The Scottish Path to Capitalist Agriculture 1: From the Crisis of Feudalism to the Origins of Agrarian Transformation (1688–1746)

This is the first of a series of articles which attempt to remedy the lack of Marxist discussion about one of the most spectacularly successful transitions to capitalist agriculture in the historical record: that of Scotland. At the end of the seventeenth century, Scottish agriculture was remarkable only in one respect: the rural class structure within which it took place corresponded to the classic feudal model more closely than that of any other state west of Poland. The subsistence crisis of the 1690s exposed the productive limits of an agriculture based on feudal social relations, but also severely weakened any possible capitalist alternative. The Treaty of Union with England of 1707 brought the feudal powers of the Scottish lords into the new British state intact, but access to English and imperial markets encouraged a minority of them to experiment with the same forms of agricultural improvement which had produced such increases in landlord income south of the border. Although these attempts were not successful in the short term, they laid the basis for the transformation of Scottish agriculture in the changed circumstances after 1746, which is the subject of a subsequent article.     

Capitalist miners in feudal Europe: A commentary on Marxist agrarian history

Marxist agrarian history conceives of medieval mining as a pre‐capitalist and backward economy isolated from all forms of capitalist change. Mining history says otherwise. Evidence confirms that mining labour enjoyed the conditions for an early emancipation from serfdom, rooted in the ascent of a European silver‐based monetary economy from the eleventh century onwards. Feudal lords were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, vulnerable to the rise of free miners and a mining economy that demanded capital outlays. Drawing upon the case study of mining in the feudal principality of Trent, the article briefly sketches the rise of capitalist miners and the conditions that gave them decisive advantages over feudal lords. The article summarizes general arguments and lines of inquiry for opening the field of Marxist agrarian history to the study of mining and extractive economies.     

The Scottish Path to Capitalist Agriculture 3: The Enlightenment as the Theory and Practice of Improvement

The second in this series of articles traced the transformation of Scottish agriculture during the period between 1747 and 1815. The Scottish Enlightenment is usually seen either as a passive expression of these and related economic changes, or as a local variant on European-wide intellectual trends with little direct connection to economy or society. In fact, it was directly involved in the transformation in three ways: as a theory of socio-economic development ('political economy'), a programme for agrarian change and the movement for its implementation ('Improvement'). The Scottish Enlightenment theorists were always conscious of the oppressive aspects of the division of labour which were inevitable under their own model of 'commercial society'. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however, they became increasingly aware of how 'actually existing capitalism' concentrated power in ways that the model had not predicted. Faced with the counter-revolutionary onslaught on British radicalism which occurred in response to the French Revolution, the Scottish Enlightenment shattered under the weight of these contradictions into its component academic disciplines. The economic aspects of the Scottish Revolution accomplished, political economy increasingly shed all elements of critique and became reduced to an intellectually rigorous justification for the now capitalist landowning classes and the emergent industrial bourgeoisie.     

Institutional Diversity and Capitalist Transition: The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in Arunachal Pradesh, India

This paper contributes a preliminary analysis of the process of agrarian capitalist transition in Arunachal Pradesh, one of the least studied regions of India. Primarily based on information collected through a field survey in eleven villages, the paper seeks to explain the nature and implications of institutional unevenness in the development of capitalism. Institutional diversity is not simply mapped across space, it is also manifested in the simultaneous existence of market and non-market institutions across the means of production within the same village or spatial context. In addition, there is a continuous and complex interaction among these institutions which both shapes and is shaped by this capitalist transition. Primitive accumulation emerges as a continuing characteristic of the on-going agrarian and non-agrarian capitalist transition. Institutional adaptation, continuity and hybridity are as integral to the emergence of the market economy as are the processes of creation of new institutions and demise of others. There is no necessary correspondence between the emerging commercialization of the different productive dimensions of the agrarian economy. These uneven processes are deeply influenced by existing and emerging power relations and by the state. Framed by the Bernstein–Byres debate about the contemporary (ir)relevance of the agrarian question, evidence is presented to justify the conclusion that although the processes at work are far from the classical models of the transition to capitalism, all aspects of the agrarian question remain relevant.     

Differentiation of the Peasantry Under Feudalism and the Transition to Capitalism: In Defence of Rodney Hilton

The focus of the essay is one specific theme pursued by Rodney Hilton: that of differentiation of the English feudal peasantry and the implications this had for the development of capitalism in England. His contribution on this, along with those of E. A. Kosminsky and of Maurice Dobb, are considered and are contrasted with the view of Robert Brenner. For Brenner peasant differentiation has no causal importance: it is an outcome of transformation and not a driving force in its securing. For Hilton, it is central to transformation: it is not an outcome but a determining variable, a causa causans rather than a causa causata. The Brenner position, it is argued, is incomplete in its ignoring of peasant differentiation in feudal England. It was one of Hilton's accomplishments to explore this in scholarly detail, and with analytical precision. It is suggested that if this is abstracted from an adequate examination of the transition to capitalism in England cannot proceed.     

Modelling Population and Resource Scarcity in Fourteenth‐century England

This paper examines the empirical data relevant in the analysis of the agrarian transformation of England in the Middle Ages. It presents an empirical analysis of available data that investigates the role and extent of resource scarcity in 14th‐century England. The analysis offers a way forward for economists and historians to reach a plausible consensus about the reality of what may be one of the most important transition periods in European economic history. The insights gained throw useful light on the processes whereby agricultural relations evolved from ancient feudal structures.     

Beyond market dependence: The origins of capitalism in Catalonia

Buried in the footnotes of his famous 1976 essay, Robert Brenner left the remark that Catalonia had experienced an agrarian transition to capitalism in parallel to England. This important claim has been completely forgotten by his followers of the political Marxist tradition, who since then have developed his views on the origins of capitalism. Building on the specialist literature, this article revisits the question of the Catalan transition through the prism of political Marxism and teases out its implications. In particular, it argues that the Catalan case illustrates the centrality of agency and subjectivity in the process of capitalist change. Contrary to Brenner's claim, this paper will argue that pre‐capitalist social property relations persisted in agriculture throughout the period of transition. Instead, the region's capitalist breakthrough was prompted by sociocultural struggles in its 18th‐century proto‐industry.     

Capability approach to compulsory purchase compensation: evidence of the functionings of land identified by affected landowners in Scotland

This research was inspired by the challenges faced by landowners seeking adequate compensation for all their losses following the compulsory acquisition of land by public authorities in Scotland. This research uses Sen’s ‘capability approach’ and argues that the well-being contribution of land extends beyond its market value and therefore compensation payable following compulsory acquisition should include these other losses. The aim of this research is to identify the valuable functionings (or usefulness) of land from the perspective of the existing landowners. The functionings which contribute to their well-being can be both financial and non-financial and should be appropriately compensated. This research identifies and creates a list of valuable ‘functionings’ of individual landowners who have suffered losses due to compulsory acquisition, servitude and severance under various public projects in Scotland. Qualitative Content Analysis is applied to analyse case reports prepared by the Lands Tribunal for Scotland. In-depth analysis of 19 relevant cases is performed with the use of NVIVO software and reveals a list of 15 different functionings of land. Results show that financial functionings are the most frequently discussed at the Lands Tribunal. The debate on the loss of financial benefits from expected and planned development on land in the near future is the most debated topic by the landowners.     

The Chilean Agrarian Transformation: Agrarian Reform and Capitalist 'Partial' Counter-Agrarian Reform, 1964–1980

This article, which is published in two parts, is an empirical analysis of the Chilean agrarian reform (1964–1973) and 'partial' counter-agrarian reform (1974–1980). Its aim is to explain and interpret their logic and the changes they brought to Chile's agrarian property regime in particular and Chilean life in general. Chile's agrarian reform was successful in expropriating (under the Frei and Allende administrations, 1964–1973) the great estates of the hacienda landed property system. The capitalist 'partial' counter-reform then redistributed it (under the military, 1974–1980). CORA, the country's agency for agrarian reform, expropriated and subsequently redistributed 5809 estates of almost 10 million hectares, or 59 per cent of Chile's agricultural farmland. A large amount of the expropriated land (41 per cent) benefited 54,000 peasant households with small-sized family farms and house-sites. The rest of the farmland benefited efficient and competitive commercial farmers and agro-business and consolidated medium-sized farms. Of central concern is the role of the agrarian reform and subsequent 'partial' counter-reform processes in fostering the transformation of the erstwhile agrarian structure of the hacienda system toward agrarian capitalism. The redistribution of the agricultural land previously expropriated made possible the formation of an agro-industrial bourgeoisie, small commercial farmers, an open land market and a dynamic agricultural sector. While, however, under military rule, a selected few benefited with family farms and became independent agricultural producers, a large majority of reformed and non-reformed campesinos were torn from the land to become non-propertied proletarians in a rapidly modernizing but highly exclusionary agricultural sector.     

The Chilean Agrarian Transformation: Agrarian Reform and Capitalist 'Partial' Counter-Agrarian Reform, 1964–1980

This article, which is published in two parts, is an empirical analysis of the Chilean agrarian reform (1964–1973) and 'partial' counter-agrarian reform (1974–1980). Its aim is to explain and interpret their logic and the changes they brought to Chile's agrarian property regime in particular and Chilean life in general. Chile's agrarian reform was successful in expropriating (under the Frei and Allende administrations, 1964–1973) the great estates of the hacienda landed property system. The capitalist 'partial' counter-reform then redistributed them (under the military, 1974–1980). CORA, the country's agency for agrarian reform, expropriated and subsequently redistributed 5809 estates of almost 10 million hectares, or 59 per cent of Chile's agricultural farmland. A large amount of the expropriated land (41 per cent) benefited 54,000 peasant households with small-sized family farms and house-sites. The rest of the farmland benefited efficient and competitive commercial farmers and agro-business and consolidated medium-sized farms. Of central concern is the role of the agrarian reform and subsequent 'partial' counter-reform processes in fostering the transformation of the erstwhile agrarian structure of the hacienda system toward agrarian capitalism. The redistribution of the agricultural land previously expropriated made possible the formation of an agro-industrial bourgeoisie, small commercial farmers, an open land market and a dynamic agricultural sector. While, however, under military rule, a selected few benefited with family farms and became independent agricultural producers, a large majority of reformed and non-reformed campesinos were torn from the land to become non-propertied proletarians in a rapidly modernizing but highly exclusionary agricultural sector.     

Roads from Calabria: The Arrighian approach to agrarian political economy

Scholars of agrarian change have long debated the nature of capitalist transition in the countryside, including whether the deepened interlinking of local, national, and transnational economic activities make past trajectories of agrarian transformation unlikely to reoccur in the present. This essay makes the case that Giovanni Arrighi's work has much to add to our understanding of the agrarian question in global historical perspective. We focus in particular on Arrighi's research on trajectories of change in the Calabrian region of southern Italy, and his essay “Capitalist Development in Hostile Environments.” In this piece, Arrighi and co‐author Fortunata Piselli develop two key insights. The first is that the pathways to capitalism are diverse, non‐linear, and historically contingent such that within one country—or, in the case of Italy, a single subnational region—multiple trajectories can be found. The second is that the outcomes of capitalist transition vary based on a country's position in the international hierarchy of wealth, meaning that agrarian transformation is compatible with both economic development and underdevelopment. We describe the three methodological principles that enabled Arrighi to develop his analysis of capitalist transition and explain how the papers collected in this special issue reflect and extend the Arrighian approach to agrarian political economy.     

Mapping historical and contemporary agrarian transformations and capitalist infiltration in a complex upland environment: A case from eastern Nepal

The relationship that mountain communities have with global capitalism are complex, being mediated by a diverse topography and ecology, both of which provide opportunities for capital accumulation, while also isolating older, “pre‐capitalist” modes of production. This paper takes a case study valley from Nepal's eastern hills, tracing over two centuries of agrarian change and evolving interactions between “adivasi” and “semi‐feudal” economic formations with capitalism. In recent years, the expansion of markets, rising demand for cash, and climate stress have solidified migrant labour as a core component of livelihoods, and the primary mechanism of surplus appropriation from the hill peasantry. Through a focus on three altitudinal zones, however, it is demonstrated how the trajectory of this transformation, including the interactions with persisting pre‐capitalist formations, is mediated by both political–economic processes and the local agro‐ecological context.     

Scottish structure plans and their role as indicators of future retail developments

Summary

In trying to form a view of what the pattern of retail development in Scotland is likely to be in the early years of next century, it is important to gain an understanding of how the physical planning framework influences the development process. Most Scottish Structure Plans now contain detailed statements of policy on retail development and the Scottish Development Department (SDD) periodically issues planning guidelines, including guidelines on the location of major retail developments. Much of this paper is taken up with analysis and interpretation of Structure Plan policies on retailing and the SDD's new planning guidelines, issued in December 1986.

Previous work in this subject area has identified common elements in Structure Plan policies on retailing and has pointed to the difficulties planners face in formulating policies appropriate to the dynamism of the industry. This paper attempts to go further than previous work by showing how policies are evolving in the face of change in the retail industry. Four broad trends in policy development are identified. The paper also describes the distinguishing features of the retailing policies of the six regional planning authorities in Scotland.

The review of Structure Plans, which was accompanied by a series of interviews with planning officers, highlighted a number of issues for further discussion. It is clear that the SDD's new guidelines on the location of major retail developments are being interpreted differently by different planning authorities and that the full intent of the guidelines has yet to emerge. Local authorities are also concerned about how the necessary environmental improvements in town and city centres are to be financed. Particularly in light of the emergence of new forms of shopping and proposals for new large‐scale and out‐of‐town developments, a further issue is the feasibility of retailing policies based on the principle of hierarchy.

Although there is no reason to suspect that the continuation of Structure Planning in Scotland may be in doubt, the question also arises of whether the plans have a future, given that Structure Planning is to be abandoned in England and Wales. The answer to the question is, ultimately, political, but Structure Planning in Scotland does appear to work. Scotland has a more coherent structure of local government than England and Wales and, unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Britain, upper‐tier local authorities in Scotland can exert strategic control over the development process by virtue of their call‐in powers.

The paper comes to the qualified conclusion that Scottish Structure Plans do, or at least have the potential to, indicate the way ahead for the pattern of retail development. The qualification is necessary because Structure Plans generally are in a state of flux and, for this reason, it is not entirely clear whether the policies are anticipating change in the retailing industry or are simply reacting to it. Some of the remaining uncertainties should be resolved, however, when Structure Plan policies are reviewed in light of the new planning guidelines.     

New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer–Exporters

With the global restructuring of agri‐food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large‐scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. This group of pineapple producer–exporters represents a path to capitalist agricultural production that can be conceptualized as capitalism from outside: where capital flows into the countryside, rather than accumulation occurring from above or below within the agrarian economy. The emergence of this form of agrarian capitalism is stimulated by opportunities in new high‐value agricultural export markets, but its stabilization depends on country‐specific characteristics such as rural social structures, property rights and state support. The article documents the conditions of emergence of this new group of Ghanaian capitalist farmers, the period of destabilization caused by increasing international competition that resulted in a small number of large‐scale agribusiness firms surviving, and the challenges that these agribusiness firms faced in stabilizing their capitalist agricultural production.     

The Boys from Bothaville, or the Rise and Fall of King Maize: A South African Story

This paper tells the story, for the first time, of a maverick maize farmers' association in South Africa during the period of apartheid. NAMPO (National Maize Producers' Organization), that grew out of SAMPI (South African Maize Producers' Institute), ultimately achieved a unique, if short-lived, breach in the normal operations of 'organized agriculture': a set of relations and practices that bound together white farmers, the National Party and the state. The paper provides an account of SAMPI/NAMPO's project of 'King Maize' and an explanation of its fall after a brief period of victory from 1981 to 1985. This explanation draws on broader patterns of agrarian change in contemporary capitalism combined with the fracturing of the original agrarian bloc of apartheid in the 1980s, marking the end of a 'second moment' of South Africa's version of a Prussian path of capitalist development.     

Capitalist development in hostile conjunctures: War,dispossession, and class formation in Turkey

This article analyses how periods of geopolitical conflict and violence have affected the development of capitalism and class formation in Turkey. We argue that all major episodes of conflict, violence and war—from forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of the non‐Muslims in the late 19th and the early 20th century, to Kurdish secessionist warfare in the 1990s and the Syrian Civil War—have become major historical turning points in the development of historical capitalism in Turkey. These “hostile conjunctures” transformed capitalism through their direct and indirect effects on dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation. Although each of these conflicts produced a violent dispossession process, none of them resembled the rural dispossession process in England. To make sense of Turkey's experience, we turn our attention to what we call the “Castilian/Spanish road,” and what Lenin called the “Junker/Prussian road” and the “farmers/American road.” Our analysis shows that these differential paths of dispossession, class formation, and capital accumulation have produced highly variegated rather than uniform outcomes. We conclude that we are living in a new “hostile conjuncture,” which is pregnant to a major structural crisis and is generating the preconditions of another historical transformation in the way capitalism operates.     

A spatial land-use planning support system based on game theory

Spatial urban land-use planning is a complex process, through which we aim to allocate suitable land-uses while taking into consideration multiple and conflicting objectives and constraints under certain spatial contexts. Landowners should be modeled as players that are able to interact with each other so as to seek their best land-uses while considering multiple objectives and constraints simultaneously. Game theory provides a tool for land-use planners to model and analyze such interactions.In this paper, spatial urban land-use planning is considered as a game to model local competitions between landowners, whose players (i.e. landowners) of which play to pick the most suitable land-use for themselves. The game is defined based on the objectives of consistency, dependency, suitability, compactness of land-uses, and land-use per capita demand. In this paper, three different scenarios are designed for the players. In the first scenario, the players are greedy and only accept the most compatible land-use. In the second scenario, conversely, the players are fully collaborative and care about other players’ payoff. In the third scenario, the players are first greedy, but when they cannot achieve an agreement with other players, they change their attitude to become gradually collaborative for reaching the Nash equilibrium (NE). Furthermore, the dissatisfaction index (DI), which represents the number of unsatisfied landowners with their current land-use, is defined to compare the different scenarios. The proposed model is tested in a district located in District 7 in Tehran (the capital city of Iran) with 2710 parcels.Results of the first scenario showed that, at the beginning of the game, 50 % of the landowners were not satisfied with their current land-uses, but after 50 iterations, about 100 landowners were dissatisfied with their land-use and this scenario was not able to reach the NE. Results of the second scenario indicated that, in order to reach an optimized layout, 325 parcels needed to be changed. Also, after reaching the NE in this scenario, values of the objective functions did not significantly improve. So, lowering the expectations of the players would not lead to appropriate results. The outcomes of the third scenario provided appropriate results, which could be achieved when the expectation levels of the players could be changed during the game. Furthermore, the NE was obtained among the players and the objective functions improved by 20 % on average in comparison with the other scenarios.Moreover, results of the scenarios were compared with the optimized layout obtained by a genetic algorithm (GA) using different parameter values. Results of the comparison also revealed that the urban layouts produced by game theory improved the objective function values obtained by the GA in about 10 % and improved the GA’s running time in more than 85 %, on average in this research.     

Capitalist food production and the rise of legal adulteration: Regulating food standards in 19th‐century Britain

This paper argues that food adulteration is constitutive of capitalist food production. Through an analysis of the plasticity of legal reasoning on food regulations during the second half of the 19th century in Britain, the paper demonstrates the key role of the state in enforcing the distinction between legal and illegal forms of food adulteration, which is essential to understand contemporary dynamics in food production.     

转型时期英格兰、长三角土地市场发育程度的比较

转型时期英格兰、长三角的土地市场流转率分别为0.496%、0.424%。从数值上看,两地区的土地市场流转率接近,似乎处于同一市场发展阶段,但实质并非如此。在英格兰,各类职业者、资产者构成了土地的买方,土地卖方包括欠债的土地家族、继承土地的旁系亲属、小土地所有者。在长三角,农村金融枯竭,高利贷肆虐,绝大多数农家的年净余率为零或负数。为了生存,不愿变卖土地的农家,只能凭土地举借高利贷经营。利率的高昂、借贷的消费倾向,年净余率的却失,使他们抵押、典当、最终绝卖土地。英格兰的土地交易是买卖双方自由往来的结果,已进入了市场阶段;长三角的绝卖土地则是农家身负高利贷经营达到山穷水尽地步的一种无奈之举,不具备现代市场的基本前提,属前市场阶段。     

Rodney Hilton (1916–2002): In Memoriam

This essay is written in memory of Rodney Hilton (1916–2002), who died on 7 June 2002. He was one of the towering historians of medieval England. Along with the Russian scholar, E. A. Kosminsky, of a previous generation of historians, he provided a formidable Marxist treatment of English feudalism, at once empirically rich, through extensive archival research, and theoretically informed. His work, while displaying a particular vision of the nature of feudal society, and embracing certain recurring themes, is broad in its scope and varied in the issues it covers. The essay is offered as a tribute to the particular tradition of Marxist historical scholarship represented by him, and which he did so much to foster. A brief account of his career and writing is given. There is, in the present issue, a companion essay in which his views on peasant differentiation and the transition to capitalism in England are considered at length.