de janvry, peasants, capitalism and the State in latin american culture

(391-392): three near-universal features of peasant production

1. family-based nature of production motivated by rationality of ensuring unit's reproduction (safety-first, etc.)
2. subordinate position of peasants, which requires them to surrender a portion of the surplus
3. discontinous and often defensive collective action strategies

(393): three facts about LA

1. dependent development, growth that was inequalizing of income
2. failure of real wages to revive
3. most rapidly growing sectors of economy oriented to luxury consumption and capital goods

(393): characterized by extreme inequality in assets; surplus labour; unfavourable terms of trade

(394): two observations

1. systematic undervaluation of agricultural commodities, in order to produce cheap food (overvalued exchange rates, trade restrictions, price fixing) [this is a tax on agriculture, effectively, designed to serve industry]
2. permanence of a large peasantry (often growing)

(395): despite cheap food policies, institutional rents allow well-off peasants to do ok; meaning that poor peasants bear the brunt.

(395): hypothesis of 'functional dualism', for four reasons

1. peasants can provide particularly cheap food, thanks to their capacity to exploit themselves to a point where they're more productive than their capitalist counterparts.
2. they can also be a source of rent (why we see share-cropping, in his argument).
3. a source of cheap labour, since part of their costs of reproduction don't need to be paid
4. land acts as a social safety net that the State can't provide

(397): noting that off-farm sources of income are quite high for peasants (based mostly on figures collected in the 80s) [suggests that 'depeasantization' might need better theorization)

(398): despite their functional position, poverty makes their state very unstable

(399): anti-feudal land reforms forged a dualistic agrarian structure: -- an expansive capitalist sector and a growing semi-proletarian peasantry (absorbed labour, politically stable)

(402): peasantry finds itself in a contradictory class position

(403, FN): nice description of backward-linkages (the demand generated for input-suppliers), and forward-linkage (the supply generated for output-consumers)

de janvry, the role of land reform in economic development (1981)

(386, 388): land reforms create a reform sector, and a nonreform sector. most have sought their economic impact in the later, but the political payoff in the former.

(388): most common LRs have been (1) antifeudal reforms seeking to implant a capitalist elite, farmer class, or free peasantry, or (2) reforms seeking to dispossess a larger capitalist elite in favor of farmers or peasantry.

(388): they've typically required an economic incentive, aside from their political importance -- achieving thus both equity and efficiency gains

(389): the GR served as a surrogate to antifeudal reforms

(389): today (80s), a further set of LRs is clearly needed; but this is unlikely, for four reasons:

1. the political alliance is exceptional -- it is difficult to generate a coalition to oppose the landed elite, typically requires revolutionary pressures
2. the same alignment of equity and efficiency is not necessarily present (hmm); any drastic land reform implies short-term costs
3. countries have industrialized to serve foreign markets/luxury markets; not interested in building the domestic market
4. LRs are typically limited only to their political purpose--they will be as limited as possible while creating a supportive political minority

(390-392): four types of LRs

1. conservative: purely legitimizing purpose, the least that can be done to create a supportive minority
2. national bourgeois: LR seen as a way of expanding the domestic market for wage goods, disposessing feudals
3. populist: give the land to the peasants (premised on efficiency on sm. farms, which have zero social opp cost for labour)
4. radical: (not specified well, at all)