly, as part of its own costs of production, or indirectly, as part of the necessary consumption of its own wage-labourers. In the latter case, paid workers are given the means to purchase goods from 'independent' workers or from their own part-time subsistence production (if they are indeed engaged in such activity). The same reasoning holds true in respect of the worker's legal ownership of factors of production other than his labour-power. A simple commodity producer may own some of the means of production, land for instance, without fully possessing or controlling more value than what is needed to reproduce his limited means of personal consumption. This brings us to an important aspect of SCPo The worker's ownership of agricultural land and the particular status which may be attributed to landed property and to the value of the object of labour (as opposed to its product) in capitalist economies. Briefly stated, the issue is whether or not the monopoly of landed property is to be treated as a basic requisite and an internal effect of capitalist laws of movement. Let us begin with Marx's own position on the matter. Marx's writings display a certain ambivalence towards the problem of ground rent and the role of the naturally given conditions of production in the forward march of capitalism. There is a tendency, on the one hand, to consider the legal ownership of the object of labour as an integral part of capital and of its monopolistic control over all objective conditions of labour. As Marx put it, The same process which placed the mass face to face with the objective conditions of labour (land and soil, raw material, necessaries of life, instruments of labour, money, or all of these) as free workers also placed these conditions, as capital, face to face with the free workers.I'' The domination

of exchange value thus presupposes

alien labour capacity itself as an exchange value - i.e. the separation of living labour capacity from its objective conditions; a relation to them - or to its own objectivity - as alien property; a relation to them, in a word, as capital. 29 Capitalized rent, on the other hand, is seen as radically different from other forms of capital, in so far as it is appropriated through the ownership of an object of labour which contains no value: that is, land is not a product of labour and therefore is without value. The source of rent comes not from land itself but from the fact that the agricultural produce is not sold at its price of production but at its value, and that the latter exceeds the price of production because the organic composition of capital

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is lower in agriculture than in industry, whereas the monopoly of landed property prevents the free flow of capital in and out of agriculture, so that agricultural capital is thus prevented from 'sharing' in the social equalisation of the rate of profit, giving up part of the surplus-value created in 'its' sphere to the general share-out of this surplus-value.r'?

Marx distinguished between differential rent which is derived from differences in natural or economic fertility between pieces of land and absolute rent which presupposes: (a) higher profit rates in the agricultural sector (due to a lower organic compsoition of capital); (b) the ownership of land by non-producers, which permits landowners to appropriate the agricultural surplus profit, thus withdrawing it from the process of equalisation of rates of profit; (c) the capitalist farmer's appropriation of no more than the average profit. 31 Marx thus explains the capitalization of ground rent as an effect of specific relations of ownership on the economic redistribution of surplusvalue among non-working classes. It is the locus not only of an extraeconomic intervention in the material valorization process, but also of a transitional phase in the forward march of capital. The notion that landed property is not an invariant of capitalism is clearly stated in the Grundrisse where Marx recognizes that the modified reproduction of medieval forms of exploitation may be essential to the initial use of capitalism but not to its full development. In its advanced stage, capital regards the existence of landed property itself as a merely transitional development, which is required as an action of capital on the old relations of landed property, and a product of their decomposition; but which, as such - once this purpose achieved - is merely a limitation on profit, not a necessary requirement for production. It thus endeavours to dissolve landed property as private property and to transfer it to the state. This is the negative side. Thus to transform the entire domestic society into capitalists and wage labourers ... ( ... ) the negation [of landed property) from the side of capital is only a change of form, towards its undivided rule. (Ground rent as the universal state rent (state tax), so that bourgeois society reproduces the medieval system in a new way, but as the latter's total negationj.V

To be sure, recent rnarxian-inspired studies of capitalist penetration in agriculture have shown a certain reluctance to accept Marx's views on the matter and the notion of a quasi-automatic eradication of SCP in either the formative or advanced phases of capitalist evolution. Two extreme positions have emerged from within the latter literature. The first one is taken by Pierre-Philippe Rey in his influential Les alliances de c1asse. Briefly, Rey - although very critical of crude evolutionary models in Marxian theory reaffirms in his own way the early predictions formulated by Marx, Lenin and Kautsky, with regard to the long-term future of the feudal landowning class. Much like earlier followers of Marx, Rey also associates the full development of capitalism and the corresponding transformation of feudal rent into capitalized rent with the

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gradual disappearance of the worker as owner, the dissolution of the labourer's property in land or any other factor of production, and therefore with the complete expropriation of the workers from all means of production, excepting their labour-power which remains theirs to sell.I! His contention, however, is that landed property is essentially external to the capitalist mode of production and it rests upon precapitalist relations of productions; that is, a feudal opposition between peasants and landowners, the effects of which may intervene in the process of capital distribution within the CMP. 34 From a dominant relation of production in feudalism, the ground rent gradually assumes, with the expansion of capitalism, the secondary role of a distributive mechanism. A symbiotic relationship is initially formed between European feudal landlords and capitalists: the former can increase their rent only with economic growth founded on capital, whereas the latter can insure the supply of labour and raw material to their enterprises only with the help of a modified/intensified mechanism of feudal exploitations.P In the advanced stage of European and American capitalism, capital penetrates into the agricultural sector, destroys peasant forms of production by means of market competition, and asserts the dominance of its own economic mechanisms in the exploitation of agricultural workers. In undeveloped countries and ex-colonies of Europe, where feudal landed property is often absent, other extra-economic systems of exploitation must be employed for capitalism to 'take root.' This takes a much longer time, however, since the resistance of such 'ancient structures' to the expansion of the CMP is much fiercer than in Europe and lends itself to the establishment of potentially revolutionary alliances between the proletariat and other exploited classes in their resistance to exploitation. An alternative approach is proposed by Vergopoulos in La question et Ie capitalisme, which also contains an article by Amin on the same issues. Vergopoulos' thesis departs from the views expressed by Marx and Rey in two essential ways: the forced development of SCP in agriculture is integral to the enlarged reproduction of capitalist exploitation and is largely conditioned by the determinant role which the extra-economic principle of scarcity and the market forces of unequal exchange play in the domination of all workers by capital. The author suggests that there are two contradictory tendencies which determine the evolution of agriculture in all capitalist economies. There is the relative scarcity of land and agricultural produce which constitute the real (extra economic) source of the ground rent and which permits large landowners to retain a certain portion of the total surplus value of a given economy, to the detriment of both productive capital and all labouring classes: just as interest rates are determined by the relative scarcity of credit, so the ground rent is determined by the limited availability of land (and food-

paysanne

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stuffs) . .1" Moreover, the greater the gap between the development of agriculture and industry then the higher the relative market value of land and its produce, the larger the potential size of differential and absolute rents, and therefore the greater the relative stagnation of agricultural production . .17 Vergopoulos adds that such mechanisms are fully internal to the functioning of capitalism and have very little to do with the preservation of feudal-like forms of exploitation (as Rey would have it). His thesis also implies that absolute rent may exist in the absence of a lower organic composition of capital in agriculture and that it is the relative size of agricultural capital (and food supply) that matters in the final determination of the market values of land and foodstuffs. The functioning of a market economy, however, implies a constant redistribution of 'value' from departments with lower investments in variable (V) and constant (C) capital to those which employ more capital. The greater the control over scarce capital (C + V, as distinct from C I V), the larger the total amount of surplus profit extracted from other branches of capital. The net effect of such unequal exchanges coincides with the consequences of the first tendency described above: namely, the unequal development of sectoral branches and the relative stagnation of agriculture. The confrontation of these two opposite tendencies implies that the gains which industrial capital (capital-fonction) may derive from the strengthening of its overdevelopment may be partially or totally cancelled out by the surplus profit which landowners or capitalist farmers can obtain from a concomitant rise in the overpricing of those commodities which they control (land and agricultural producej.Y The establishment of industrial capital as a dominant force in advanced capitalism presupposes therefore the removal of such obstacles to the pursuit of maximum profit. Capital's 'plan of action,' which requires the effective manipulation of market and State apparatuses, involves: (a) the elimination of landed property (capitat-proprietes as the private monopoly of land and the recuperation of the rent's value by industrial capital; (b) the forced development of agricultural production; and (c) the greater exploitation of a weaker - and more productive - middle size peasantry (i.e., salaries

a domicile).

Both Rey and Vergopoulos have attempted to keep crude evolutionary models at a distance from their own interpretations of capitalism's impact on the reproduction of peasant economies. Each author, however, has reintroduced evolutionary claims of his own, with an emphasis on either the protracted articulation of a strictly defined CMP to older relations of production, or the market regulated dominance of increasingly productive forms of agricultural SCP by all agents of urban capital.

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Middle-of-the-road positions have been taken up from different angles by Amin and Mollard on the issue of whether SCP is articulated to the CMP from within or from outside the logic of capital. Amin basically accepts Rey's argument regarding the feudal correlates of landed property, its timeless contribution to the initial rise of capitalism, and the long-term incompatibility between the reproduction of a landowning class of exploiters and the full strengthening of capital. Yet he agrees with Vergopoulos that the penetration of capital into agriculture can take the form of an indirect (and more profitable) process of proletarianization. The creation of a rural class of working owners tproletaires a domicile) presents many advantages from the point of view of capital accumulation: agents of capital can thus avoid assuming the cost of land ownership and may effectively exploit agricultural workers through a process of forced mechanization, direct control over market mechanisms and the resulting overpricing and underpricing of agricultural inputs and outputs, respectively. 3'1 Unlike Vergopoulos, however, Amin goes on to apply the unequal exchange model to the analysis of relations between the economies of central and peripheral social formations, and to the corresponding variations (capitalist! precapitalist) in forces and relations of production. The evolution of agriculture in peripheral economies follows a path characterized not by the rise of a self-employed proletariat, but rather by the highly constraining reproduction of precapitalist forms of exploitation. Rural economies of underdeveloped countries are dominated by the wider forces of colonial (or neo-colonial) administration and capital accumulation. Their role is by and large restricted to the provisioning of cheap foodstuffs and underpaid wageworkers, cheap services for wealthier classes and overexploited labour for owners of plantations and primary industries. The formal ownership of land may still reside in the hands of self-employed peasants, yet the latter have no control over market mechanisms and are not in position to retain any profit or rent from such formal possessions, let alone the full value of their own labourpower;" Mollard's outstanding analysis of French peasantry is also based upon the notion that the subordination of advanced forms of SCP in developed countries is to be distinguished from the older and less productive categories of peasant production which typify third world agriculture. Briefly, his contention is that the industrialization of small holding agriculture is a necessary condition for the enlargement of the (relative) surplus value produced by farmers and therefore a solution to the uncertainties and low level of peasant production which benefits only usurers and other representatives of archaic commercial capital. This new form of SCP, typically found in heavily industrialized countries, serves to reduce 105

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the costs of agricultural produce and thus to compress the proportion of capital allocated to the reproduction of the labour-power of all working families." The gradual integration/subordination of the peasantry within the CMP entails the separation of rural agriculture and urban industry, the extension of monetary transactions and the impossibility for farmers to derive any profit from either the ownership of their means of production or from a situation of shortages in food supply which can be easily turned to merchant capital's favour. Mollard shows how simple commodity farmers occupy a vulnerable bargaining position vis-a-vis the agro-industrial complex due to the dispersal of their means of production, the concentration of upstream and downstream industries and the reinforcement of capital's domination through state intervention. The resulting subsumption of peasant labour under capital manifests itself in the forced accumulation of constant capital under the pressure of off-farm enterprises, a radical revolution in agricultural productivity and the development of excess production. As the prices of agricultural produce tend to fall, the least productive farmers are compelled to accept lower standards of living or simply forced out of agriculture; conversely, those who remain - although receiving higher earnings - are increasingly exploited through an intensification and greater mechanization of their labour and stricter compliance with the technical exigencies of the agro-industrial complex. Finally, without resorting to the unequal exchange thesis or departing from Marx's labour-time theory of value, Mollard shows how the appropriation of surplus occurs whenever peasants are obliged to pass through the sphere of capitalist circulation. Systematic exploitation is achieved by means of monetary rents, an overpricing of constant capital investments, a rapidly rising level of financial indebtedness, overmechanization and a quasi-total loss of control over the productive process. 42 In short, while early marxists have tended to accept Marx's treatment of smallholding agriculture as an archaic economy doomed to rapid dissolution under the impact of capitalist growth, more recent theorists have chosen to view the latter form of production as involving either: a) precapitalist relations which can be articulated to the CMP and subjected to a transitional yet protracted process of primitive accumulation (Rey); b) an integral effect of capitalist exploitation through marketregulated mechanisms of unequal exchange (Vergopoulos); c) a heterogeneous category which refers not only to highly productive farmers in central economies but also to the more archaic peasantries of peripheral formations dominated by

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capital (Mollard and Amin). The debates generated from within the preceding literature are complex and cannot be resolved without a thorough examination of many central issues in Marxian theory. Although my immediate aim is certainly not to offer a detailed theory of SCP's relationship to capitalism, there are several tentative generalizations pertaining to the formal subsumption process that I wish to derive from the latter discussion which are at odds with the views expounded above. Firstly, there is a strong tendency, in the marxian literature, to equate wage-labour with the commodification of labour-power, and therefore to treat SCP as either a precapitalist, transitional or secondary sub-form in the development of capitalism. Amin, Vergopoulos, Mollard and a few other theorists accept the notion of wage-labour equivalents.v yet they either fail to provide the theoretical foundations of this innovative construct or hesitate to detach it completely from a formal conception of capitalism based upon the centrality of the legal wage-labour relationship. As already stated, my contention is that the commodification of labourpower and the realization of its exchange-value can occur without their real monetization and under conditions which are not reducible to the subordinate reproduction of precapitalist relations of economic Iivelihood . Secondly, self-employed workers may be dispossessed from the surplus-value which they produce without being totally separated from the juridical ownership of means of production. As Marx once remarked, the development of capitalism may force simple commodity producers to restrict their productive activity to one kind of work in which they become 'dependent on selling, on the buyer, the merchant, and ultimately produce for and through him.' The capitalist buys 'their labour originally by buying their product.' As soon as their labour is restricted to the production of exchange-values, which implies that they 'must exchange their labour entirely for money in order to survive,' then they come under his command, and at the end even the illusion that they sold him products disappears. He [the capitalist] buys their labour and takes their property first in the form of the product, and soon after the instrument as well, or he (eaves it to them as sham property in order to reduce his own production costs.44

The latter quote is taken from Marx's discussion of the early forms in which capital appears and is therefore not at all representative of the author's principal statements on the subject of labour's formal subsumption under capital, especially in the advanced phase of capitalist growth. Yet it does condense my own position in that it suggests the 107

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possible purchase of labour-power by capital as a whole through indirect means, and the maintenance of some limited ownership of productive factors by a special category of workers within the framework of production founded on capital. Legal property in productive factors may be used as a real asset in the workers' struggle against exploitation; yet its market value may be so low or the debts incurred so high that formal ownership can be of little use in reducing the predatory effects of wider capitalist forces on smallholding economies located in either central or peripheral regions of the world system. Thirdly, far from being a unitary process of economic domination, the formal subsumption of labour under capital lends itself to important variations (from within) which reflect both the exigencies and contradictions of capital accumulation. As pointed out by many theorists, simple commodity agriculture in both developed and underdeveloped countries presents many advantages from the point of view of capital. It does away with the costs of labour's direct supervision by capital, takes land away from the monopoly of landed property and puts it in the hands of a fragmented and dependent peasantry, thereby forcing it to surrender the value of all rents to agents of capital; moreover, it compels these producers to adjust their consumption schedule (personal and productive) to the needs of capital-dominated markets, the most important of which are the production of cheap food (or supplementary subsistence) and the renewal of labour at minimum cost. 45 The general applicability of the preceding argument is such that even the conspicuous underdevelopment of SCP in most areas of the Third World can be seen as contributing in many ways to the enlargement of merchant and industrial profits. Yet just as low levels of simple commodity productivity are not to be explained away as effects of lower stages of evolution or even as manifestations of articulated modes and forms of production, so we must avoid espousing the opposite thesis, which consists - as in Vergopoulos' work - in reducing all forms of SCP to purely functional moments of capitalist growth, irrespective of the observed variations in levels of production, real monetization, mechanization and capital accumulation. The contradictory functioning of world-wide capitalism and the confrontation of distinct branches and regions of the world system may impose severe constraints upon capital's ability to stimulate the expansion of its own economic base." This holds true especially in Third World countries where the dominance of relatively weak branches of capital tends to reinforce problems of agricultural underdevelopment, which include low levels of mechanization and the overdevelopment of subsistence commodity production (as an integral moment of all forms of SCP; cf. upper leg of SCP circuit in diagram on p. (0). Furthermore, workers may turn these limitations on the pursuit of 108 ------------------------

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greater profits to their own account and strengthen their resistance to all forms of economic impoverishment. We have seen that capital can benefit from the eventual decomposition of landed property; yet, as suggested by Marx, When capital has reached this point, then wage labour itself reaches the point where, on one side, it endeavours to remove the landowner as an excrescence, to simplify the relation, to lessen the burden of taxes etc., in the same form as the bourgeois; on the other hand, in order to escape wage labour and to become an independent producer - for immediate consumption - it demands the breaking up of large landed property. (... ) The negation (of large landed property) from the side of wage labour is only concealed negation of capital, hence of itself as well. 47

To sum up, the attachment of agricultural workers to their land may result from the combined action of the two contradictory facets of the formal subsumption process: namely, the subjection of workers to the requirements of capitalist exploitation and the reproduction of the limitations and struggles inherent in the logic of capital. This argument presupposes a rejection of crude evolutionary models as applied to the analysis of all categories of SCP; but it also undermines any thesis which depicts the less productive categories of capital-dominated SCP, those usually found in Third World economies, as reducible to either precapitalistic moments of the combined development process or purely instrumental moments of unlimited capital accumulation. The last point which I wish to make is that the value of land originates certainly not from its intrinsic material properties or from its mere ownership, nor can it be assigned to the intervention of legal property relations in the redistribution of surplus-value, as Marx would have it. Rather it stems from the relative scarcity as a quantifiable and commodified object of labour. Any materialistic theory which reduces all value to the labourtime which it embodies, and the value of land to the interference of extraeconomic mechanisms in the sharing out of surplus-value, fails to theorize a central component of all extensively commodified economies: that is, the valorization of all factors of personal and productive consumption as scarce values amenable to the economic laws of market supply and demand. As pointed out by Cutler (et aI), 'there is no way the Marxist theory of value can eliminate the central role of supply and demand (Bohrn-Bawerk was correct to note Marx's dependence upon competition to explain various tendencies and effects of the capitalist mode of production)'48. The implication, I suggest, is that capitalism thrives upon the commodified exploitation of both the subject of labour and the naturally given object of labour, hence another twofold expression of the formal subsumption principle: the subordination of labour under capital, and the subjection of nature to the social logic of abstract wealth. 109

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Correspondingly, the value of agricultural rents and surplus production cannot be seen as originating from within the strict confines of the agricultural sector. The intrasectoral conception of such values tends to prevail in most studies mentioned above, with the partial exception of Vergopoulos' analysis. In spite of some theoretical hesitations.t? Vergopoulos succeeds in showing the pervasiveness of the infamous principle of scarcity in the integration of agricultural SCP within capitalism and in locating the source of rents and agricultural profits in the systemic, intersectoral operations of capital-dominated markets. His argument is that the profits derived from the market-regulated exploitation of peasants represent a portion of the total surplus rather than a strict equivalent of the surplus labour-time produced in the agricultural sphere. 50 For obvious reasons, a full elaboration of this insightful approach cannot be offered here; my claim, however, is that a proper analytical treatment of SCP does require an economic theory of the latter sort.

Real Subsumption

The preceding attempt to redefine the formal subsumption process calls for an explanation of what is meant - or should be meant - by the 'real subsumption of labour under capital.' According to Marx, the latter occurs only when there is a revolution that takes place in 'the development of the social forces of production of labour,' hence a complete transformation which brings about large-scale production and the direct application of science and advanced technology. Correspondingly, if the production of absolute surplus-value was the material expression of the formal subsumption of labour under capital, then the production of relative surplus-value may be viewed as its real subsumption. 5 1 Although absolute surplus-value will usually precede relative surplus-value, the more highly developed form can serve to introduce absolute surplus-value in new branches of industry. Capitalist forces of production involve not only industrial technology but also a particular set of relationships between economic agents and their means of production and among agents themselves. As pointed out by Balibar, capitalism entails the separation of the worker from both the ownership of means of production and 'any ability to set in motion the instruments of social labour by himself">', Productive forces cease to be organized according to craft principles and the worker is effectively stripped of his ability to control the labour process.

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In one, the combined collective worker appears as the dominant subject J, and the mechanical automaton as the object; in the other, the automaton itself is the subject, and the workers are merely conscious organs, co-ordinated with the unconscious organs of the automaton, and together with the latter subordinated to the central moving force. The first description is applicable to every possible employment of machinery on a large scale, the second is characteristic of its use by capital, and therefore of the modern factory system. 53

( ...

As a correlate of the preceding revolution, the labourer becomes a Jackof-all-trades and a master of none; he looks 'upon the particular content of his labour with equal indifference,' for the 'more fluid will be the movements of capital from one sphere of production to the next' and the 'greater the demand will be for versatility in labour-power. '54 Marx claims that the introduction of large-scale industry in the sphere of agriculture has the revolutionary effect of annihilating the 'bulwark of the old society' and substituting wage-labourers for peasants. 55 Modern history has shown that this is not necessarily the case; agricultural production may undergo a thorough process of industrial mechanization without there being a complete separation of the workers from their means of production or an 'absolute degradation' of their work. Studies of rural underdevelopment in Third World countries show that the opposite is also true: the development of industry may fail to take root in agriculture yet provoke a significant reduction in the control exercised by small peasants over their intensified production and an increase in the mobility (and degradation) of rural labour. What is at stake here, however, is not the degree of resistance of older forces of production but the varying effects - or modes of appearance - which may be attached to the general process of real subsumption and the corresponding interference of other variations in the functioning of capitalism: those which stem from the development of unequal development and from unequal combinations of elements of conception and execution in the performance of different acts of production. As already suggested, peasants in underdeveloped countries are often directly dependent upon the wider economy for the purchase of necessary means of personal and productive consumption and for the sale of their produce. They have little control over those market forces which determine the nature, quantity and value of what they produce and sell (or of what they cannot afford at market prices and must therefore purchase from their own production). They usually have no control over the real circulation

or physical distribution

of commodities, which is defined by 56 In many cases, agricultural

Marx as an integral moment of production.

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production cannot be reproduced without labour's involvement in industrial wage-work (and vice-versa) and workers must show some versatility in their execution of unskilled manual work (or what is treated as such). All this usually correlates with a certain increase in the productivity of labour. Although production may not be fully mechanized,

labour becomes far more continuous and intensive, and the conditions of labour are employed far more economically, since every effort is made to ensure that no more (or rather even less) socially necessary time is consumed in making the product - and this applies both to the living labour that is used to manufacture it and to the objectified labour which enters into it as an element in the means of production. 57

As shown elesewhere.V the intensification of work generated by the development of agricultural SCPdoes not necessarily entail a noticeable change in the scale of production (or total output per unit for cultivated land) or in the volume of the means of production invested; rather it may simply entail a tendency to specialize in the production of a few cash crops, to bring rudimentary improvements on prevailing tools and techniques of production and to perhaps devote more time in labour-intensive sectors of industrial production (as a necessary supplement to the household economy).

I must emphasize that the technical changes noted above, however important they may be, can hardly amount to the industrial revolution which Marx associated with the real subsumption process. The effective growth of productive forces in the agricultural sector of peripheral economies is usually highly constricted. Farmers still dominate the simple technology they are using; they still possess some traditional skills (for example, knowledge of environment and of techniques of production); and they can still choose between several strategies of production, the most typical of which involves the combination of cash crop cultivation (or seasonal wage-labour) with household subsistence production (hence a limited division of labour). More often than not the 'movements of the instrument of labour' still proceed from them, such that there is no complete 'separation of the intellectual faculties of the production process from the manual labour' or a complete 'transformation of those faculties into powers exercised by capital over labour' . 59 Having said this, I hasten to add that a chronically constricted version of the technical advances which Marx had in mind is not to be automatically equated with a lower stage of unitary Of combined development or an incomplete realization of the real subsumption process. Rather it may constitute an endemic effect of the compressed (or extraverted) development of satellite economies which in turn is conditioned by the wider functioning of a

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polymorphous world system dominated by the heavily industrialized centers of capital accumulation. Just as the realization of exchange-value through means other than monetary transactions can result from both the exigencies and contradictions of generalized commodity production, so the failure to revolutionize all productive forces can be caused by the concentration of industrial and financial capital in privileged regions of the world economy. 60 Finally, I would suggest that the absence of an absolute degradation of work is also to be found among the technologically advanced categories of simple commodity agriculture but for reasons which are quite different and relate to the intraverted expansion of wealthier economies. In the latter cases, the strengthening of working class solidarity and the greater application of science to productive serve to promote the creation of many modern skills and the growth of an 'upper working class' which occupies a not-so-unimportant role in such economies. Modern farmers are to a certain extent the product of these metropolitan developments. Although Marx emphasized the jack-of-all-trades effect of the capitalist mode of production.s' he did recognize that Some work better with their hands, others with their heads, one as a manager, engineer, technologist, etc., the other as overseer, the third as manual labourer or even drudge. An ever increasing number of types of labour are included in the immediate concept of productive labour, and those who perform it are classed as productive workers, workers directly exploited by capital and subordinated to its process of production and expansion. (... ) And here it is immaterial whether the job of a particular worker, who is merely a limb of this aggregate worker is at a greater or smaller distance from the actual manual labour. 62

In brief, the real subsumption of labour under capital and the corresponding production of relative surplus value and division between the conception and execution of work should not be theorized in evolutionary, ideal-typical and absolute terms; that is, they should not be thought of in rigid isolation from the determining effects of other tendencies of the CMP, which include the contradictory development of underdevelopment, the struggle of labour against its total submission to capital and an ever-increasing complexity in the division of socialized labour.

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Maximization

Without Accumulation

To summarize, SCP is governed by the following logic, the components of which are all conceivably produced from within an economy marked by the formal and real subordination of labour to capital:

r subsistence ---

•• C

I (personal

g M:

and

• C' productive)

I

g

C: r

consumption

___ ....•• M selling

•

r' I' i' g'

buying

Commodity 'object of labour' (natural resources) labour-power instruments articles of personal consumption money and credit

The commodities produced or appropriated by a self-employed worker, whether they be articles of personal consumption (g) or factors of production (r, I and i), are divided into two categories: subsistence commodities directly consumed through material acts of household production (the upper leg) and market products to be exchanged for money (and credit) and the commodities (C') which money can buy (the lower leg). This composite SCP circuit goes beyond the classic C-M-C model offered in most marxian works. Unlike the latter, it includes a strategic subsistence commodity component (C - C), the most restricted expression of which consists in the direct conversion of self-employed labour into consumption goods (C 1 cg). It also incorporates the possible necessity for the worker to sell part of his labour-power to other simple commodity producers or agents of capital, or even to supplement his own production with the purchase of other workers' labour-power. Moreover, it allows for crucial variations in the relative weight assigned to each component. For instance, the greater the weight of the upper leg, the lower the level of overall productivity. The model can thus apply to a wide range of economic practices which can be understood without resorting to a mechanical application of structural articulation theory.

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To be sure, the modified circuit given above begins and ends with a limited number of commodities, the total value of which may undergo little change over time. Yet we must remember that SCP is subject to many critical variations such that the producer can effectively fail to make both ends meet and be forced out of self-employed production. Likewise, he may succeed in converting his limited assets into capital investments if and when the opportunity offers. As for those operating within the preceding upper and lower limits of self-employed labour, they are still faced with the necessity to calculate the precise way in which they can make the best of a bad bargain and also with the possibility of significant changes - positive or negative - in their overall level of limited consumption. Market dependent workers must engage in the production and exchange of measurable magnitudes of material wealth in order to secure the simple reproduction of their own livelihood; this puts them in a class separate from peasants not exploited by capital. Consequently, the practices of simple commodity farmers are often guided by a principle of concrete economizing, or the appropriation of an optimum - albeit limited - magnitude of value which is embodied in the following elements: a) the instruments of production which they must purchase; b) the land which they own and the rents which they must pay in order to retain it; c) the labour-power which they purchase from others or from themselves; and d) the foodstuffs which they produce and sell (or buy from their own production). The notion of a peasant use-value rationale, which tends to be uncritically accepted in the economic works of both marxists and 'substantivists', may thus hide the profound differences which separate those economic practices which are subjected to the development of a commodified economy from those which are not. Market-oriented farmers, much like peasants in general, are primarily concerned with survival and subsistence. But this resemblance is only a superficial one, for it is only in a commodified economy that the workers' objectives (and results of their actions) take the form of specific material magnitudes, that is, commensurable commodities which possess a definite quantity of exchange value. The implication is that the satisfaction of the worker's socially defined wants is constantly subjected, in a capitalist society, to a fundamental contradiction which results from the twofold use-value/ exchange-value composition of the commodity form. The basic pursuit of workers (wagelabourers and simple commodity producers) is to secure their access to

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those use-values which they need to achieve or maintain acceptable living conditions. Yet they cannot pursue this goal without treating such usevalues as objects of market transactions and therefore as objects which contain value in definite amounts. Consequently, commodities which serve as means of personal or productive consumption are never apprehended as use-values only: the total amount of commodities made available to the worker is always comparable, in a purely quantitative way, to other amounts of useful wealth and, a fortiori, to other levels of consumption. In short, there is more to the economic practices of this worker than the mere primitive-like pursuit of a limited set of material use-values. The particularity of SCP in underdeveloped countries is that it is governed not by a relatively simple rationale of subsistence but by a highly constricted form of economic maximization. In quantitative terms, the scale of calculated consumption is extremely limited, its progressive enlargement often negligible or even negative and the level of overall development quite low; such conditions of consumption differ markedly from those of peasants in developed countries and, more importantly, from those of wealthier classes in Third World nations. In qualitative terms, it is a strategy of maximization 'in-the-concrete', in the sense that the working owner is driven not by the pursuit of greater profits, but rather by the quest for a feasible optimum of concrete consumption (which mayor may not be superior - or even equal - to prior levels of consumption). In other words, it is maximization without capitalization. Simple commodity producers own their means of personal and productive consumption and will seek to enlarge them, yet they cannot treat the latter as means of profit accumulation. Unlike merchants, they sell goods which they have produced but in such a limited quantity (or at such low prices) that the money thus derived is not always sufficient to sustain minimum standards of personal consumption. And unlike industrial capital, the instruments of production and object of labour which they own possess limited worth (because of low market value or chronic indebtedness problems) and can hardly be considered as the source of a profitable monopoly over scarce factors of production. The same can be said of the labour-power which workers purchase from others or from themselves: it cannot be treated as capital but only as needed use-values which are indispensible in securing the reproduction of the household economy. Correspondingly, simple commodity producers who hire wage-workers do not necessarily form a class distinct from those they employ: in many cases, the hired worker is also a self-employed producer and the employer, a productive labourer. As Friedmann aptly puts it.

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In striking contrast to its central role in capitalist production, wage labour would be a compensatory mechanism for demographic variation within households under conditions of competition. While necessary to the reproduction of simple commodity production, the labour market would play an ancillary role. Instead of supplying the unique source of labour for production, it would simply redistribute existing household labour among households undergoing cyclical variation in labour supply. (... ) In the context of simple commodity production, wage labour would be a phase in the individual life cycle of males belonging to the same class as their ernployers.v'

The renewal of greater profit is the guiding principle of capital accumulation while it is the struggle against poverty which paradoxically governs the pursuit of maximum use-value consumption. Small farmers, not unlike wage-labourers, are irremediably confronted with an inescapable fact of social life in a capitalist economy: that is, the quantifiable distance which separates their actual living conditions from that which is necessary to survive or satisfy the basic socially defined wants and that which is consumed and owned by agents of capital. The overall rationale of self-employed workers dominated. by capital cannot therefore be reduced to either the primitive-like pursuit of subsistence use-values, as many Marxists would have it, or to a bourgeois-like obsession with profit-maximization.v' An exchange-value rationale, or capital accumulation in-the-abstract, cannot be detached from the capitalist production of use-values, the monopoly of means of material production, the realization of value through tangible acts of consumption (personal and productive) and exchange, and therefore from capitalism as a system of concrete relations between men and Nature and among men themselves. Yet the opposite is also true. A worker's quest for material survival in a capitalist economy can never be detached from his active involvement in the production and circulation of exchange-values, from the initial quantification of wealth (and needs) that goes with it, and from his constant pursuit of optimum wealth and tangible improvements in his level of economic consumption.P In the words of Marx: Even though his wage is in fact nothing more than the silver or gold or copper or paper form of the necessary means of subsistence into which it must constantly be dissolved - even though money functions here only as a means of circulation, as a vanishing form of exchange-value, that exchange-value, abstract wealth, remains in his mind as something more than a particular use-value hedged round with traditional and local restrictions.66

The actions of labour are effectively guided by a calculative rationale of its own kind, one which enters into frequent collision - but also occasional collusion - with the forward march of capital. The real poverty to which labour is subjected results not from the absence of

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profit-mindedness but from the worker's direct separation from - and confrontation with - the ownership of capital and from the forced compression of his level of concrete consumption (which may fall below the value of what is needed to reproduce his own labour-power). While 'the ancients provide a narrow satisfaction,' the modern world leaves men unsatisfied, or, where it appears to satisfy them, does so in a manner which is 'vulgar and mean. '67 Conclusion

The functioning of capitalism is complex and should not be theorized in such rigid terms as to exclude the possible subordination - formal and real - of SCP to its logic. The preceding analyses offer a tentative outline of a theoretical rethinking of SCP in light of its full subjection to the contradictory or unexpected effects stemming from both the extensive commodification process and the capitalist forces of growth and misgrowth. This alternative model of capital dominated SCP is also shown to entail a general scheme of strategic conduct which lends itself to critical variations in levels of production and in the allocation of limited economic resources. This alternative approach to self-employed work in capitalist economies is hardly compatible with general characterizations of household production - especially in agriculture - as an abstractly recognizable mode of production, or an economic type endowed with its own logic.68 As argued by Friedmann and Ennew et al.,69 universally defined notions of domestic or peasant economy are based upon the misleading assumption that household production can be theorized without reference to the specific features of wider economic structures. But I must also stress that my views on the matter of SCP preclude any attempt to establish rigid classificatory contrasts between the developed and underdeveloped forms of SCPo Pre capitalist relations of production may indeed be shown to play an important role in Third World economies, yet one cannot assume, as most structural marxists do, that household or subsistence production is a sure sign of capitalism's articulation to older modes or forms of economic livelihood. 70 One last point should be made in regards to the possible intervention of non-economic or non-capitalist relations in the reproduction of SCP. The argument presented above should by no means be read as implying a total rejection of the combined development thesis as applied to SCPo My contention is simply that the formal and real subsumption of labour to capital has contradictory and unexpected effects which account for many of the essential features of capital dominated SCPo This does not mean that SCP can be reproduced without the active interference of noncapitalist or non-economic practices as such. On the contrary, one can 118

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easily demonstrate that external factors do play an essential role in the exploitation of self-employed workers by capital. This can be shown, however, without using the assumption that the essence of SCP lies in its articulation to capitalism from outside, that is, in the reproduction of its precapitalist or non-capitalist conditions of existence."!

NOTES 1. K. Kautsky, La Question Agraire (Paris 1970); V.I. Lenin, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Moscow 1968). 2. R. Brenner, 'The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of NeoSmithian Marxism,' New Left Review 104 (1977), 90. 3. A.G. Frank, Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution (New York and London 1969); Frank, Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (London and Basingstoke 1978); F. Cardoso and E. Faletto, Dependencia y Desarrolo en America Latina (Mexico 1970); T. Dos Santos, 'The Crisis of Development Theory and the Problem of Dependence in Latin America,' in H. Bernstein (ed.), Underdevelopment and Development (Harmondsworth 1973); I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York 1976). Reviews of this literature are found in R. Chilcote, 'Dependency: A Critical Synthesis of the Literature,' Latin American Perspectives I (1974), 4-29; T. Harding, 'Dependency, Nationalism and the State in Latin America,' Latin American Perspectives III (1976), 3-11; and J.G. Taylor, From Modernization to Modes of Production: A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment (Atlantic Highlands 1979). 4. A. Foster-Carter, 'The Modes of Production Controversy,' New Left Review 107 (1978), 49. 5. E. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism - FascismPopulism (London 1977). 6. P.P. Rey, Les alliances de classes (Paris 1973),21 (my translation). 7. See B. Hindess and P.Q. Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London 1975); G. Dupre and P .P. Rey, 'Reflections on the Relevance of a Theory of the History of Exchange,' in D. Seddon (ed.), Relations of Production: Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology (London 1978); Rey, Les alliances; C. Meillassoux, 'From Reproduction to Production: A Marxist Approach to Economic Anthropology,' Economy and Society I (1972), 93-105; D. Bradby, 'The Destruction of Natural Economy,' Economy and Society 4 (1975), 127-61;N. Long, 'Structural Dependency, Modes of Production and Economic Brokerage in Rural Peru,' in I. Oxaal et al. (eds.), Beyond the Sociology of Development: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa (London 1975); and Taylor, From Modernization. 8. K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I (New York 1976), 1023. See also J. Banaji, 'Gunder Frank in Retreat?,' Journal of Peasant Studies 7 (1980); R. Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London 1951); and E. Preobrazhensky, 'Peasantry and the Political Economy in the Early Stages of Industrialization,' in T. Shanin (ed.), Peasants and Peasant Societies (Harmondsworth 1971). 9. On Latin America, see R. Stavenhagen, Social Classes in Agrarian Societies (New York 1975); and M. Burawoy, 'The Functions and Reproduction of Migrant Labour: Comparative Material from Southern Africa and the United States,' A merican Journal of Sociology 81 (1977), 1050-87.On the debates, see

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R. Hilton (ed.), The Transition/rom Feudalism to Capitalism (London 1976); and M. Sternberg, 'Dependency, Imperialism and the Relations of Production,' Latin American Perspectives 1 (1974), 75-86. 10. Rey, Les alliances, 28 (my translation). 11. Foster-Carter, 'The Modes,' 58. 12. Marx, Capital, 1022-3. The other quotes in this paragraph are from Capital, 1035 and 1026. 13. A Mollard, Paysans exploites (Grenoble 1977), 228 (my translation). 14. Similar characterizations of simple commodity production as a non-capitalist (or precapitalist) form of production, or of wage-labour as a defining feature of a capitalist relation of production, may be found in S. Amin and K. Vergopoulos, La question paysanne et Ie capitalisrne (Paris 1974), 9-13, 245, 254 and 261; H. Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York and London 1974), 63 and 410-24; Hindess and Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes, 185; G. Kay, Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis (London 1975), 63-72; Laclau, Politics, 42-50; Long, 'Structural Dependency,' 261; E. Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory (New York and London 1968),65-8,119-20 and 271-2; R. Meek, 'Some Notes on the Transformation Problem,' Economic Journal 66 (1956), 94-107; C. Meillassoux, Femmes, greniers et capitaux (Paris 1975), 145-9; N. Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism (London 1978), 285-6; Rey, Les alliances, 35, 60-1, 74-6 and 85-7; Taylor, 'From Modernization'; and even Frank, Dependent Accumulation, 240-1, to name just a few. Other theorists such as Banaji, 'Gunder Frank'; H. Bernstein, 'African Peasantries: A Theoretical Framework,' Journal of Peasant Studies 4 (1979), 432-43; H. Friedmann, 'Household Production and the National Economy: Concepts for the Analysis of Agrarian Formations, Journal of Peasant Studies 7 (1979), 158-84; M. Morishima and C. Catephores, 'Is There an Historical Transformation Problem,' Economic Journal 85 (1975), 309-28; and K. Vergopoulos, 'Capitalisme difforme (Ie cas de l'agriculture dans Ie capitalisme),' in Amin and Vergopoulos, La question paysanne, have stressed the possible or actual integration of SCP within the logic of capitalist exploitation; none of them, however, have tried to relate their useful conclusions to a systematic rethinking of the formal and real subsumption mechanisms. (Banaji's suggestion that 'wage labour, labour which produces capital, can take a series of unfree forms' such that even women who work at home and produce labour-power for capital enter into no other productive relations than those of capital, presupposes a relatively crude reduction of real variations in relations of production to so many expressions of the essential wage-labour relationship and to functional moments of the all-inclusive logic of capital accumulation; my position on the matter of SCP is by no means to be equated with the latter.) 15. K. Marx Grundrisse, (Harmondsworth and London 1973), 165. 16. Marx, Grundrisse, 311. 17. Marx, Grundrisse, 312. 18. The quotes in this paragraph are from Marx, Grundrisse, 413, 416 and 422 respectively. 19. The quote and argument in this paragraph are drawn from Marx, Grundrisse, 190-3.

20. Capital, 21. Capital, 22. Capital, 23. Capttat,

950. 951. 952.

252 (my emphasis). 24. Cf. Morishima and Catephores, 'Historical Transformation 25. For example, N. Mouzelis, 'Capitalism and the Development

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Journal of Peasant Studies 3 (1976), 483-92; or Rey, Les alliances. 26. Marx, Capital, 1026, cf. Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (New York 1965),67 and 99. 27. Marx, Capital, 952. 28. Grundrisse, 503. See also Marx, Pre-Capitalist, 106. 29. Grundrisse, 510. 30. Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, 279. 31. Items produced under labour-intensive conditions are said to contain more value than commodities created through greater constant capital investments. All items, however, must be sold at competitive prices, which means that technologically advanced firms are in position to realize extra profits over the value of their products; conversely, labour-intensive firms must sell at the average price and can therefore realize only the average profit. 32. Grundrisse, 279. 33. A summarized version of this relatively orthodox argument can be found in Bradby's discussion of the destruction of the natural economy as applied to the rural economy of Peru, ('The Destruction,' 154-7.). Incidentally, in his 'Postface de novembre 1972,' Rey changes his own position toward SCP and considers the latter as highly compatible with advanced capitalist development iLes alliances, 215-6). The author, however, does not address himself to the implications of this theoretical qualification from the point of view of his structural articulation model. 34. Rey, Les alliances, 20, 60, 88 and 93. 35. Les alliances, 73-4. 36. Vergopoulos, 'Capitalisrne difforme,' 98. 37. 'Capitalisme difforme,' 143-58. 38. 'Capitalisme difforme,' 159. 39. S. Amin, 'Le Capitalisme et la rente fonciere (la domination du capitalisme sur I'agriculture),' in Amin and Vergopoulos, La question paysanne, 46-7. 40. Amin, 'Le capital isme,' 57-8. 41. Mollard, Paysans exploites, 24. 42. In formal terms, a peasant's overall production is composed of three elements: the surplus labour appropriated by capital in the form of ground-rent, interest, and value unrealized in prices (RI); the investments necessary for the reproduction of his means of production (R2); and what is needed for the reproduction of his family's labour-power (R3). Mechanisms of overexploitation may threaten the reproduction of the peasantry or lead to a noticeable increase in its regression and to rural depopulation. Finally, the greater the rate of surplus [(RI + R2)/ R3] and the higher the rate of appropriation [RII (RI + R2)], the higher the rate of exploitation (RI/ R3). (Mollard, Paysans exploites, 212-6) 43. Bernstein, 'African Peasantries,' 436. 44. Marx, Grundrisse, 510. 45. The advantages of simple commodity and supplementary subsistence production from the point of view of capital accumulation in under-developed countries are discussed by Meillassoux, 'From Reproduction,' 98-105; Burawoy, 'Migrant Labor'; Bradby, 'The Destruction'; J.M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York 1975), 15-6; Bernstein, 'African Peasantries'; Amin and Vergopoulos, La question paysanne; Lord Hailey in Stavenhagen, Social Classes, 246-7; A. de Janvry and C. Garrarnon, 'The Dynamics of Rural Poverty in Latin America,' Journal of Peasant Studies 4 (1977), 206-16, and many others. A concise cost/benefit formulation of such analyses is found in de Janvry and Garrarnon: 'With semiproletarian servile labour the worker receives in payment for his work the usufruct of a patch of land, some consumption goods, and a small amount of cash. For the employer, the cost of servile labour

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is less than the price of labour even for mere subsistence because the opportunity cost of the land given in usufruct to the worker is less than the value of production that the worker can generate on it through use of family labour. The cost incurred is thus less than the price of labour by an amount equal to the net between the value of production on the land plot and the opportunity of this plot for the landlord. This difference can be very large.' ('The Dynamics,' 209). Also for a highly informative discussion of stratification, competition, structural isolation and other factors of divisiveness among commercially oriented peasants, see Paige, Agrarian Revolution, 30-8. 46. Similar points are made by Amin, 'Le capitalisme'; Bernstein, 'African Peasantries'; N. Mouzelis, 'Modernization, Underdevelopment, Uneven Development: Prospects for a Theory of Third World Formations,' Journal of Peasant Studies 7 (1980), 353-74; and Taylor, From Modernization. 47. Grundrisse, 279. 48. A. Cutler et al., Marx's 'Capital' and Capitalism Today (London 1977),Vol. I, 92. 49. Vergopoulos, in 'Capitalisme difforme,' 95, 144 and 263-4, contends that the principle of scarcity originates from outside the logic of capital and that it penetrates the functioning of the CMP mostly, if not exclusively, through the agricultural sphere of production. 50. Vergopoulos, 'Capitalisme difforme,' 101. 51. Capital, 1025. 52. L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Reading Capital (London 1970), 215. 53. Marx, Capital, 544-5; cf. 548-9. 54. Marx, Capital, 1014. 55. Capital, 637. 56. Merchants do not busy themselves with financial speculations only; they must also purchase the necessary services, labour-power and instruments of physical distribution upon which their income depends (storage facilities, transportation services, clerical workers, wage-labourers, etc.). The capital which merchants possess therefore takes the form of a two-fold investment: the purchase and constant renewal of a considerable quantity of marketable articles of personal consumption, and the purchase of what may be called factors of material distribution. Although Marx regarded the business of merchant capital as confined to the non-productive sphere of circulation (Grundrisse, 56; Capital, 266 and 1023), he did nevertheless draw a distinction which is crucial to the understanding of profit-oriented trade: namely, between the act of monetary exchange and the productive process of physical distribution: ... the bringing of the product to the market, belongs to the production process itself. (. . .) the reduction of the costs of this real circulation of production by capital, the reduction of the costs of its realization. (... ) circulation itself appears as a moment not only of the production process in general, but also of the direct production process (Grundrisse, 534; see also Pre-Capitalist, 70-1). These considerations are quite important for our understanding of those very small businesses operated by merchants or petty traders who own so little, in addition to their own labour-power and limited factors of material distribution, that they can hardly be considered as real agents of merchant capital. Their economic position may in fact be much closer to that of simple commodity distributors (for want of a better label). The latter notion is necessary if we are to avoid collapsing both activities of monetary and physical distribution into one simple category, which is a common mistake of marxian studies of petty trade and exchange relations in general (Kay, Development, 70;

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Laclau, Politics, 33-4; Dupre and Rey, 'Reflections'; and Mollard, Paysans 229). 57. Marx, Capital, 1026. 58. J. Chevalier, Civilization and the Stolen Gift (Toronto, in press). 59. Marx, Capital, 548. 60. S.A. Mann and J.M. Dickerson, in 'Obstacles to the Development of a Capitalist Agriculture,' Journal of Peasant Studies 5 (1978),466-81, point out that the growth of capitalism in some areas of primary production may be hindered by the naturally conditioned effects of an excess of production time over labour time and complications in the smooth circulation (preservation, transportation and exchange) of commodified goods. These useful remarks apply to the agricultural sectors of many underdeveloped countries. We should be careful, however, not to fall into the trap of ecological determinism. The underdevelopment of techniques of production and distribution may not be a cause but a consequence of low levels of capital accumulation. The technical obstacles to the full development of industrial capitalism in Third World agriculture cannot by any means be reduced to purely natural constraints and insufficient advances in science and technology. Nor can the prevalence of SCP in agriculture be explained away as direct effects of such technical difficulties. 61. Cf. Marx, Pre-Capitalist, 101; Grundrisse, 497 and 505; and Capital, 544-54, 788 and 1033-4. 62. Capital, 1040. 63. H. Friedmann, 'Simple Commodity Production and Wage Labour in the American Plains,' Journal of Peasant Studies 6 (1978),80. 64. Illustrations of the formal utilitarian approach to rural economies are given in H.K. Schneider, Economic Man: The Anthropology of Economics (New York 1974). As for the marx ian notion of a use-value or subsistence rationale among simple commodity producers, see Vergopoulos, 'Capitalisme difforme,' 187-8 and 218; Kay, Development, 63-6; Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory, 57-8; Mollard, Paysans exploites, 52; and Bernstein, 'African Peasantries,' 425. The latter notion is of limited value. It hides the profound differences which separate those economic practices which are subjected to the development of a commodified economy from those which are not. It throws little light not only on the calculative actions of simple commodity producers dominated by capital, but also on the economic practices of precapitalist peasantries. As argued elsewhere (Chevalier, Civilization), the concept of use-value cannot be detached from the logic of a commodified economy. Material goods may take the form of use-values only by virtue of a historically specific process - the formal subsurnption mechanism - which institutes the commodity unit as a basic value of social intercourse. If we are to eschew, as I think we should, the formalist temptation of spreading the profit mentality around the world (to the inclusion of capital exploited workers), then we should be equally wary of any substantivist or marxist vision of a quasi-universal rationale that would govern the economic actions of all men, with the unique exception of the modern bourgeois as the incarnation of capital wealth in the abstract. 65. An excellent analysis of the effects of a commodified economy on farmers' behavior towards risk is offered by G. Wright and H. Kunreuther in 'Cotton, Corn and Risk in the Nineteenth Century,' Journal of Economic History 35 (1975), 526-5 I. 66. Capital, 1033. 67. Marx, Pre-Capitalist, 85. 68. See T. Shanin, 'The Nature and Logic of the Peasant Economy, 1: A Generalization,' Journal of Peasant Studies 1(1973),63-80; A.V. Chayanov, On the Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Ill. 1966); and M. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago 1974). exploites,

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69. Friedmann, 'Household Production'; J. Ennew et al., ' "Peasantry" as an Economic Category,' Journal of Peasant Studies 4 (1977),295-322. 70. Although useful in many ways, Friedmann's distinction between systems of SCP and peasant economics (and the corresponding levels of production, commoditisation, market competition and integration, factor mobility, specialisation, social stratification and so on) is somewhat overdrawn. Economic stagnation, as she herself notes ('Household Production,' 180, note 7), may be an integral effect of a world market economy (and therefore a sign of market integration through dependent misgrowth), 71. Non-capitalist conditions of SCP include eminently modern systems of political and domestic life based upon the dominant institutions of state polity and the nuclear family. External factors are not therefore to be automatically equated with social instances of precapitalist formations. Any model which suggests the active interference of variables originating from outside the logic of capital in the reproduction of SCP must allow for the latter differentiation between the non-economic institutions of bourgeois society and the social practices of non-capitalist formations. It must also provide a proper theoretical understanding of such exogenous elements and a rigorous reconstruction of their own systemic properties.

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