Tese De Doutorado - University Of Wisconsin-madison

PLANTATION SYSTEMS, LAND TENURE AND LABOR SUPPLY: AN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BRAZILIAN CASE WITH A CONTEMPORARY STUDY OF THE CACAO REGIONS OF BAHIA, BRAZIL

BY

Gervasio Castro de Rezende

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Economics)

at the

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

1976

© Copyright by Gervasio Castro de Rezende 1976

PLANTATION SYSTEMS, LAND TENURE AND LABOR SUPPLY: AN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BRAZILIAN CASE WITH A CONTEMPORARY STUDY OF THE CACAO REGIONS OF BAHIA, BRAZIL Gervasio Castro de Rezende Under the supervision of Professor John D. Strasma

ABSTRACT

The thesis discusses the apparent paradox of the rise and reproduction of the dominant export sectors taking the form of a low-wage, technically-backward but profitable production in the context of a “naturally” land-abundant, labor-scarce economy, as has been the case historically in Brazil. This "paradox" is explained by the determined social frameworks of production, which have included slave labor as well as other forms of “cheap” labor. In this way it is argued that these capitalist sectors have been able to create for themselves an “unlimited supply of labor.” The social relations of production in this capitalist sectors, on the other hand, are analyzed in terms of what they have in common as means and conditions for production of surplus labor under determined technical condition, in particular the technical conditions of production of

“necessaries” (or “subsistence goods”). These technical conditions of

production of necessaries, in their turn, are analyzed as an aspect of a fundamenta1 duality export production/subsistence production that has been found to be a general feature of capitalist development in the backward countries. A se1ected survey of a broad range of historical examples is presented in order to suggest that these structural features seem to have been, rather than the exception, the general historical pattern. The Brazilian is then discussed against the background of the coffee economy in the nineteenth century. The role of land tenure is exemplified with an analysis of the Northeastern sugar economy, in the transition from slave to free labor. As an empirical contribution to the subject, the “cacao region” of Bahia is analyzed on the basis of data collected in 1972-73 for a sample of about 3,000 farms. It is demonstrated the existence of sharp duality between the cacao plantation sector and a petty production (or “peasant”) sector, where alone the “subsistence goods,” in relatively inferior technical and economic conditions, are produced.

This duality, on the other hand, is related to the region’s plantation-dominated agrarian structure, in a contribution to the problem of agrarian reform in Brazil.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It was thanks to the support received from the Instituto de Planejamento Economico e Social (IPEA) of the Brazilian Ministry of Planning, as well as from Ford Foundation, that I was able to come to the University of Wisconsin for graduate work in the years 1971-1973; after returning to Brazil, IPEA has made possible full-time work on this dissertation, and has covered my expenses with the field trips to Southern Bahia. In addition, I have been permitted to come to the United States for thesis defense, and Ford Foundation, again, has helped finance the trip as well as other expenses. Professor Donald Harris, formerly at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has supported this project from its very beginning. Without his reassuring comments and a permanent interest on this work, it would simply have been impossible for me to continue. Although he could not remain as the chairman of my committee due to his departure for Stanford University, we managed to continue discussing crucial issues in this thesis. In an important sense, therefore, he is also responsible for this work. Professor Eugene Havens has also strongly supported this project and made some important comments stressing the need for an historical perspective. Thanks to him, Professor James O’Connor has also read and presented comments on the original project. Professors John Strasma, Ralph Andreano, Willard Mueller, Don Kanel and Thomas Skidmore have read the manuscript and presented valuable comments. Having been asked to replace my original thesis committee, they have not required from me an adoption of theoretical or methodological perspectives that they themselves might have preferred; instead, they accepted the previous work I had developed with Professors Harris and Havens, and I was always pleased to receive comments that have contributed for improvements in the presentation of my argument. In particular, I would like to thank Professor John Strasma’s close scrutiny of the cacao case study, and many of his criticisms and observations have been considered in the final version. My own capacity to complete this work depended to a great extent on the support given by the members of my committee, and for this reason I express my deep gratitude to them. Professor Emilia Viotti da Costa, now at Yale University, read parts of an earlier version of the manuscript and presented useful comments as well as a reassuring interest, that

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was also expressed by Professor Celso Furtado. Professor Warren Dean has kindly made available to me the manuscript of his forthcoming book, whose relevance for this work has been fundamental. I have also benefited from the interest and penetrating comments of my friend, Professor Antonio Barros de Castro, of Universidade Estadual de Campinas; it was thanks to him that I was able to present an informal discussion at Campinas, that proved to be very helpful. Basic theoretical questions have been discussed also with Pasquale Scandizzo, of World Bank, as a result of which I decided to introduce in the thesis a more systematic theoretical discussion. Stahis Panagides, also of World Bank, presented useful comments to the initial versions of the project; as an expression of a close friendship, he has constantly reassured me in my efforts to deal with questions that have always deeply concerned him. Professor Edmar Bacha, of Universidade de Brasilia, was also helpful in criticizing initial attempts to frame the analysis, as well as some ways to develop the argument. Finally, the former Superintendent of INPES, Professor Anibal Villela, has also shown a reassuring interest in my work. I have benefited particularly from deep discussions with Moacir Palmeira and Afranio Garcia, of the Master program in social anthropology of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro. Palmeira’s own work has greatly influenced my perceptions of basic issues, and it has been unfortunate that I have not been able to discuss critically some of his propositions. To a great extent, Hermino Ramos de Souza and Ana Maria Reis, of CEPLAC, must share in the work on the cacao regions. We managed to establish a friendly work relationship, on the basis of which a common project for analyzing the data was designed and implemented. Hermino Ramos, in particular, as the coordinator of CEPLAC's survey, had to solve almost insurmountable problems related to the processing of the data.

The former

coordinator of CEPLAC's project Levy Cruz, of IICA, has made possible my access to the data; other people at CEPLAC have also been very friendly as well as helpful.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................1 II. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY. (I) A SURVEY OF A NINETEENTH CENTURY EVIDENCE...........................................................................................................................4 III. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY. (II) AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK ..................30 IV. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY (III) AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE.........................................................................................................................57 V. COFFEE AND LABOR SUPPLY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BRAZIL ...................72 VI. AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND LABOR SUPPLY IN BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURE ...........................................................................................................................................107 VII. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF A CONTEMPORARY PLANTATION SYSTEM: THE “CACAO REGIONS OF BAHIA, BRAZIL.....................................................................119 VIII. SUMMARY AND CONLUSIONS ..............................................................................207 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................210

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CHAPTER I I. INTRODUCTION

The discussion of the problem of agrarian reform in Brazil has taken the form of a debate on the relationship between agrarian structure and economic development of the country. To a great extent, this debate centered around the capacity of agriculture to satisfy the demand for food and raw materials required by the process of industrializition, as well as for expansion of exports. A hypothesis of “rigidity of agricultural supply” was advanced as a justification for agrarian reform, as the Three-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development (1963-65) has stated it:

“The rigidity of the agricultural supply, that results, to a great extent, from the deficient agrarian structure, entails that the agricultural prices increase faster than industrial prices (...). The terms of trade (...) force the industrial sector to transfer part of its income to the agricultural sector (...). Losing substance, the industrial sector sees diminished its capacity of investment, while the concentration of income in the rural areas prevent the masses from contributing to the growth of the national market. (...). The present agrarian structure constitutes, then, a grave obstacle to the economic development of the country, and its transformation is a requirement for the progress of the Brazilian society”. A contrary view, however, soon sought to “demonstrate”, as Celso Furtado has put it, “the functionality of the country’s agrarian structure. The agricultural sector would have performed brilliantly its role in the process of development (...)”1 . Such a conclusion was mainly based on the evidence that agricultural prices had not increased in relation to industrial prices, contradicting therefore what should be expected if there were any insufficient of supply relative to demand for agricultural products; analyses of “priceresponsiveness,” in addition, showed that this result was an expression of a “satisfactory” capacity of agriculture to “respond” to market incentives.2 1

Furtado, C., “A Estrutura Agraria no Subdesenvolvimento Brasileiro”, in Analise do ‘Modelo’ Brasileiro (Rio: Civilização Brasileira, 1972), p. 113. 2

For relevant works, see Delfim Netto, A. et alii, Agricultura e Desenvolvimento no Brasil (Sao Paulo: Estudos ANPES nº 5, 1965); Pastore, A. C., “A Oferta de Produtos Agricolas no Brasil,” in Pastore, J., ed., Agricultura e Desenvolvimento (Rio: APEC, 1973); Castro, A. B., “Agricultura e Desenvolvimento no Brasil,” in Sete Ensaios sobre a Economia Brasileira (Rio: Forense, 1969).

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The present thesis seeks to contribute to a critique of this “price-responsiveness” literature, in its attempt to imply, as Furtado has pointed out, that “it would thus be thrown to the ground the thesis that the present agrarian structure constitutes an obstacle to an authentic development of the country”. For, still following Furtado, in this implication it is “pushed to the background the question of whether an agriculture that “responds” to a changing demand is actually developing, that is to say, if it raises its technical level, if it allows a qualitative change in the human resources, if it implies an improvement in the standards of living of the rural population”3 . The problematic that is focused in this thesis has been largely ignored in the previous debate, and has only recently been introduced in the discussion by Furtado. It has to do with the relationship between agrarian structure and the socio-economic conditions of the rural population, on the one hand, and the structuring of the labor market and the technical level of agricultural production, on the other hand. An historical argument is presented according to which, as a necessary outcome of the social relations of production that have constituted historically Brazilian agrarian structure, expansion of production -- manifesting indeed a high degree of “price-responsiveness” -- has not implied a “qualitative change in the human resources”,

much less

“an improvement in the standards of living of the rural population”.

In addition, the technical backwardness of important sectors of agriculture is shown to have been related, in a definite sense, to these social relations of production. This historical analysis, while in itself representing a contribution relevant to the explanation of the historical roots of Brazilian underdevelopment, is nevertheless intended primarily as a means to sharpen our capacity to analyze the present conditions. Thus, for instance, while discussing the structural insertion of petty producers in the coffee economy in the nineteenth century, we were trying also to learn something that might be relevant for the analysis of the minifundia sector today; in several other ways, the historical analysis had for ultimate reason-d'etre to shed light on the present conditions. This historical argument is restricted to the export sectors, the ones more closely related to the world economy. It limits itself, furthermore, to the coffee economy in the nineteenth century.

Chapter V presents a detailed analysis of coffee production, bringing to

the forefront of the discussion the structural features of that economy. In Chapter VI, some general conclusions related to the coffee economy are summarized; at the same time, the Northeastern sugar economy, in its transition from slave to free labor, is also discussed, as a

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particularly illustrative case of the determining role of agrarian structure. An empirical analysis of the “cacao regions” of Southern Bahia is presented in Chapter VII; by focusing on a contemporary situation, an attempt is made to strengthen the proposition that the analysis of the socio-economic conditions that characterize the insertion of the majority of the rural population in the social relations of production --founded on definite (property) relationships to the means of production -- is of paramount importance for the analysis of the technical level of substantial sectors of Brazilian agriculture, as well as for the analysis of the labor market. It becomes clear then, the concern of this thesis with present conditions of Brazilian economy and society. An attempt has been made to present the argument within a theoretical perspective. A selected survey of a broad range of historical experiences is presented, in Chapter II, in order to suggest that the incorporation of the backward countries, through their “export sectors”, into the world economy has been characterized by social relations of production with definite implications for the labor market as well as for the technical and social conditions of production in the “subsistence sectors”. The rise and reproduction of these social relations of production -- being our contention that the Brazilian case is just a particular instance of this historical process -- is analyzed in connection with the labor needs of these “capitalist sector”; while stressing the concrete social forms of insertion of labor in these export sectors, we tried to pose the analysis of these forms as a theoretical issue, and for this reason we present, in Chapter III, an exposition of the Marxian theoretical framework for the general analysis of the capitalist mode of production, stressing, in particular, the connection between the social conditions of production, labor exploitation and accumulation of capital. In Chapter IV, in a discussion of direct relevance to the analysis of Brazilian agrarian structure, we try to argue for the need to analyze the concrete social and economic conditions in those capitalist sectors in connection with accumulation on a world scale. Some elements for such an analysis are presented as a contribution to this task, but their tentative character should be taken into account.

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“A Estrutura Agraria...”, p. 113.

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CHAPTER II II. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY. (I) A SURVEY OF A NINETEENTH CENTURY EVIDENCE

Introduction The selective historical evidence that follows has two main purposes. The first is to document the several non-market, political mechanisms of formation of a supply of labor that have accompanied the rise and development of the export sectors in the respective areas surveyed. It is expected that this admittedly cursory survey of the relevant literature should serve as a contribution to the development of a critique of the standard conception implicitly embodied and Lewis-type models regarding the relationship between “capitalist”, or “modern” sectors, on the one hand, and “traditional”, or “subsistence” sectors, on the other hand. Such a conception has been aptly characterized in this way by an author:

“(...) the development of capitalism is conceived of not only as an ultimately beneficial process but also as a spontaneous process in the sense that it is induced exclusively, or almost exclusively, by ‘market forces’ (i.e., the free choice of individuals on the market place) with no or little role assigned to open or concealed forms of compulsion”4 . The second purpose of this chapter is to use the evidence in order to suggest, in a preliminary way, how even a “spontaneous” labor supply to such capitalist sectors, rather than being an expression of freedom of choice of the laborer -- being, in this sense, a market phenomenon -- is ultimately an expression of absence of choice inherent in the lack of alternatives of earning subsistence but through wage labor.

In this connection, the evidence

is useful in suggesting how the historical processes that led to proletarianization and hence to several specific forms of wage labor, have been, at the same time, politico-economic processes that implied the restriction, and in some cases the pure and simple destruction, of 4

Arrighi, G., “Labour supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia”, Journal of Development studies, vol. 6, (1969-70), April 1970, p. 199.

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the possibilities for autonomous development of the non-capitalist, or “subsistence”, sectors. With these purposes in mind, the rise of the “migrant labor” system in Africa is discussed in the first section. In the second section, the general process of capitalist development in the Caribbean is surveyed in the concrete cases of British Guiana and Puerto Rico. The first serves for us to understand better indenture labor in its nineteenth century version, while Puerto Rico provides an important example of forced labor. The third and fourth sections present the cases of Peru and Mexico, appropriate for a glimpse at another form of compulsory labor, namely, debt peonage.

Section 1 -- Wage labor in Africa 1.1 -- The “ labor problem”: a general survey In a general survey of the African colonization by European powers beginning in the late nineteenth century,5 Greaves contrasts the labor demand for mining, agriculture, construction works, etc., with the conditions underlying the native’s labor supply decision: “Under their customary economy natives work regularly and methodically for the attainment of recognized ends, and what we have to consider here is how the introduction of capitalistic forms of production affects their motives for working and the final ends to which their effort is directed. The scope of the market to which they have access is greatly enlarged; in place of a choice limited by direct exchange in a particular environment, indirect exchange and foreign trade bring within their reach an extended range of both consumption and production a1ternatives. They may satisfy their usual wants by new means or increase their scale of total wants; and the purchasing power for these new purposes must be acquired by changing their production system from direct to indirect, that is, either by working for wages or by growing crops for sale.

The relative advantages of these two forms of occupation depend upon how their different degrees of profitability compare with the living conditions they respectively offer. Through the superior efficiency of its equipment and organization a plantation may be able to offer a higher rate of remuneration than the native can earn by independent production; or, on the other hand, a plantation may find its overhead and management costs 5

For a periodization of African history on the basis of the different patterns of relationship to Europe, see Amin, S., “Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa -- Origins and Contemporary Forms”, The Journal of Modern African studies, vol. 10, nº. 4 (1972),pp.503-24.

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so high that it cannot afford to pay labour as much as a peasant can obtain by selling the produce of the same amount of time and labour expended on lis own account. And besides this difference in the productivity value of his labour, another determinant in the native’s choice of occupation is the difference in the conditions under which he will have to work as a wageearner and as an independent producer”6 . “To the extent that the native’s choice excludes foreign employment, or accepts it only at a rate which the productivity value of their labour does not warrant, then, if foreign enterprise is to be carried on, the problem arises of devising expedients which will make the supply of labour conform to the requirements of employers. (…)”7 .

It is against this background that Greaves discusses “(…) the actual measures for regulating the supply of labour which are in force in various areas”:8 (1) “The first group of these belong to the category which we described above as destructive of the basis of native independence. The outright annexation of all land over which they claimed jurisdiction was the original method of colonization by the European Powers, and in so far as they were able to implement their claims they struck at the roots of the independence of the indigenous race. (…)”9 . (2) “In most of the territories with which we are dealing foreign enterprise felt the need of local labour while the natives had not been deprived of enough of their land to make them dependent upon wage employment for a livelihood, and the work required from them could only be secured by imposing political obligations which made it necessary, or by creating new desires for purchasable commodities which made it voluntary. (…)”10 . Greaves presents a brief, but impressive, account of the specific ways compulsion was used: “‘The reason why the native works when he is told to’, said the reply of 6

Greaves, I. C., Modern Production Among Backward Peoples (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp. 112-113. Elsewhere, Greaves contrasts these conditions, in a highly suggestive manner, as “the supervised ranks of a labour camp”, on the one hand, and “the companionab1e freedom of his village”. (Ibid., p. 162). 7 Ibid., p. 121. 8 For another general survey of these “actual measures”, see the relevant chapters in Kloosterboer, W., Involuntary Labour Since the Abolition of S1avery (Leiden, Netherlands. E. J. Brill, 1960). 9 Greaves, Modern Production, p. 131. Elsewhere, the author clarifies her position when she says that, thanks to the changes in land ownership, the natives “must either earn wages or pay a labour rent to the new landowner”. (Ibid., p. 124) 10 Ibid., p. 136.

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South Africa to the International Labour Office in 1929, ‘is because he is afraid something worse will happen to him if he does not’. This is probably as good a description of the basis of forced labour as can be given in a few words; it is a system that depends upon penalties for non-performance instead of rewards for performance; and evidence is not lacking that when the labour did not come up to the expectations of the supervisor ‘something worse’ did happen to the native. It would serve no useful purpose to recount here the regime of the chicote which was responsible for the ‘red rubber’ of the Congo Free State, the resourceful atrocities that accompanied the recruitment of labour in French Africa, nor the abuses of a ‘modern slavery’ in Portuguese Africa; they were all denounced by contemporary investigators, and they have been regretted -- or repudiated -- by the highest authorities, yet they continued, and many existed in only a modified form until the economic crisis in 1930 reduced the demand for labour. All these coercive practices had one basic principle, the determination to show the native that you were prepared to kil1 in order to enforce your will; and after a few examples he became tractable. One form of threat which appears to have been both widespread and long-lived was to send a force of native police to a village where they seized the women and children as ‘hostages’, and recruited the men as labourers. Under such a system payment was clearly an irrelevant matter”11 . An indirect measure, however, was put into practice by the Colonial Powers, namely, taxation. “(...) it acts alike upon those who have not been accustomed to money, those who do and those who do not want more goods, those who are reluctant to work, and those who dislike emp1oyers; in order to pay the tax they must all either sell some produce of their own or work for wages. (...) In all African colonies and protectorates there is now either a poll or hut tax payable in money besides the labour dues for which the natives are liable at certain times”12 . Informing us of the naked violence involved in such methods of creating a supply of labor, Greaves says: 11

Ibid., pp. l44-145. Ibid., pp. 141-142. Myint has also said that “Sometimes the pressure was applied directly, and the administrative power of the colonial government or indigenous rulers was used to direct labour into the mines and plantations. More frequently, the pressure was applied indirectly, by imposing a poll tax or a hut tax which obliged the indigenous people in the subsistence economy to come out and work in the mines and plantations so that they could pay their taxes”. The Economics of Deve1oping Countries (New York: Praeger, l97l), p. 61. As to the role of “indigenous rulers”, Greaves informs us that “(...) When a supply of workers is required, the district official requisitions a certain number of men from each chief or village headman; chiefs who are progressively minded (sic) and co-operate with the Government receive some measure of payment in recognition of their status and their services, while those who cannot meet the demands are fined or imprisoned, and if they prove unfriendly to the administration eventually removed”. (Modern Production, p.141). 12

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“A tax is, of course, just as much an involuntary contribution as forced labour and can only be obtained on the same principles. At the present time if the failure to pay it can be traced to any defection on the part of the chief he is imprisoned; if the people themselves have omitted to obtain the money they are required to work the tax off at the discretion of the Government; but in the earlier stages of development (sic) tax collecting was accompanied by far more drastic methods of compulsion than these. The mildest method appears to have been the ‘punitive expedition’ of the British, which burnt the huts on which taxes had not; been paid, or the kraa1s of tribes who were in arrears with their poll tax. The French secured the fulfillment of tax obligations by tournees pacifiques d’impot, which aimed at intimidating the natives by physical violence. (…)”13 .

1.2 -- The Rhodesian case

The general picture presented by Greaves can be improved upon thanks to a detailed study of a particular example, namely, Rhodesia14 . The author purported to show how “(...) dualism in Rhodesia (i.e. the technological, economic and political distance between the two races) was less an ‘original state’, progressively reduced by market forces, than ti was the outcome of the development of capitalism itself. (...) market forces did not ab initio favour capitalist development. Real wages remained at a level which promoted capitalist accumulation not because of the forces of supply and demand, but because of politico-economic mechanisms that ensured the ‘desired’ supply at the ‘desired’ wage rate. Before the determination of wage rates and rates of accumulation could be ‘safely’ left to market forces, the Rhodesian capitalist system had to undergo the process of ‘primary accumulation’. (…)”15 13

Ibid., p. l43. Arrighi, "Labour Supp1ies…”. 15 Ibid., p. 221. Another author has also argued, now for the case of South Africa, that “(…) an adapted form of the traditional subsistence methods provided for hundreds of thousands of Africans a preferable alternative to wage labour on white colonists’ terms (...). (...) it is suggested that the crucial post-mineral period was one in which non-market forces predominated; in which discriminatory and coercive means were utilized by the wielders of economic and political power to disadvantage the African peasantry; and that an economy was created whose structure was such as to render ‘market forces’ highly favourable to the white, capitalist sector. The decline in productivity and profitability of African agriculture -- and the corollary of greater dependence by Africans on wage labour -- is in an important sense the outcome of the nature of capitalist development in Soutb Africa”. Bundy, C “The Emergence and Decline of a South African Peasantry”, African Affairs, Oct. l972, pp. 370-1. Amin has generalized that, for the “Africa of the labour reserves”, “capital at the centre needed to have a large proletariat immediately available. This was because there was great mineral wealth to be exploited (gold and diamonds in South Africa, and copper in Northern Rhodesia), and an untypical settler agriculture in the tropical Africa or Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, and German Tanganyika. In order to obtain this proletariat 14

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Arrighi starts by explaining the low rate of African participation in the labour market, in late nineteenth century, by “the ‘discretionary’ character of African participation in the money economy” and “the low comparative effort-price on income earnable through the sale of produce”16 . It is against this background, also brought to the forefront by Greaves, that the author analyses the “measures taken by the Government to eliminate the labour shortage”, enforcing that “political rather than market mechanisms were to be the equilibrating factor in the African labour market”17 . (1) In the first place, (…) forced wage-labour was an obvious device for closing gaps between supply and demand in the labour market and it was widely resorted to in the early days of settlement. (…) quickly, the colonizers dispossessed the African rural communities -- sometimes by violence -- and drove them deliberate1y back into small, poor regions, with no means of modernizing and intensifying their farming. They forced the ‘traditional’ societies to be the supplier of temporary or permanent migrants on a vast scale, thus providing a cheap proletariat for the European mines and farms, and later for the manufacturing industries of South Africa, Rhodesia, and Kenya”. Amin, “Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa ...”. p. 519. 16 “Labour Supplies …”p. 206. For the meaning of a “discritionary” or “necessary” participation in a money economy, as well as the concept of “effort-price”, see Ibid., pp. 206-207. For an earlier analysis of “the factors that determine whether and for how long an individual African villager will offer his labor for paid employrnent” on the basis of a similar theoretical framework, see Berg, E. J., "Backward-Sloping Labor Supply Functions in Dual Economies -- The African Case”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. LXXV, n°. 3, reprinted in Wallerstein, I., ed. Social Change: The Colonial Situation (New York, 1960). 17 Ibid., p. 207. For Berg, since “Most Africans in the past (and many today) could (...) be regarded as reluctant (...) it is no surprise that until about 1930 in most of the continent the securing of a labor force in the exchange sector depended largely on the exercise of direct or indirect coercion. (…)” (op.cit., p. 121). In the case of Kenya, another author has argued that “(…) African economic structures more or less sufficed for African societies -- insofar as they ever had done so -- before the British came. European settlers and administrators eventually discovered, however, that to obtain sufficient numbers of Africans for labor, they would have to coerce Africans out of their existing economic structure by transforming the structure totally”. More specifically, “European settlers and officials sought to formulate plans to produce enough African laborers at the wages the s ettlers deemed necessary. The alternative was failure of the British program of economic development through European colonization. Beginning in 1902 with the basic commitment to, and first arrivals of, European settlers, British officials began to evolve a 1abor policy”. Wolff, R. D., The Economics of Colonialism, Britain and Kenya, 1870-1930 (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 90, 97. “By the late 1920’s, they had forced the African population as a whole to play its assigned role in their plantationbased economic structure. (...)” (Ibid., p. 116) For a discussion of such a policy, see, in addition to Wolff’s work, Clayton, A. and D. C. Savage, Government and Labour in Kenya 1895-1963 (London: Frank Cass, 1974). In this last work, the authors conclude that “By 1914 [Kenya] was for almost all purposes divided into white settled areas where economic development, even if unsound or in debt, was to be protected; along with closelyadministered, efficiently-taxed African reserves, the more densely populated of which were spoken of as the ‘labour-producing areas’. (...) In the reserves economic development was at best only taking place under criticism and obstacles, more often it was not taking place at all for fears that the labour supply would be reduced. (...) “(p.65). Wolff’s “labor policy” is taken by Myint to be a “cheap labor policy”, and its “sponsoring (...) had far-reaching implications. Since peasant production was the main alternative to working for money wages, it followed that there was a conflict of interest between providing cheap labour for the mines and plantations and for the government, and the development of peasant cash production. In so far as the colonial governments regarded the requirement of cheap labour to be of paramount interest, therefore, peasant agriculture was deliberately discouraged or at least 1argely neglected so as not to spoil the labour market”. (Economics of Developing Countries, p. 61)

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This practice was one of the causes of the African Rebellions of 1896-97 and was subsequently; abandoned, at least in its crudest forms, in order to avoid a cost1y repressive apparatus. but even as late as the early 1920’s ‘a hint from the Native Commissioner to some of the headmen [would] usually bring out the desired number of young ones to work’. In 1908-9 a ‘hint’ of this sort increased the supply of labour in two districts by 50 percent, and the abnormally high rate of African participation in the labour market recorded in 1911 was largely due to pressures of this sort”18 . (2) Taxation was another device. “A hut tax of 10s. for every adult male and 10s. extra for each wife exceeding one was imposed as early as 1894 and ten years later it was replaced by a poll tax of £1 on each male over 16 and 10s. upon each wife exceeding one. (…) Taxation had, however, some shortcomings. For taxation, by not discriminating between incomes obtained from sale of produce and incomes obtained from the sale of labour time, did not alter the discrepancy between the effort-price of the two types of income. It could therefore, as it did in many instances, simply lead to the extension of the acreage under cultivation and/or to more intensive cultivation of the land. This was not, of course, the case in those areas which were located far from the centres of capitalist development (mines, towns and lines of communication) and were not reached by traders. For Africans living in these areas the only way to earn mone yto pay taxes was to sell their labour-time”19 . “(…) The extension of taxation to such territories, the recruiting activities of various governments and private agencies, and, subsequently, the spreading of new tastes and wants, soon turned Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and later Nyasaland (Malawi) and Mozambique into reservoirs of cheap labour which enabled Rhodesian employers to overcome the labour shortage of the first two decades of this century (...) the proportion of extra-territorial Africans in the total African wage 1abour force rose from less than 50 percent in 1904 to 68 percent in 1922”20 . 18

“Labour supplies...”, p. 207. Ibid., p. 208. 20 Ibid.,p. 210. The connection between Portuguese “recruiting activities” in Angola and Mozambique and the function of these former colonies as reservoirs of cheap labor for South African mines is analysed in O’Brien, J., “Portugal and Africa, A Dying Imperialism, Monthly Review, May 1947, p. 28 “(…) The threat of forcible displacement under intolerable conditions assures acceptance of the same or worse inhuman wages and working conditions which either do not involve the worker’s separation from his family or do not degrade him in the eyes of family and friends or himself. Thus, Africans tend to ‘prefer’ to contract directly with a company at lower wages, or to work under brutal conditions in the mines of South Africa. (...) the ‘choice’ of one of these alternatives is a reaction to the threat of forced labor. (…) “In a careful study of the Mocambique Thonga and their (former) subjection to Portuguese colonial rule, another author has concluded that “(…) the perpetuation of 19

11

(3) A third device (non-market force) was land expropriation. Such a measure “would significantly increase the effort-price of participation in the produce market”. Indeed, it is to be expected that, dispossessed of his land, the peasant would have no other a1ternative but to earn his subsistence through the sale of his labor-power. In one stroke, his participation in the money economy would become “necessary”, taking in addition a specific form, name1y, wage labor. Arrighi points out, however, that the effects of land expropriation, contrary to what is “commonly assumed”, materialized in a complex way. Granted that “By 1920 the African people had been expropriated from more than three-quarters of all the land in the country”, they were allowed, however, to “remain on their ancestral lands upon payment of rent or commitment to supply labour services”. The problem that Arrighi poses is then why European production developed on the basis of such institutional devices, rather than the more conventional capitalist wage-labor. Hhe explains such “semi-feudal relations” as arising, first of all, under conditions of abundant land and scarcity of labor. “As the Native Affairs Committee Of Enquiry (1911) pointed out, ‘it would be very short-sighted policy to remove these natives to reserves, to their services may be of great value to future European occupants’. Land was abundant and labour scarce, so that land with no labour on it had little value”. Secondly, he sees the rents and “other payments exacted from African tenants” valuable to the capitalist economy”. Thirdly, he points out that the capitalist sector continued to rely heavily upon African supplies of produce, and any reduction thereof would have seriously hit the dominant mining interests”. Finally, capitalist relations in agriculture were being hampered by market forces themselves: “the low opportunity cost to the African peasantry of supplying surpluses of ‘subsistence produce’, the scarcity of cheap wage labour, and the smallness of the financial resources at the command of would be European farmers, were all factors that made the latter's economic position precarious. Moreover, capitalist agriculture was a highly risky enterprise. For the market was relatively small and prices, being mainly determined by African production of marketable surpluses, fluctuated widely from season to season”21 . the Rand migratory current among the Thonga continues to be intimately related to the pressures maintained by Portuguese colonial policy”. Harris, M., “Labour Emigration among the Mocambique Thonga: Cultural and Political Factors”, Africa, vol. XXIX n°. 1 (1959), as reprinted in Wallerstein, Social Change: The Colonial Situation, p. 103. 21 “Labour Supplies...”, pp. 208-209. Such “semi-feudal” relations were also established in South Africa (see Bundy, op.cit.) and Kenya (see Wolff, op.cit., pp. 125-l26). The Mau Mau revolt of the l950’s in Kenyaq is analysed by another author as a result or attempts by the European settlers to “elirninate the African squatter as an independent producer, to be transformed into an agricultural labourer”.Furedi, F., “The Social Composition

12

Arrighi contrasts these early decades of this century, however, with the period that followed the early 1920's, when “African responsiveness to wage employment opportunities increased continuously, irrespective of whether real wages were rising, falling or remaining constant”22 . With an explicit consideration of the previous “political rather than market mechanism”, he proposed that “In analyzing the process whereby the sale of labour-time became a necessity for the African population of Rhodesia, attention must be focused upon two tendencies: (a) the transformation of ‘discretionary’ cash requirements into ‘necessary’ requirements; and (b) an upward tendency in the effort-price of African participation in the produce market resulting from a growing disequilibrium between means of production (mainly land) and population in the peasant sector and a weakening of the peasantry’s competitive position on the produce market”23 .

1.3 -- The “Migrant Labor” system -- a critical discussion The selective survey presented before on the actual historical foundations of wage labor in Africa does not emphasize sufficiently a particular feature of this wage labor, namely its being migrant wage labor, “(...) men temporarily in paid employment who shuttle between home villages and employment sites”. Such “migrant labor” is acknowledged to be “the characteristic feature of 1abor markets in West Africa, as in African generally (…)”24 .

of the Mau Mau Movement in the White Highlands”, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 1, n°. 4, pp. 486-505. A similar process of proletarianization is described, for South Africa, by Bundy, op.cit. 22 Ibid., p. 22l. 23 Ibid., pp. 210-211. For a detailed account of such tendencies, see Ibid., pp. 211-221. Arrighi points out, however, that “All this having been said, it is probable that political mechanisms were progressively 1osing their dominant role in undermining the peasantry’s ability to participate in the produce market and in strengthening the competitive position of European agriculture. For, once capitalist agriculture has overcome the initial difficulties related to its competitive weakness in the produce market and to its low productivity relatively to the market wage rate, market forces themselves tend to widen the gap between productivities in peasant and capitalist agriculture. The main reason for this is that capitalist producers in reinvesting surpluses tend to chose those techiniques which increase the surplus itself at some future date rather than current output as the peasantry can be expected to do. (...) In the second place, capitalist agriculture is not subject to the constraints which we have seen to hamper certain types of innovation in peasant agriculture. It is therefore free -- and indeed compelled under tne pressure of competition -- to innovate as trends in market conditions and factor endowment change. (…)”. (Ibid., p. 221) 24 Berg, E. J., “The Economics of the Migrant Labor System”, in Kuper, H., ed., Urbanization and Migration in West Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, l965), p. 160. Myint has also said that “In most African countries the mines and plantations have so far been able to obtain the bulk of their labour requirements on the basis of the migrant labour system, reinforced by taxation and administrative pressure”. (op.cit., p. 63). “The peculiar feature of this labour-force is that it is migrant and temporary, returning to the Reserves in between periods of work, and retains means of production in the African economy or has a claim on

13

The compulsory measures adopted to extract labor from the African villages, as well as the politico-economic processes that led to the formation of the “labor reserves” can not be fully understood unless this specific form of wage labor is discussed. As it has been put for the case of South Africa, “The central problem faced by the employers of the Thonga was not to get them to work for wages, but to employ masses of unskilled workers under those historical and economically determined conditions peculiar to the South African mining enterprise and the Portuguese colonial venture which alone rendered the payment of wages viable economically and secure politically. These conditions were the wages paid could not include the cost of sustaining the family of the workers; that the wage-earner and his family be widely separated in space and that this separation endure for uninterrupted periods of considerable duration, yet not so long as to break the ties binding the worker to his ‘tribal’ domain. The problem, in other words, was the very much more complicated one of converting the male half, and only the male half of a rural society into a labour force sensitive to the demands of an urban industrial economy”.25 (ours the emphasis) In other words, the fact that “(...) the transition process halted where it did (…)”, that “(…) the peasantry was not completely pro1etarianized (…)”, has the answer in the fundamental fact that “(…) the embedding of migrant labour in the economic structure conferred benefits on all the major interests which had a political voice in the state. For urban employers, it meant that labour was kept cheap, unorganized, and rightness, that overhead costs were kept to a minimum, and the formation of an urban proletariat was restricted. For white workers, it provided the security of membership in a labour elite: the protection of white labouring interests meant a partial solution to the Poor White problem -- Afrikaner squatters were more fortunate than their black counter-parts. For white farmers, it meant that low wages and the impermanence of compound life kept the labour force closer at hand, once the threat of black agricultural competition had been avoided”26 . such means. Wolpe, H., “Capitalisrn and cheap labour-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid”, Economy and Society, vol. 1 (1972), p. 433. 25 Harris, op.cit., p. 98 26 Bundy, op.cit., p. 372. Harris has also pointed out that “(…) the fact that migrant wage-earners need not be expected to supply their families with food has constituted a great saving to European industrial and farm interests. Free of the responsibility of buying food for their wives and children, the migratory mass has been able to accept wages below what would be required to maintain a work force patterned after a nineteenthcentury European industrial proletariat”. (op.cit., p. 97) As it was most clearly put by Wolpe, in the case of the migrant labor system, “(…) the relationship between wages and the cost of the production and reproduction of labour-power is changed. That is to say, capital is able to pay the worker below the cost of his reproduction. In the first place, since in determining the level of wages necessary for the subsistence of the migrant worker and his family, account is taken of the fact that the family is supported, to some extent, from the product of

14

Seen in a historical perspective, therefore, the migrant labor system becomes the expression of a structural relation between a capitalist sector and the transformed traditional African village economies. Analyzed this way, it is clear that the decision of the African to sell his labor power becomes an expression of objective conditions: first, the impoverishment of the traditional African economies in the politico-economic processes previously surveyed; and second, as far as its migratory nature is concerned, such a feature become implicit in the conditions of wage employment that are imposed upon the worker, in particular a real wage that only suffices to his individual subsistence. These objective conditions, however, are conveniently pushed to the background to the very extent that the migrant labor system is explained as a result of the Africans seeking “(...) a periodical spare-time activity to earn a certain sum of money in addition to their claims on the subsistence economy”. The Africans are said to be “(…) quite willing to accept the low wages offered by the mines and plantations since these were regarded not as full compensation of the alternative economic opportunities (which were not sacrificed) but merely as an additional source of income. But precisely because of this reason, the migrant labour normally returned to their families in the subsistence sector after having worked a certain period and having earned a certain sum of money. (…)”27 What is really an imposition upon the worker is thus made to be an expression of his choice; indeed, migrant labor is turned into “(...) the most rationia1 economic choice open to the villager, allowing him a greater family income than if he migrated permanently with his family. (…)”28 The fact that the African “(…) exercises nothing remotely resembling freedom of choice when he ‘chooses’ to participate in the system or to leave his family behind” since “the other alternatives are economically unviable or even more odious than labor migration”, is thus completely obscured.29 In this way, it becomes also obscured that

agricultural production in the Reserves, it becomes possible to fix wages at the level of subsistence of the individual worker. (…)”. (op.cit., p. 434). For similar analyses of the migrant labor system, see Legassick, N., “South Africa: capital accumulation and violence”, Economy and Society, vol. 3 (1974), pp. 253-291, and Meillassoux, C., “From reproduction to production”, Economy and Society, vol. 1 (1972), pp. 93-105. 27 Myint, Economics of Developing Countries, p. 58. 28 Berg, “Backward-Sloping Labor Supply Functions …”, p. 135. See also Berg, The Economics of the Migrant Labor System”, passim. 29 O’Brien, J. and B. Magubane “The Politicsl Economy of Migrant Labor: A Critique of Conventiona1 Wisdom”, Critical Anthropology, Spring 1972, p. 95.To put Things into proper perspective, such a “choice” would involve, for instance, nothing less than “travel hundreds of miles away from family and friends to live in squalid conditions and work at dangerously heavy labor in a mine 16 hours a day for a pittance”. Ibid., p. 95. It

15

“(…) Migratory labor fulfills the needs of the implanted capitalist economic system, and therefore, the explanation of it must be sought in the requirements of that system not in the psyches of the individuals it exploits” 30 .

Section 2 – The Caribbean A general historical picture of the Caribbean region, in what matters labor supply, must be quoted here: “The moment Columbus decided to build a settlement on the north cost of Espanola (today’s Santo Domingo and Haiti), and to leave there a reputed thirty-nine crewmen from the sunken Santa Maria, the conquest, settlement, and ‘development’ -- the word is used advisedly -- of the Caribbean region began. No part of the so-called Third World was hammered so thoroughly or at such length into a colonial amalgam of European design. Almost from the very first, the Caribbean was a key region in the growth of European overseas capitalism. The German historian Richard Konetzke has pointed out that, before Columbus, there were no planetary empires; the Antillean islands were Europe’s first economic bridgehead outside itself. Nor were these islands mere points of entry, ports of trade, or ports of call; in fact they were Europe’s first overseas colonies. As keystones in ultramarine economic ‘development’, they required labor in large quantities. For a long time, that labor was African and enslaved; free men do not willingly work for agricultural entrepreneurs when land is almost a free good. Philip Curtin estimates that 38 percent of the total number of enslaved Africans who reached the New World ended up in the islands alone -- something more than two and one-half-million -between the first decades of the sixteenth century and the latter decades of the nineteenth. Before and after slavery, however, other groups supplied labor -- before slavery: indentured servants, convicts, whores, petty thieves, labor organizers, the pariahs of Britain and France, as well as countless native Americans from the Islands themselves and from the New World mainland; after slavery: contract laborers from India, China, Java, Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere. Nor have such movements of people ever really ceased. They help to explain the unusual ethnic and physical heterogeneity of the Caribbean region; but they also reveal the economically motivated intents of distant rulers. It would be fair to say that almost no one who was not European ever migrated to the Caribbean region freely; and surely no non-European born in the region was ever consulted about the advisability of additional migration. This demography by fiat was is not difficult to conclude, therefore, with Amin, that “(…) only ‘the ideo1ogy of universal harmony’ can see in these migrations anything other than their impoverishment of the departure zones”.(op.cit., p. 523). 30 Magubane and O’Brien, “Political Economy of Migration Labor…”, p. 95.

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remarkable, first of all, because it represented the replacement of indigenous populations by outsiders unlike events in most of in Africa, Asia and even Main1and Latin America; and secondly, because it was, in the context of the time, always massive. More than half a million Indians, both Moslem and hindu, were shipped to the Caribbean region, most going to Trinidad and Guyana (erstwhile British Guyana), with smaller numbers to Dutch Guyana, Jamaica and Martinique; about 150,000 Chinese were imported, principally to Cuba, more than 30,000 Javanese, entirely to Surinam (Dutch Guiana); even a few Indo-Chinese ended tip in the cane fields. Whatever their biases in other regards, the European planters of the Antilles were apparently quite free of prejudice when it come to brute labor -- even fellowEuropeans would do. Spaniards and Portuguese, in particular, reactive the Caribbean colonies in large numbers in the nineteenth century, proving -- as if it had to be proved -- that Europeans, too, could cut cane beneath a broiling tropical sun.”31

2.1 -- British Guiana

The particular case of British Guiana has been studied by an author that tried to show: “(...) that the continued production of sugar without slaves had nothing to do with the operation of blind economic forces. On the contrary, the surviva1 of sugar was the result of severa1 deliberate acts of policy. These included (1) the inhibition of the Negro village economy as a viable way of life; (2) the radical reconstruction of the plantation labor force through indenture immigration; and (3) the massive injection of public capita1 into the sugar sector, a kind of reverse transfer payment through which the Guyanese peasant and indentured immigrant paid an annual subvention to the planter. (…) Westminster, having destroyed s1avery in the name of humanity and free trade, now seemed indifferent to the reconstruction of some of the worst aspects of the preemancipation agrarian system”32 .

These “several deliberate acts of policy”, on the other hand, are analyzed in the

31

Mintz S. W., “The Caribbean Region", Daedalus, Spring 1974, pp. 46-47. Adarnson, A. H., Sugar without slaves: the poltical economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904 (New Heaven Yale Univ. Press, 1972 , pp. 32-33. Adamson has summarized his ana1ysis in “The Reconstruction of Plantation Labor after Emancipation: The Case of British Guiana, in Engerman, S. L. and E. D. Genovese, eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 457-473. 32

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specific context of post-emancipation British Guiana; they are shown by Adamson to be a definite response from the planters to the “labor shortage that developed as a result of the constitution of a independent peasantry: “(…) by the 1830’s some three to four hundred thousand acres along the coast were fit for cultivation, and only a small fraction of this area (sixty thousand acres in 1838) was absorbed by the sugar crop Abandoned coffee and cotton plantations made up much of the ba1ance. There was thus ample room for the free man to leave the estates and set up for himself as an independent peasant. This ought to have moved the planters to treat the apprentices with greater respect and humanity. But ‘like the Bourbons, after whom their best cane was named, they never 1earnt and never forgot’. The apprenticeship code in British Guiana appears to have been the harshest in the Caribbean, and their experience of it hardly disposed the ex-slaves to a life of wage labor on the plantations”33 . (ours the emphasis) Since a proper understanding of the meaning of “labor shortage” in conditions similar to Guianese sugar production is very important for our discussion, it seems worthwhile to quote an author in respect to a similar situation in Jamaica: “(...) The situation created by the exodus of the 1840’s presented the planter with two grounds of complaint; first a general shortage of wage labourers and second, a particular difficulty in obtaining that labour at the time it was required. (…). The general scarcity of labour represented a more fundamental problem. It was generally assumed even by the planters that the model for the relations between estate owner and estate worker after emancipation was to be the contemporary English industrial system. It was not explicitly recognized how completely the successful working of the wage system in England had depended upon its social and economic setting and its historical antecedents. The cardina1 point of difference between the English and Jamaican situations waas perhaps not so much the resistance of the Jamaican worker to the discipline imposed by wage work (for there is ample evidence that the English rural small-holder derived from a rather different Historical background an equally strong resistance), but the power given to the Jamaican by the availability of unoccupied land to establish himself 33

Ibid., p. 31. For additional references on tie “massive exodus” from the estate by the ex-slaves, and the formation of the peasantry between 1823 and 1850 see Mandle, J. R., The Plantation Economy Poulation and Economic Change inGuyana 1838-1960 Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1973 pp. 17-24; and also Farley, R., “The raise of Village Settlements in British Guiana”, Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 10, n°. 1 (March 1964), and “The Rise of the Peasdntry in British Guiana”, Social Economic Studies, vol. 2, n°. 4 (1954).

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on a basis which made wage work a marginal activity. In this sense the enclosure movement was the necessary prelude to the setting up of the english industrial system. (...) In particular, the part time worker valued the labour services he sold to the estate according to less simple standards than the wholetime worker. One can distinguish three separate elements: first, the economic loss involved in absenting himself from his own cultivation; second, the social inferiority of the role of wage labourer; third, the fatigue and tedium of the work performed. His demand for cash income also presented peculiarities, since particularly during the period of the early settlements, it was sharply limited to those staple needs which were not provided by the produce of his own land -- in effect, clothing and the capital needed to buy the instruments of cultivation. Neither of these had the pressing week-by-week urgency of the rent and food bills of the urban worker. (...)”34 . Given Guiana's similar conditions, one understand then that “From the planter’s viewpoint, a peasant population living at the level of subsistence or producing for the market would always, by merely existing, represent a dangerous attraction to ‘his’ labor. The ex-slave would always turn his back on the plantation if he could live independently of it. From the outset, therefore, an inherent contradiction existed between the peasant and plantation economies, the essence of which was that the plantation could not tolerate any threat to its monopoly of land labor and capital.”35 (ours the emphasis) Against this background, Adamson discusses how the colonial 1egislature raised the price and the minimum acreage for purchase of crown lands; how it broke up the communal villages into individual holdings despite drainage and sea defense problem that could be handled only on a common basis; how it minimized or refused appropriations for roads, education, drainage, or sea defense; and how it failed to pass tariff legislation to promote a domestic market for peasant produce. The result was apathy and despair in the villages, but also a supply of part-time 1aborers for the plantations 36 . Given such “1abor shortage” in the face of their 1abor needs, the planters “found their peculiar answer to emancipation and the formation of the peasantry”37 in indenture 1abor. As early as 1838 indenture immigrants arrived in British Guiana, and the period from 1838 to 1854 saw the consolidation of the legal apparatus of a labor-repressive system that 34

Cumper, G. E., “Labour Demand and Supply in the Jamaican Sugar Industry, 1830-1950”, Social and Econornic Studies, vol. 2, n°. (March 1954), pp. 59-61. 35 Adamson, Sugar without Slaves, p. 57. 36 For a detailed discussion of such policies, see Ibid., pp. 577-103.

was to last sixty years38 .

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“Labor-force abundance ultimately was achieved in the forty years between 1850 and 1890 as the British reversed their previous hostility to indentured immigration. During this period, 211,643 indenture immigrants were brought to Guiana on the country’s sugar plantation. (...) This massive influx, averaging about 5,200 laborers a year in a population which totaled only about 100,000 at the beginning or the period, reestablished the condition essential for sugar cu1tivation on plantations: the availability of a mass unskilled undifferentiated labor”39 . “Thus, from 1854 on, 1abor bound to the plantations by long indenture was an essential feature of the Guyanese economy”40 . One should perceive the nature of this “solution” more precisely. Immigration of poverty-stricken people from India, in large amounts, in itself constitutes a measure towards an adequate (from the planter’s viewpoint) solution to the “labor problem”. Indenture, however, went beyond that, for, under the justification that the laborer had previously signed “willfully” a “contract”, he was effectively made to work as suited to the planters, including the real wages. To the immigrant it was denied the possibility of becoming an independent peasant, or even a vagrant, at least for the period of indenture, usually extended by reindenture. At the same time, competition among the planters was ruled out, since the indentured laborer was tied up to a single plantation. Everything depended, of course, on a highly developed apparatus of enforcement of such a “ legal” basis.41 37

Ibid., p. 56 For a discussion of the ambiguous position of the Colonial Office and its ultimate support for the necessary repressive apparatus as well as the financing of immigration, see Ibid., pp. 46-56. As Mandle put it briefly, “The British government was generally hostile to such immigration and during the period 1838-44, and again from 1848 to 1850, placed an embargo on the importation of indentured workers from India (…)”. (The Plantation Economy, p. 24) 39 Mandle, op.cit., pp. 25-26. For similar statistics, see also Adamson, Sugar without slaves, pp. 104-106. As other authors put it, “While world standards Caribbean migrations remain almost negligible in size, their significance for population growth within the region is considerable; this is most fully demonstrated in the case of British Guiana. Within the half a century following emancipation, the inflow of 237,000 was equivalent to 2.4 times the population of 1841 and was equa1 to 88 percent of the population at 1841. (...) between 1861 and 1891 both the total population of the country and its working force increased 1.8 – fold, which migration alone made possible”. Roberts, G. W., and M. A. Johnson, “Factors Involved in Immigration and Movements in the Working Force of British Guiana in the 19th Century”, Social and Economic Studies, vol. 23, n°. 1 (March 1974), p 74. 40 Adamson, Sugar without slaves, p. 56. 41 For a detailed account of the working of the system, showing its rea1ly oppressive nature, see Adamson, Sugar without slaves, pp. 104-159. As Moore put it, “This relationship is nominally contractual, but not breakable at will. Thus the worker is under a partially coercive system once he enters the relationship, whatever the situation with respect to the original agreement. (...) Thus whether the ‘contract’ arises out of force and fraud or out of the pressure of poverty, its performance involves a substantial element of direct compulsion”. Moore, 38

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2.2 -- Puerto Rico The rise and consolidation of sugar production in Puerto Rico serves as additional evidence for the forceful, non-market mechanisms of obtaining labor that appear to have been, rather than the exception, the general pattern in the formation of the export sectors in the backward areas of the world economy. We shall begin with a broader characterization of the economic and social changes brought about by the development of sugar production: “The period following Emancipation in Jamaica (...) was a period of recovery from the whole epoch of slavery, marked by the growth of an independent, largely self-sufficient peasant population.42 Economically, the island was now of much less importance to the metropolis, but from the point of view of the masses of the Jamaican people, life unquestionably looked much better than before. The corresponding period in Puerto Rico was one of vast economic expansion and of unquestionable prosperity for insular and metropolitan entrepreneurs. Yet the working population of Puerto Rico had no cause to rejoice. Squatter farmers were cleared from Crown and private land, and marshaled on the plantations to work in a state approximating slavery. Slaves and landless freemen alike could not leave the plantation without permission. The number of slaves increased, and colored freemen were warned to show no resistance to W. E., Industrialization and Labor: Social Aspects of Economic Development (Ithaca, 1951), p. 60. For further references on indenture labor for several colonial areas see Ibid., pp. 60-61. See also Kloosterboer, W. op.cit., for a description of indenture labor indenture labor in Netherland East Indies, as well as other colonial export areas. While serving as an example of a support for the system’s legal and its repressive apparatus, much firsthand information is nevertheless presented in Coman, K., “The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands”, American Economic Association, Publications, Third Series vol. IV, n°. 3 (August 1903). For a comprehensive study of the whole process of emigration From rural India, across the seas to more than a dozen countries, starting in the early nineteenth century, and continuing up to the 1920’s and 1930’s, see Tinker; H., A New System of Slavery, The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974). According to Tinker, “Only gradually did the accumulation of evidence produce the conclusion that indenture and other forms of servitude did, indeed, replicate the actua1 condition of slavery. (...)”. (op. cit., p. xiv). As to the worldwide dimension of this new system of slavery, Myint informs us that “In other underdeveloped countries, such as Malaya and Ceylon, where migrant labour of the African type was not available on a sufficient scale, or where the development of peasant cash crops made taxation an ineffective method of increasing the supply of 1abour to the mines and plantations, a different solution was adopted. This was to import immigrant labour systematically and on large scale from the overpopulated countries of India and China. The method of obtaining ‘indentured labour’ from India under which the employers agreed to pay the passage of the immigrant workers in return for an agreement to work a certain number of years for a certain wage rates was first adopted in the sugar plantations of the West Indies after the emancipation of the slave labour. After that, it spread not only to the countries of South-East Asia, but also to places such as Fiji, Mauritius, or East and Central Africa. Indeed, the immigrant labour from India and China was recruited on so large a scale that it has been said that these two countries, together with Britain, were the ‘three mother countries’ of the British Empire. (Economics of Developing Countries, pp. 62-63) 42 For the rise of the Jamaican peasantry, see Cumper, op.cit.; Paget,H., “The Free Village System in Jamaica”, Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 10, n°. 1 (March 1964); and Cumper, G. E., “Population Movements in Jamaica, 1830-1950; Social and Economic Studies, vol. 5 (1956), pp. 261-280.

21

the stiffened control of the enslaved population. No wonder that Merivale, in comparing Puerto Rico and Jamaica in 1839, declared: ‘The tropical colonies of Spain commonwealths in an epoch when those of most other nations were mere factories; they are now rapidly acquiring the degrading characteristics of factories, while ours, we may hope, are advancing toward the dignity of commonwealths’. (…) In the case of the Puerto Rico, the demand for plantation labor in the early nineteenth century destroyed much of the peasant population which previously had developed there (…).”43 Beginning in 1815, the Cedula de Gracias, “now famous as a turning-point in Puerto Rico Rican history”, “energetically encouraged the expansion of the sugar industry by lowering duties and tariffs, granting new lands to sugar entrepreneurs, and otherwise favoring and facilitating sugar production. The results were all that the crown might have hoped for. (…) By the 1830’s, there was ample evidence that Puerto Rico had embarked on her sugar-and-lave career. (…).”44 Up to the early nineteenth century, “(…) during the span of three hundred years through which Puerto Rico had been lying undeveloped, [she] had taken on a characteristics form. A substantial population had accumulated, a population which supported itself principally by squatter farming for subsistence. This population (…) was mainly of European origin and was almost entirely free. (…).”45 “In substance, the availability of land on the island meant that a free laborer was able to produce his own subsistence without entering into significant relationships of dependence on landowners or the state. Agricultural entrepreneurs, in turn, found the cost of labor ‘high’, by virtue of its unavailability. (…) Such was the situation in Puerto Rico at the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century.”46 On the one hand, slaves did not represent more than 10 percent of the population, and in 1817 “the Crown submitted to British pressure and agreed to abolish 43

Mintz, S. W., “Labor and Sugar in the Puerto Rico and in Jamaica, 1800-1850”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. I n° 3 (1959), pp. 278-279. 44 Ibid., p. 277. 45 Ibid., p. 276. 46 “Slavery and Forced Labor in Puerto Rico”, chapter 3 of Mintz’ Caribbean Transformations (Chicago: Aldine Publ. “The Role of Forced Labour in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico”, Caribbean Historical Review, n° 2 (1951), pp. 134-141.

22

the slave trade in three years. The subsequent half-century was marked by the most complicated maneuvers on the part of the Crown, which sought on the one hand to satisfy the insatiable demands for more slaves on the part of its Cuban and Puerto Rico hacendados and on the other to avoid open conflict with Great Britain. (…).”47 Under these conditions, “The [hacendados’] demands were met by the systematic legalized coercion of free fellow citizens, whose only real sin was their landlessness. (...) strict regulation of the labor of free but land less citizens was initiated in 1824 (...)48 . Between 1824 and 1827, the number of agregados increased from 14,327 to 38,906 (...). In the same period, the number of slaves increased from 22,725 to 22,418. (...) In 1837 the screws were tightened. (...) In 1849, as the planters further reconsolidated their power, Governor-General D. Juan de la Pezuela extended the law so that workers were compelled to carry workbooks (the infamous libretas reglarnentarias) recording their services, and maintained by the plantation owner or manager who employed them. Workers were forbidden to change their place of employment (...)”49 . The slaves were also getting their lot: “(...) General Prim’s infamous ‘Codigo Negro’ of 1843 empowered slave owners to punish slaves without recourse to civil authorities and, for certain offenses such as bearing arms, made colored freemen and slaves alike subject to severe penalties. It is interesting that the expansion of the economy and the consequent increased need for labor should reduce one set of laws which divided the free population into those who owned land and those who did not in order to extract labor from the landless, and another set of laws which treated slave and landless freeman alike and which were intended to prevent any weaking of the institution of slavery, from within or from without.”50 (ours the emphasis)

47

“Slavery and Forced Labor...” p. 91. A detailed discussion of the forced labor legislation is presented in “Slavery and Forced Labor ...”, passim. 49 Ibid., pp. 91-92. 50 “Labor and Sugar ...”, p. 278. Mintz finds it “(…) perhaps significant that El Grito de Lares, the revolutionary spasm of 1868, was marked by a call both for the emancipation of the slaves and for the burning of workbooks – suggesting that the nature of these twin oppressions was well understood by the revolutionaries. (…)”. Ibid. p. 278. 48

23

Under these economic and political conditions, the “slave-and-agregado plantation period” (1815-1876) saw the expansion of sugar production:51 Year

Sugar (tons)

1872-28 1834-35 1846-47 1860-61

9,391 21,928 52,089 65,517

Year 1812 1824 1834 1846 1860

Sugar (tons) 17,536 22,725 41,818 51,216 41,736

In 1873, slavery and the forced labor legislation were abolished, with the proviso that the freed slave should enter into “labor contracts” with their previous masters for 14 years; in 1876, then, the “family-type hacienda period” began, to last until 1899; the exslaves and the (formerly compelled) agregados, however, “Were still bound (...) by the need to eke out their survival on Soil they did not own. In effect, the end of forced-labor laws and of slavery brought agregado and liberto into keener competition in the labor market. (...) (...) Barring the all important distinction between enslaved and free labor (...) the family-type hacienda was only a continuation of the slave and agregado plantation. (.. .)”52 . The next chapter of Puerto Rican sugar industry and of Puerto Rican sugar workers -is written in the context of the world-wide competitive situation in the international sugar market and of the American invasion in 1899. It began the “corporate land-and-factory combine period”. The formidable process of technical transformation and concentration of capital that ensued had for its counterpart a radical transformation in the social and economic position of the worker; having for basis his case study of “Hacienda Vieja”, Mintz summarizes this process in this way:

“It was in 1905-07 that the lands of Hacienda (now Colonia) Vieja passed formally into the direct ownership of the American corporation. We have noted that, among other changes, subsistencecrop lands and pastures were put into cultivation, a tax was leveled on agregado livestock, woodlands were cleared, and family management was replaced with a managerial hierarchy composed mainly of outsiders. Shortly after the acquisition of the Vieja land, a company 51

The data are from Mintz’ “The History of the Puerto Rican Plantation”, in his Caribbean Transformations, p. 99. This is revised version of the earlier “The Culture History of a Puerto Rican Sugar Plantation: 1876-1949”, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 33 (1955), pp.224-251. 52 Ibid., pp. 100-101.

24

store was set up on the Colonia, and a system of token money introduced. (...) (...) The ‘ticket system’ was employed in paying company store bills. Workers purchased goods on credit, and the purchases were charged against their pay slips at the end of the workweek. (…) (...) Because so much of the land of Canamelar had been consolidated under one corporate system, a ‘malcontent’ or ‘agitator’ who lost his job might search in vain throughout the municipality for another. (…) The socio-political atmosphere was menacing. (...) The threat of losing one’s house, one’s job, one’s credit at the company store, hung over everyone. Dependent on the corporation for credit, housing and labor, workers could not organize easily. (...) The maturity of the land-and-factory combine system came during the First World War. The violent and important sugar industry strikes of that period have never been forgotten in Canamelar. (...)”53 . It seems obvious that the previous non-market measures (slavery, forced labor) have given way to a labor market where indeed 1abor power was sold “spontaneously” by a proletariat; to make this sale of labor power “flow” from subjective preference and derived choices, however, can only serve the purpose of obscuring the objectively compelling condition of economic dispossession of this proletariat.

Section 3 -- Peru An additional evidence concerning the analysis of the labor market in the export sectors of the colonial and neo-colonial areas, is provided by sugar production in Peru54 . Sugar had first based itself on African slavery: “(…) the total number of slaves introduced during the colonial period, from 1532 until l82l can be fixed round 90,000. And the majority of them resided on the coast during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”55 . Slavery was abolished in 1855 but a replacement of it had already been found in the importation of Chinese “contract labor”. “Between 1849 and 1891, 15,294 coolies arrived 53

54

Ibid., “The History of a Puerto Rican Plantation”, pp. 120-123.

Plaza-Jibaja, Orlando E., “The historical Development of Sugar Cane haciendas in Peru: Historical Data and Sociological Analyses”, M. A. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1973.

25

in Peru. (…)”56

In the period 1862-1874, 61,449 Chinese indenture laborers entered Peru, corresponding to a booming period for sugar production. “Between 1873 and 1874, the greatest volume of sugar cane in Peru is produced. During these two years, up to two million quintales of sugar are exported, which is the maximum exported up to that time. (…)”57 After

the

crisis

years

(1874-1884),

great

technical

transformations and

concentration of capital took place; foreign capital strengthens its relative position, including direct ownership of large sugar haciendas58 . And yet, when we turn to labor, the by now familiar story happens: “In order to solve the labor problem (...) the hacendados attempt to re-contract the free coolies that were left from previous years. However, this measure does not have the expected results, and a very important process begins that forms the base for the configuration of the present-day hacienda. By means of a system known by the name of ‘enganche’, indigenous labor is brought to the coast from the sierra. Through an intermediary called the ‘enganchador’ who knows the customs of the indigenous people and the places where they can be found, the hacendado begins to supply himself with the necessary labor force. The engachador gives the Indian an advance payment of ten soles to be discounted from his pay. The Indian signs a contract in which he promises to return the loan by working, and in case he does not do it, he commits himself to pay it with all of his goods that he owns and may own in the future. The ‘contracts’ are for four months, but the enganchador, and afterwards the hacendado, through a series of mechanisms tie the Indian to the hacienda”59 . Besides this form of debt peonage, the “labor problem” seems to have been solved on the basis of a symbiosis between the Coast and Sierra. The Sierra haciendas, in this 55

Ibid., p. 74. Ibid, p. 79. The role of the coolies in the guano sector, as well as the barbarous conditions of work and pay, are discussed in detail in Levin, J. V., The Export Economies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press ),pp.39-41, 85-90. 57 Plaza, op.cit., pp. 83-84. 58 Ibid., pp. 65-66. 56

59

Plaza, “The Historical Developement …”, p.86. According to another author, “Since the end of the 19th century, when indigenous labour from the Peruvian highlands began to supplement and later replace the use of indenture labour from China and Japan in the Peruvian coastal plantation, the system of enganche (literally ‘the hook’) was the predominant method of recruitment of unskilled field labour, mainly cane cutters (macheteros) and cane loaders (carreros). Many of the violent labour disputes in the industry in the first three decades of the 20th century were concerned with abuses inherent; in early versions of engache. (…)”. Scott, C. D., “Issues in the Analysis of the Labour Market of Sugar Cane Cutters in Northern Peru, 1940-69”, mimeo, March 1975 (School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia), p. 4.

26

symbiosis, perform the role of “producing” labor, becoming then “haciendas de ganado humano” (human cattle haciendas).60

Section 4 -- Mexico An additional example of the development or a “capitalist sector” on the basis of compulsory mechanisms of forming a labor supply is debt peonage in Mexico’s Southeast during the Porfiriato.61 “The large-scale increase of demand for products of the tropical lowlands, embracing essentially the states of Yucatan, Tabasco, Chiapas, parts of Oaxaca and Veracruz, led to a corresponding increase in production there. From 1877 to 1910 production of rubber, coffee, tobacco, sisal, and sugar increased sharply (…). Southern planters resorted to four different methods to increase output: (1) some increase in the use of machinery; (2) utilization of outside labor; (3) changes in the mode of utilization of hacienda labor; and (4) increasing use of laborers from communal villages. (...). To the southern planters, outside labor meant labor from other parts of Mexico. European labor was considered too expensive and one attempt to bring Italian workers to Yucatan was a failure. Chinese and Korean indentured laborers were brought to Yucatan, but many could not withstand the climate, the diseases and harsh treatment, and become ill or died. This alone would not have constituted a sufficient reason for discontinuing the practice, but foreign labor importation ceased during the Diaz period because more and more labor from within the country became available. Technically, such laborers were divided into two categories, 60

See Oliveira, F., “Para entender a Revolucao Peruana: do modo de producao asiático à crise de 1968”, Estudos CEBRAP (10), Oct./Dec. 1974, esp. pp. 67-68. A detailed study of an example of such symbiosis is presented in Miller, S., “Hacienda to Plantation in Northern Peru: The Processes of Proletarization of a Tenent Farmer Society”, in Steward J. K., ed., Contemporary Change in Traditional Societies (University of Illinois Press, 1967), pp. 133-221. The author shows how a Sierra hacienda was bought by a coastal sugar planter, that required from the tenants, in “exchange” for access to land for their subsistence production, to go to work on the coast. A further process of encroachment developed, destroying their possibilities of satisfying their subsistence by own production, turning them into part-time wage laborers: “Almost all families at the sierra hacienda have one or more relatives who live and work permanently on the coast. Land and population pressure in the sierra is becoming more acute with every passing year, and at same point each family must come to the decision that one of their member must go to the coast. (…)”. (Ibid., p. 194) The African “labor reserves” found their counterpart in the Peruvian sierra 61 Katz, F., “Labor Conditions on haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: some Trends and Tendencies”, Hispanic American Historical Review, Feb. 1974.

27

deportees and voluntary contract workers. In practice, there was scarcely a difference between them. The deportees were: (1) members of frontier Indian tribes who had resisted the confiscation of their lands by Mexican hacendados, principally the Yaquis of Sonora, thousands of whom were sent to Yucatan62 ; (2) political dissenters from Central and Northern Mexico who had resisted the Diaz regime, mostly villagers and urban workers who were son to the plantations of Yucatan, the Valle Nacional in Oaxaca, or to Tabasco; and (3) criminals, including genuine criminals too poor to buy their way out of prison or at least out of deportation, as well as vagrants and the unemployed considered criminal only by Porfirian standards. The contract workers were mainly expropriated peasants and unemployed workers from Mexico City, as well as from other parts of central Mexico, lured to the tropics by promises of higher pay or simply made to sign labor contracts while drunk or drugged. The enganchado, literally the ‘hooked one’, a contemporary observer sympathetic to the Diaz regime wrote, ‘was generally a man who was practically shanghaied from the cities of the temperate and cold zones of Mexico. Often disease-ridden, almost inevitably soaked with pulgue, captured and signed up for labor when they were intoxicated, these men were brought down practically in chain gangs by the contractors and delivered at so many hundred pesos per head. They were kept in barbed wire enclosures, often under ghastly sanitary conditions, their blood vitiated with drink and tainted with disease, and were easy victims of tropical insects, dirt and infection. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson’s special representative in Mexico, John Lind, together with the commander of the American fleet in Veracruz, Admiral Fletcher, was invited to visit a Veracruz sugar plantation owned by an American, Sloane Emery, which depended entirely on contract workers. ‘They were contract laborers’, John Lind later reported: ‘Who were virtually prisoners and had been sent there by the government. Admiral Fletcher and I saw this remarkable situation in the twentieth century of men being scattered through the corn fields in little groups of eight or ten accompanied by a driver, a cacique, an Indian from the coast, a great big burly fellow, with a couple of revolvers strapped to a belt, and a black snake that would measure eight or ten feet, right after the group that were digging, and then and the farther end of the road a man with a sawed-off shotgun. These men were put out in the morning, were worked under these overseers in that manner, and locked up at night in a large shed to all in tents and purposes. Both Admiral Fletcher and I marveled that such conditions could exist, but they did exist.’

62

For an account of the tragic fate of the Yaquis -- as well as their heroic resistance -- see Hu-Dehart, E., “Development an Rural Rebellion: Pacification of the Yaquis in the Late Porfiriato”, Hispanic American Historical Review, Feb. 1974, pp. 72-93.

28

John Kenneth Turner found similar conditions in the tobacco plantation of the Valle Nacional of Oaxaca, which he vividly described in his now famous Barbarous Mexyco. According to Turner, the average life-span of an enganchado in the Valle Naciona1 was less than a year. ‘The Valle Nacional slave-holder’, Turner wrote, ‘has discovered that it is cheaper to buy a slave for 45 dollars and work him to death in seven months and then spend 45 dollars for a fresh slave then (sic) it is to give the first slave better food, work him less sorely, and stretch out his life and his toiling hours over a longer period of time.’ Contract labor was also widespread in lumber-producing areas of Mexico’s southeastern state of Tabasco. Workers there were attracted to the Mejares properties by promises of high wages. These promises were effectively kept for the duration of one year. After that, instead of being allowed to return home, the laborer was kept on the properly and forced to work for less than half of his first year’s wages by the Mejares brothers.”63 After describing the “living and laboring conditions” of the acasillados (a kind of permanent hacienda workers), that became “more and more similar to those of the contract workers”, with a “tendency for the acasillados to decline into slave like conditions”64 and after suggesting the relationship between the operation of the tienda de raya, the company store, and debt peonage, Katz proposes the broader political context of such a process of formation of a supply of labor: “As the system went far beyond traditional types of debt peonage, new ways of enforcement had to be set up. At the top of the system were national authorities. The army and the rurales fought the Yaquis in the north and the Maya in Quintana Roo and were instrumental in carrying out their deportation.65 At the bottom, s large number of state and local authorities, private contractors and haciendas policemen supervised the workings of the system. ‘So valuable did this labor become’, an observer wrote, ‘that bribery and government coercion, special detectives and policemen had to be 63

Katz, “Labor Conditions ...”, p. 14-17. Ibid., pp. 17-18. 65 “In Yucatan, the Caste War between Mexican authorities and the Mayan Indians had begun in the 1840’s simultaneously with the expansion of large scale p1atation agriculture’. John Coatsworth, “Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest in the Early Porfiriato”, Hispanic American Historical Review, Feb. 1974, p. 68. A detailed account of the Caste War as “(...) resistance of Maya to further advance of sugar cultivation” is presented in Cline, H. F., “The Sugar Episode in Yucatan 1825-1850”, Interamerican Economic Affairs, vol. 1, n°. 4 (March 1948), p. 100. The connection between the Yucatan henequen hacendados’ labor needs and the “pacification” of the Yaquis is stressed in Hu-Dehart, “Development and Rural Rebellion…” pp. 84-85. 64

29

called in to capture and return the peons who ran away from their contracts and judges and the mayors of towns were induced to arrest the runaways.’”66 The connection between these “coercive mechanisms” and the expansion of export production is clearly seen by Katz, when he says:

“These coercive mechanisms facilitated phenomenal increase in the production of tropical goods during the Porfirian period. The beneficiaries of this plantation system, outside of Yucatan, were mainly foreigners: German coffee planters in Chiapas, Spanish and Cuban tobacco producers in the Valle Nacional, American rubber planters in the Tehuantepec area. In Yucatan the sisal hacendados were all Mexican. The principal beneficiaries of the increase in sisal production up to 1910, however, were not the producers but the International Harvester Company.”67

66

Katz, “Labor Conditions …”, p. 21 “Labor Conditions …” 23. The pervasiveness of debt peonage in the coffee plantations of Mexico’s Southeast, as well as in Guatemala and Nicaragua, can be seen from the travel accounts of a Brazilian coffee planter around 1905-07; see Ramos, A., O Café no Brasil e no Estrangeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1923), pp. 287-362. Interesting1y enought, Ramos complained that “If there was an invariable note to hurt my ears in every place I have been, was the clamour against insufficient of hands. Wherever I arrived, I was bound to listen: ‘there aren’t people’!” (Ibid., p. 357). 67

30

CHAPTER III

III. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY. (II) AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Introduction The evidence presented in the previous chapter has included many cases in which labor was obtained on the basis of open or concealed, as coercion, such as debt peonage in Porfirian Mexico, the head tax in most of Africa, the enganche system in Peru, the several forms of legislation enforcing compulsory labor, etc., and last not least, African slavery. The variety of the situations surveyed -- in time as well as in space -- did not prevent us, however, from calling attention to some circumstances that were salient in all the cases studied. In the first place, the laborer was being required to work in a definite manner, most conspicuously manifested in a long working hours (in cane-cutting, say) and meager material benefits accruing to such. In the second place, this demand for labor was confronting a situation where the laborer could satisfy his subsistence needs in alternative ways, this circumstance being fundamental the understanding of his resistance in such demand that therefore could only be satisfied in a coercive manner. As against these cases of forced labor, the evidence surveyed has also depicted many situations in which the demand for labor the export sectors has been satisfied on the basis of an “spontaneous” supply of labor, as it was case, for instance, with the labor market in the Puerto Rico sugar economy after the turn of the century. The most salient feature in these situations, however, was the fact that actually no other option was available to the laborer but to engage in wage employment, in order to be able to satisfy his needs. Such a labor supply, therefore, was founded on a compulsion of a economic nature, since there was not here possibility for the laborer to confront wage employment with an alternative. In what follows we will present a general theoretical framework that will be used in Chapter IV for the discussion of this evidence, as well as for the Brazilian case, to be discussed in Chapter V-VIII. In Section 3, the Marxian conception of production is contrasted to the Classical and Neoclassical conception of production, on the basis of a fundamental distinction between production as a material-technical process and production as a social process. Correspondingly a distinction is also made between the material-technical or natural

31

form of labor and the social form of labor. In Section 2, we will present some concepts and relations relevant for the analysis of particular social form of production, namely, slave-based production, as it arose in the modern conditions. The usefulness of these concepts and relations is stressed in Section, in a critical discussion of the neoclassical analysis of forced labor, as expressed in the so-called “economics of slavery”. In Section 4, capitalist production and the corresponding social form of labor, namely, wage-labor, are discussed.

Section 1 – Relations of Production and Production … In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of productions appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society …68 (emphases mine) These relations of production constitute the social framework of production; they give to production a social character, distinct from its material-technical form. That is, over and above the fact that production is a material-technical process, it is such a process in an specific social manner. Thus in a slave economy production is carried out under the control of a non-producer (the master), that is able to organize the labor activity of the slave in an objectively arbitrary wau from the point of view of the laborer, since his will is ignored. Production in a slave economy, therefore, is inseparable from the social framework of that economy. The fact that a specific activity is carried out in one way or another is not exclusively a technical, or a social matter; for instance, the rhythm of work activity becomes determined given the master-slave relation. Consequently it becomes impossible to separate out the material-technical form of production from its social determinants. For the purposes of exposition, and without losing generally, we shall keep framing our discussion having for reference a slave economy. Production is in the first place an appropriation of nature by man: it is a natural process within nature. But 68

K. Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. 20.

32

since such an appropriation is mediated by social relations, it acquires a specific social form; it becomes not only a combination of factors of production--human purposive activity (labor); the soil and all the other natural elements; the materials of labor; and instruments of labor--but a combination in a specific social manner. Thus production in a slave plantation shares with production in a peasant holding the common form of being both a material-technical, or natural process; both the labor activity of the slave and the labor activity of the peasant perform a natural function; they are factors of production. But while the peasant exercises a control over his work activity, the labor activity of the slave is not under the latter’s control--the manner his labor activity is exercised becomes influenced by the social fact of the laborer being a slave. The labor activity of the slave, consequently, to the extent that becomes the expression of a social relation, acquires a socia1 form; It is not any more merely “labor,” but it is a definite form of labor. The labor of the slave is not any more of the saire species as the labor of the peasant, because of the distinct social frameworks of production. 69

Section 2 -- Production and Distribution under Slavery

2.1

A System of Production

Consider a closed economy producing m goods, the first n of them being capitalist goods (or means of production) and the remaining m-n being consumption goods. The latter include both “necessaries” and “luxuries.” It is assumed in the following:70 (a)

that to each good there is available one and only one method of production;

(b)

that each process produces one kind of output, without any by-product;

(c)

that there are no primary factors of production other than labor; labor is homogeneous;

(d)

that all capital goods have the same span of life, which is taken an unity, so that there are no fixed capita1 goods in the proper sense left over to the next period for further production after having been used in the

69

For Marx, the reduction of production to its material-technical form ”... rests on the confusion and identification of the process of social production with the simple labour-process, such as might even be performed by an abnormally isolated human being without any social assistance. To the extent that the labou process is solely a process between man and nature its simple elements remain common to all social forms of develoment. But each especific historical form of this process further develos its material foundations and social forms ....” Capita1 (New York: International Pub1ishers 1967), vol. III, p. 883. (emphasis mine) The “simple elements” of the labor-process, as Marx conceptualized them, are presented in Capital, vol. I, chap. 7, sec. 1. 70 The model being proposed here follows closely the one used by Michio Morishima in his Marx's Economics, A Dual Theory of Value and Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. For a contrast between this class of models of production and the Neo-c1assica1 (specifically, the Australian) theory of production, see Wolfstetter, E., “Surplus Labour, in Synchronized Labour Costs and Marx’s Labour Theory of Value,” The Economic Journal, Sept. 1973

33

current period; (e)

that all goods have the same period of production, which is taken as one unit of time;

(f)

that each production process is of the point-input point-output type; inputs are made at the beginning of the production period and outputs are obtained at the end of the period, so that labor is used only once in each production period.

Let a unit of good i be produced by aji units of capital good j (j = 1,...n) and li units of 1abor. The amount of 1abor embodied in one unit of good i, denoted by λi, is defined as the sum of the amount of direct labor and the amount of labor embodied in other factors of production used directly in producing a unit of good i. Evidently aji units of capital good

j

embody aji λj units of labor, so that: λi = a1iλ1 + a2iλ2 + ... + aniλn + 1 i

(i = 1, ..., m)

λi (i = 1, ..., m) is defined as the labor embodied71 of good i. In the general case of n capital goods and m-n consumption goods, the above equations are written more conveniently, in matrix form, as: ΛI =ΛI AI +LI

(1)

ΛII =ΛII AII +LII

(2)

where

a11 ... a1n AI =   an1 ... ann

a1n + 1 ... a1m  AII =   ann + 1 ... anm 

LI = (l1 , ...,ln ), ΛI = ( 1 , ..., n ),

LII = (ln+1 , ...,lm)

ΛII = ( n+1 , ..., m)

by solving (1) for ΛI and substituting in (2), we obtain ΛI = LI (I-AI)-1

(1’)

ΛII =LI (I-AI)-1 AII +LII

(2’)

From (1’) and (2’) it is evident that λi Morishima calls λi the value of commodities. These concepts will be discussed in connections with capitalist production; at that point, we shall discuss also the assumption of homogeneous labor. 71

34

are not more than the employment multipliers discussed by Kahn and later by Keynes, which can be ca1culated from Leontief’s input-output table, while the first definition [given by (1) and (2) - GCR] imputes the total increase in employment caused by an increase in output to the factors of production utilized.72 In what follows it is assumed further that A1 is productive, in the sense that there exists a positive vector x0 such that x0 > AIx0 ; then every capital good industry in the society can simultaneously produce positive net outputs when they are operated at the levels x0 . If AI is productive, then (I - A)-1 exists and is positive; hence ΛI and ΛII are also positive vectors.73 2.2 Labor exploitation and slavery Labor, of course, is a human purposive activity. Let us define labor power as “capacity to work,” embodied in a laborer. Denote by:

bn + 1 .      B= .   .  bm  the daily means of subsistence of such a laborer.

These daily means of

subsistence are measured, in terms of labor-time, at ΛIIΒ. ΛIIΒ is thus the amount of labor embodied in the dai1y means of subsistence necessary to the reproduction of the laborer, and hence of his labor power. Let T and T be the maximum and the prevailing 1ength of the working day respectively; let ? = 1/T . Then the worker will work T hours a day, and will receive B/T (= ωΒ) in means of subsistence per hour of work. The payment ωΒ corresponds to ΛIIωΒ hours of labor; so that the worker gives one hour of labor and appropriates the equiva1ent of ωΛIIΒ of labor. We define ωΛIIΒ as paid labor and 1-ωΛIIΒ as unpaid labor. The rate of exploitation, denoted by e, is then defined as the ratio of unpaid labor to paid labor, which is:

72

Morishima, op.cit., pp. 18-19. Ibid., chapter 2, where it is shown that “productiveness” of ΛI, given other unrestrictive assumptions,” is necessary and sufficient for positive ness of ΛII ΛII. 73

e=

Unpaid labor Paid labor

=

1 - ωΛ II Β Λ II ωΒ

35

(3)

The main point of the above definitions is to characterize a situation in which the laborer, while realizing one hour of his labor-power, appropriates goods whose labor content is less than one hour. The amount of labor that he appropriates for one hour of labor is then paid labor; consequently the difference, if it exists, Is unpaid labor. It is c1ear that the rate of exploitation is positive if and only if 1 > ΛIIΒ, or T > ΛIIΒ. Since T ≤ T , we conclude that e is positive If and only if T , T and ΛIIΒ are such that: N ’ ≥ T, > ΛIIΒ.

(4)

Now, the labor embodied vector ΛII is determined by the technologica1 coefficients aijs and lis; these coefficients are not strictly technical data, because they themselves depend on the intensity of labor, the more or less efficient use of the material inputs, etc.; for instance, in one hour of labor a greater or smaller amount of goods may be produced, depending on the intensity of work, so that neither the aijs nor lis are given in advance, as it were.74 The prevailing working day T is by definition bounded by T the maximum working day; historica1 experience should warm us to the elasticity of T and hence of T. By the same token, B is equally elastic: subsistence needs contain a “moral and historical element,” as we know since Ricardo. From an economic point of view, the significance of slavery as it arose in the modern conditions has to do has precisely with the determination of the labor embodied vectors ΛI and ΛII, the working day T, and the vector of the daily means of subsistence of the slave Β. These are specifically social matters: given slavery, all of them can be determined so that e, the rate of exploitation, is positive. To illustrate the point, we may use a recent study of American slavery in which it is proposed that the higher “geometric index of total factor productivity” for Southern slave plantations, as against Northern farms, should be attributed, amount other factors (as economies of scale), to the extraordinary high labor-force participation rate (share of the population in the 1abor force). In the free economy--North and South--approximately one third of the population was in the labor force. Amount slaves, the 1abor-force participation rate was two thirds. This was due 1argely to the inability of slaves, 74

Morishima has missed this point when he says that “... it must be noted that [λi ] are determined only by the technogical coefficients, aij s and li s; they are independent of the market, the class-structure of the society, taxes and so on.” op. cit., pp. 14-15.

36

particularly women and children, to choose leisure, education, or work at home, if they preferred it, to work in fields or other assigned tasks ….

In addition, Plantations not only brought a 1arger share of the population into the labor force, but they were also able to move closer to “fullcapacity” utilization of the labor potential than was true of the free economy. After ruling out a longer working day, as well as more days week, than free farmers, the authors stressed the higher intensity of labor: The higher rate of uti1ization of labor capacity was partly due to what was, by the usual standards of farmers, an extraordinary intensity of labor … black plantation agricu1turalists labored under a regimen that was more like a modern assembly line than was true of the routine of many of the factories of the antebellum era ….75 Equation (3) enables us to draw the exploitation rate curve

75

R.W. Fogel and S.L. Engerman, Time on the Cross (Chicago: Little, Brown and Co., 1974), pp. 207,208. An excellent description of the intensity of labor in cotton production is provided by the authors (op.cit., pp. 202206). The significance of slavery in what matters the labor-process in further discussed in S.L. Engerman, “Some Considerations Relating to Property Rights in Man,” The Journal of Economic History, March 1973, especially pp. 48-56. Regarding the working day Engerman has referred to “the conventional descriptions of the workday (‘sunup to sundown’ with chores left to be done after field work), the workweek (6 days during much of the year, with some plantations or a 5 or 51/2 day field week during slack times), and the workyear (generally only 3 or 4 days off for Christmas holidays) … most indications are that the total labor time of the slave, in producing for the planter as well as on his own plots, exceeded that of free workers …. Most proslavery southerners and anti-slavery northerners agreed that slaves worked longer hours than free labor -- that being the frequent basis for complaints about the poor whites …” Ibid., pp. 51-52. In a recent paper, Fogel has stressed the intensity of work, arguing that “the fundamental form of exploitation of slave labor was through increasing

37

Figure 1 The exploitation curve in the (e,ϖ) plane. It traces. out a downward sloping curve, starting from ϖ=1/ T and ending at ϖ=1/ΛIIΒ. (see Figure 1). There are three other equivalent ways of defining the rate of exploitation e. If we express the total amounts of paid labor and unpaid labor per working day we have, respectively, ΛIIΒ and T-ΛIIΒ. The former is also called necessary labor and the latter surplus labor. Necessary labor is, the labor expended during that portion of the working-day in which the workman exerts an amount of labor equal to that embodied in his means of subsistence. On the other hand, during the second portion of the working day it is extracted surplus labor. Thus we have an alternative expression of (3): e=

Surplus labor Necessary labor

(3’)

2.3 Surplus labor and surplus product A further definition of the rate of exploitation can be given in terms of the distribution of labor amount ni dustries. Let there be T laborers, who work T hours a day, in society. In order to maintain them at the subsistence level, there must be produced Β N amounts of subsistence goods per day. Therefore the total amount of labor time directly or indirectly required for the production of the necessaries is given by: TN = LI X I + LIIΒ N

(5)

where N is the number of necessary laborers and X I is the vector of capital goods that have to be produced, after having taken all-around multiplier effects into account. I.e., Surplus labor

= ΛI X I + ΛII Β N

Necessary labor I

(6)

The rest of the laborers, N - N, are unnecessary and can work either in the capital goods industry for investment purposes, or in luxury-goods industry for the benefit of the non-producers. They will, produce surplus-products represented by XII - Β N and X* I - XI, where XI and XII are gross out-put vectors of the capital goods industries and the consumption goods industries, respectively, satisfying the condition: ΛI (XI – X* I) + ΛII (XII - Β N ) = T ( N - N)

(7)

intensity per hour rather than through an increase in clock time hours per year …” “Three Phases of Clinometric

38

while: X* I =ΛI X I + ΛII XII

(8)

The ratio of the total or social surplus labor to the socially necessary labor (T N TN) / TN, is shown, in view of (5) and (6), to equal the exploitation rate (3) or (3’) since: T N - TN

=

TN

Hence, e =

T N - [L I (I - Λ I ) -1 Λ II + L II ] ΒN [L I (I - Λ ) -1 Λ II + L II ] Β N

=

1 - ωΛ II Β Λ II ωΒ

Total surplus labor

= T N - TN Socially necessary labor TN

(9)

Every non-slave income an the system will have for material counterpart surplus product; in other words, the system must be able to produce a surplus. Given “productiveness,” the size of this surplus is governed by the size of the surplus labor. The determination of surplus labor, however, involves (i) the degree of participation in the labor force, expressed by N , the total number of laborers; (ii) the size of Β; (iii) the duration of the working day T, as well as the intensity of labor. A new light is afforded, consequently, to the economic aspect of control over labor.

Section 3 -- The Neoclassical Theory of Exploitation: A Critical Discussion The content of the theory of exploitation presented previously may be better understood if we contrast it with the Neoclassical theory of exploitation. Exploitation exists, in the Neoclassical tradition, if the worker receives less than the marginal revenue product of labor (in passing, it should be pointed out that the marginal product of a worker can only be defined if the working day is also defined); such a concept has been originally proposed as part of the characterization of monopolist situations in the labor market.76 Under slavery, there is necessarily a difference between the marginal revenue product of labor and the slave’s maintenance costs: this is due to the fact that the labor costs of individual production unit includes the profit, at the ruling rate, on the capital invested in

Research on slavery and its Aftermath,” American Economic Review, May 1975, p. 40. 76 The Pigouvian original formulation of this concept is discussed in M. Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect: (London: Heinem, 1968), pp 434-435. Cf.also M. Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 115. It must be noted that in this Neoclassical analysis, the labor supply curve is not influenced by the demand side of the market; as we shall see, this circunstance makes the situation of control over labor, being analysed in the thesis, radically different from a situation of monopsony of labor, since , in our case the supply of labor is controlled. (ore on this point below, p. 75)

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slaves. This difference is, according to Neoclassical economics, the measure of exploitation in the system. In view of the fact that the marginal product of labor is commonly, if misleadingly, identified as the “just reward” of labor -- with the implicit consequence that the marginal product of capital is seen as the “just reward” of the owner of property -- the Neoclassical theory of “exploitation” is prone of ethical overtones.77 Fogel and Engerman have thus said: “The labor power of slaves was also utilized without giving slaves an equivalent return. This aspect of their exploitation was most apparent in the case of hires. The man who rented a slave paid the full market value of the slave’s services, but the slave received only part of that payment. The slave’s income was the expenditure of the renter of his maintenance; the balance of the value produced by slave went to the owner of the slave in the form of a rental fee.78 (Emphases mine) Even more explicitly, the association of the marginal product of labor to what the slave “should” appropriate is clear in their assertion that. As previously noted, a part of the income that slaves produced was expropriated from them … Over the balance of the life cycle the accumulated or present value of the expropriation mounted, on average, to a total of $32. This last figure is 12 percent of the average present value of the income earned by slaves over their lifetimes. In other words, on average, 12 percent of the value of the income produced by slaves was expropriated by their masters.79 (Emphases mine) In the Marxian theory of exploitation, presented before by means of reference to the modern slave economy, what is focused is the capacity of the social system to generate surplus labor on the basis of a definite control over labor in the labor process and a determination of the subsistence basket of labor. It is apparent that a property income in the system must somehow be related to this social feature of production, although it has yet to be 77

In its original formulation, J.B. Clark conceived of the marginal productivity theory of distribution “as meaning that each factor, and by implication those responsible for its supply received the equivalent of what it ‘contributed’ to production: ‘the law itself’ said Clark, ‘is universa1 and hence natural.’ Although this in its cruder, Clarkian form was subsequently disowned as untenable, some implication of attribution (and even more of inevitability) still lingered, even in non-popu1ar textbooks, at any rate to the extent that the factor and its supplier (or owner) were linked by any concept of the type of ‘abstinence’ or ‘waiting’ ...”. M. Dobb, op.cit., p. 176. See also M. Dobb, Po1itical Economy and Capitalism (Westpoint. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972), pp. 179-183. 78 op.cit., p. 107 79 Ibid., p. 153. One wonders, therefore, about Blaug’s opinion that “the term ‘exploitation’ to describe a situation in which labor receives less than its marginal value or marginal revenue product conveys the unfortunate suggestion that labor’s MVP or MRP constitutes its ‘just reward’ … Pigou’s point has nothing to do with equity…” (op.cit. p. 435).

40

established the specific character of this relationship. Not only thus Neoclassical exploitation would have its origin in slavery, i.e., not only the profit on the capital invested in slaves would come from exploitation, but indeed any profit.80 The focus of the Marxian theory of exploitation, therefore, is the sphere of production, broadly defined to include the social relations of productions of production that give to production a definite social form; distribution, consequently, is not made independent, for distribution becomes implicit in the social form of production, in the manner the several classes relate in production. Production is thus seen not only as a natural or material-technical process but also as a social process; as a social intercourse. In the Neoclassical traditional, however. Just as the individual is assumed to be a-social, so too is production. instead of seeing production as a social process in which human beings combine together within a specific framework of social relations, vulgar economy sees production as an a-social or natural process in which inputs of labour, land and means of production … are mysteriously transformed; into outputs of material and nonmaterial goods.81 Production is reduced therefore to a technical matter: the technical possibilities become represented, for instance, by a production function F(.) ; the only additional information needed is the factor endowments K,L, say. One should only notice that the amount of labor effectively used involves the determination of the rate of labor force participation, the working day and the intensity of labor -- whose social character becomes obvious in the case of a slave economy. It is precisely because production in fully specified only on condition of specifying its social form that production cannot be considered as a

80

It is striking the ideological side of the matter; the 12 percent referred to in the text is, after all, not that much, so that not very much was being “expropriated” from the enslaved worker in the U.S. South. On the other side, even this “expropriation” was the return to a capital investment, and there was certainly “abstinence,” “waiting,” etc., in the act of investment. Engerman has thus said that “the slaveowners’ ability to exploit, however, need not imply other than normal profits, since there were costs of acquiring a slave … Thus the beneficiaries of the currently achieved exploitation may not be those who have received the ultimate benefit from the involuntary redistribuition of property rights, that benefit being abtained by the initial enslaver.” (op.cit., p 48) (Perhaps the African chiefs? This is actually the answer provided by R.P. Thomas and R.N. Bean in “The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade,” Journal of Economic History,December, 1974, pp. 885-914) Domar has also defended the investor: “The buyer who pays this price, [i.e., “the value of the slave’s discounted net lifetime marginal product”] will discover that he will earn not much more than the going rate of interest; he will complain about the high cost of slaves and express doubt regarding the profitability of slavery in general …” “The causes of Slavery or Serfsom: A Hypothesis” Journal of Economic History, vol. 30 (1970) Nos. 1-2, p. 22 n. 4. 81 R. Rowthorn, “Neoclassical Economics and its Critics - A Marxist View,” Pakistan Economic and Social Review, Autumn 1973, p. 317.

purely technical, or a-social, matter.82

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The point we have just made may be better understood if we take for target precisely the Neoclassical foundations of a proposed explanation of the rise of slavery. 83 The basic element in Domar’s model is the labor-land ratio. Being land abundant in relation to labor no diminishing returns in the application of labor to land appear; both the average and the marginal-productivities of labor are constant and equal, and if competition amount employers raise wages to that level (as would be expected) no rent from land can arise, as Ricardo demonstrated some time past ...84 Being the marginal product of land zero (or near zero), land is, the Neoclassical sense, a free good. Even if land ownership is monopolized by a class of “non-working land-owners,” says Domar, to the extent that workers are free to move, competition among the employers will drive the wage up to the value of the marginal product of labor, and since the letter is still fairly close to the value of the average product (because of the abundance of land) lett1e surplus will remain.85 If a class of non-working landowners is to be created, slavery (or serfdom) becomes necessary: With labor tied to land or to the owner, competition among employers ceases. Now the employer can derive a rent, not from his land, but from his peasants by appropriating all or most of their 82

Fogel and Engerman have thus provided us with excelent descriptions of the labor process in cotton production, but the theoretical significant of this evidence is completely absent in their work. The same observation applies to Engerman’s perception that slavery permits “the forcing of laborers off what would be their desired suplly curve of choice weee voluntary, leading to a larger labor input than would be voluntarily provided at a market-clearing wage.” (op.cit., p. 46) “The slave-owner is able to obtain higher output from his labor force than might be obtained where labor is free, because of the ability to manipulating the supply of labor available.” (Ibid., p. 48); thanks to “forced international migration” “the labor force was made available at ‘wage’ level below that which needed to be paid to attract white labor, and, presumably, below that required if black African migration were voluntary.” (Ibid., p. 49) Evidently, it is a ,great advancement to see slavery under this light; after all, one should contrast Engerman’s perceptions with Goodloe’s argument, criticized by Engerman; according to the former, “slavery merely serves to appropriate the wages of labor -- it distributes wealth, but cannot create it” (Ibid., p. 47 n. 9) Findlay has (also acknowledged that”… the labor supply forthcoming from the slaves at each price is larger than it would be if they were free.” As against a monopsony model, in his model “the coercive power of the slaveowner increases the supply of labor obtainable at any given price. “Slavery, Incentives and; Manumission: A Theoretical: Model,” mimeo., Columbia University, May 1974,pp. 8,9. 83 Domar, op.cit. 84 Ibid., p. 19. p The introduction of “capital does not change matters, for, since “per capita income is relatively high (because of the ample supply of land),” and “the amount of capital for starting a farm is small,” “a good worker should be able to save or borrow and start on his own in time.” (Ibid., p. 20) 85 Ibid., p. 20. In Chapter VI, we will show how concentration of landownership in the Brazilian conditions -i.e., precisely in conditions of abundant land and thus of “free land” according to Domar’s Neoclassical theoy -has been the key to the production of surplus labor, and thus for the existence of Domar’s “non-working landowners.” What is focused there, however, is the lack. of free land for the rural population, economically bound to the “plantations.” Our concepet of free land, however, is completely different from Domar’s.

income above some subsistence level…86

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Hence Domar’s maxim: …the three elements of an agricultural structure relevant here -free land, tree peasants, and non-working landowners -- any two elements but never all three can exist simultaneously …87 It is our concern here to criticize this hypothesis solely on account of its being a good example of the Neoclassical theory. In effect, hidden in Domar’s model is the conception of a production function F (.) and relative factor endowments L/T such that FT is close to zero; since these factor endowments are given, so must also be given the marginal products of labor and land; the only relevance of slavery (or serfdom), therefore, becomes the “exploitation” of labor -- it becomes a matter of “robbing” labor of part of “his” product. Slavery is thus reduced to this: to allow a class of masters to appropriate a income whose generation, whose origin, is alien to slavery itself: it has to do with technology and factor endowments; it is an a-social matter. Production as such is not in the least effected in the enslavement (or enserfdom) of labor. Domar -- because of his Neoclassical formation -- has therefore obscured completely the role of slavery in enforcing the production of surplus labor and of channeling it to the exploiting class; rather, (his) slavery leaves production unaffected, for it is an a-social process, after all. He explicitly disregarded “the possibly greater reliability of the slave and the lopper hours he may be forced to work …”88 All of this can only illuminate further the distinctive features of the theoretical framework being presented in this chapter. Section 4 - Wage Labor and Capitalist Production 4.1 The labor theory of value: some elements89 Consider a situation where there is division of labor and privately owner means of production. Due to specialization, any particular product does not provide utility to its producer; this product is use-value only to others. This applying to all products, exchange

86 87

Ibid., p. 20.

Ibid., p. 21 Ibid.,pp. 22. 89 This section draws particularly on K. Marx, Capital vol. I, Part I, Chapters I-II; I.I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (Detroit: Black & Red, 1972); R. Hilferding, “Bohm-Bawerk’s Criticism of Marx,” in E. Von Bohm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His System, ed. by P.M. Sweezy (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949); and R.L. Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1973), chapters 4-6. 88

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becomes necessary, not only so that all the producers may satisfy their needs, but furthermore in order that a shoe-maker, for instance, may be able to replace his materials and means of labor an consequently to reproduce his production cycle. Exchange in this situation becomes therefore implicit in the social form of production. The products are produced as commodities: their useful qualities can be realized only after they have been sold and bought. We are speaking consequently of commodity production. The producers confront, one another in the market as (simple) owners of commodities; every producer is free to dispose of his property, but no individual producer can affect the terms of exchange. His commodity has an exchange value that is given in the relation of exchange to any other commodity; a particular relation, in any given moment, depending upon many factors related to supply and demand. These producers, therefore, are working for one another. Through the exchange of their commodities, they are really exchanging their labors. Let us go deeper on this matter. Any two producers establish relations of exchange only on the condition that they own commodities qualitatively different; i.e., a cost is not exchanged for another coat equal to itself. The different natural qualities of commodities, however, are a result of their being products of qualitatively different concrete labors. Consequently, heterogeneous labors are a requisite for exchange. But exchange cannot take place unless some relation of equiva1ene is established: qualitative1y different commodities, in appropriate amounts, are made equal in exchange. But this entails that some relations of equivalence is also established for the heterogeneous concrete labors that have produced the different articles. In other words, their differences are being negated, or abstracted from; these concrete labors become therefore “labor in general” or abstract labor. Every concrete labor is reduced, or converted, to this homogeneous substance; only on this condition can exchange take place. This conversion involves also the reduction of skilled to unskilled labor, as Marx has shown: Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labor, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple, unskilled labor, represents a definite quantity of the latter labor alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labor are reduced to unskilled labor as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on be hind the backs of the producers and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom.90 90

Capital, vol. I, p. 44.

44

To the commodity as a use value--its natural form -- there corresponds labor in its concrete form -- the natural form of labor. To the commodity as exchange value there corresponds labor in its abstract form. Exchange value presupposes the commodity being placed In a relation to other commodity; abstract labor presupposes that the concrete or useful labors be placed in relation to each other. Because abstract labor presupposes such a social process, abstract labor is a social form of labor. A definite amount of this social substance -- abstract labor-- becomes embodied, therefore, in a commodity. Consequently, besides having an exchange value, expressed by the amount of any other commodity exchanged for it, a commodity contains an intrinsic, or absolute substance: it is a receptacle of a portion of this substance. We define the amount of abstract labor incorporated an a commodity its (labor-) value When, at; the beginning of this chapter, we said in common parlance, that a commodity is both a use value and a exchange-value, we were, accurately speaking, wrong. A commodity is a use-value or object of utility, and a value…91 …When looked at as crystals of this social stance, common to them all, [the commodities] are -- values.92 In a commodity-society, therefore, the exchange of commodities becomes the means for interconnecting the independent labors of the individual producers; it is through the exchange of their products that these producers exchange their labors. The social character of any individual labor takes the form of value, in a commodity. Labor becomes represented in the value of a commodity because the commodities become the bearers of social relations. It is not, therefore because a commodity--as a use-value--requires labor as a factor of production that labor is defined as its value. It is not the technical, but the social form of production that is of concern in the labor theory of value.93 It is because the commodities are produced in a specific social manner that abstract) labor -- the common

91

Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 38. 93 “The use-values, coats, linen, etc., ie., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements: matter and labor. If we take away the useful labor expended upon them, a material substractum is always left, which is furnished by Nature; without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter. Nay more in this work of changing the form, he is constantly help by natural forces. We see, them, that labour is not source of material wealth, of use-values produces by labour. As William Petty puts it, ‘labor is it father and the earth its mother.’” (Ibid., p. 43) 92

social substance to which the several concrete labors are reduced -- becomes their value.94

45

4.2 - Definition of value Consider then the model of production presented in Section 2.1. We call λi the value of commodity i. These values are define in terms of homogeneous simple (abstract) labor. It is taken for granted that a social process that “goes on behind the backs of the producers” has converted the several heterogeneous concrete labors into this (socialized) homogeneous labor. Any concrete labor activity will count as value-creating only to the extent that it performs a socially necessary labor.

4.2 - Wage labor and capitalist (commodity) production In the previous section, we were dealing with simple or petty, commodity production, where the direct producers own the means of production. In capitalist commodity production, however, the direct producers do not own the means of production, and for this reason they cannot carry out production on their own account; rather, they hare to engage in wage employment.95 The mans of production, on the other hand, are owned by capitalist that organize the labor process with the purpose of earning profits on the capital invested. As against slavery, the worker’s labor power is his property; it is not his person that is object of sale and purchase, but merely his capacity to work, and this for a definite period. The commodity here is not the worker himself, like in slavery, but only his labor power. For this reason we depict the labor market as a sphere where the sale and purchase of labor power goes on. At the same time, it; serves the purpose of denying that it is labor that is sold by the worker, for “As soon as his labour actually begins it has already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by him.”96 In simple (or petty) commodity production, every producer’s participation in the market consists of disposing of something of no utility to him, in exchange of commodities 94

“Where 1abour is in common, relations between men their social production are not represented as ‘value’ of ‘things.’ Exchange of products as commodities is a certain method of exchanging labour, and of the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of others, and a certain mode of social labour or social production ...” K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part III, p. 127, as quoted in Colletti, L., From Rousseau to Lenin, Studies in Ideology and Society (London: NLB, 1972), p. 78. 95 Marx distinguished the rise of wage labor from its reproduction. The former he locates in the “so-called primitive accumulation,” a historical process of separation between labor and the means of production. In Wages, Price and Profit, Marx refers to “primitive accumu1ation” as “original expropriation,” cf. Se1ected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1968), p. 210; and Capital,vol. I, part III (Chap. XXVI-XXXIII). The reproduction of the laborer as wage-laborer, however, has to do with the laws of distribution that correspond to the capitalist relations.

46

consisting of different use-va1ues. He starts with commodities and ends up with commodities, but in the process he has gained utility. Circulation in petty commodity production, therefore, can be summarized by the formula C-M-C’, where C and C’ stand up for commodities and M for money. The essence of the matter is the fact that C’ is qualitatively different from C. In capitalist production, however, circulation can be depicted by the formula M-C-M’, expressing the fact that, after taking into account the process of production, the capitalist; starts and ends up with money, a homogeneous substance, wht ca make sense only if D’ is greater than D. The petty commodity producer sells in order to buy; the capitalist buys (invests, or “advances”) in order to sell (recouping, with a profit, his capital investment). An analogy exists between the petty commodity producer and the wage-laborer. The matter also disposes of a commodity whose use-value he cannot appropriate -- since he does not own the means of production -- in order to buy commodities of different use-values. He also, therefore, sells in order to buy. Both wage laborers and petty producers, then, can be said to spend what they get; in this they differentiate themselves from the capitalists, that get what they spend (Kalecki). In a historical sense, it is under capitalism that commodity production attains its fuller development. The social process of reduction of concrete to abstract labor, presupposing as it does heterogeneous labors being placed in relation to one another, reaches under capitalism, therefore, its full maturity. The indifference to the particular kind of labor corresponds to a form of society in which individuals pass with ease from one kind of work to another, which makes it immaterial to them what particular kind of work may fall to their share. Labour has become here, not only categorically but really, a means of creating wealth in general and is no longer grown together with the individual into one particular destination … It is only here that the abstraction of the category “labour in general,” labour sans phrase, … becomes realized in practice. …97 Since the concept of value of a commodity presupposes in the first place the 96

Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 537. Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy , p. 210. “This self-abstraction of labor from the concrete labouring subject, this acquisition by it of independence from man, culminates in the form of modern wage-labourer. The inversion whereby labour no longer appears as a manifestation of man but man as a manifestation of labour assumes here a real and palpable existence. … This ‘self-strangement,’ or acquisition by labour of independence from man, culminates in modern industry, where it is not the labourer who ‘ applies the conditions of labour, but inversely, the conditions of labour which apply the labourer’ … “Colletti, L., From Rousseau to Lenin, Studies in ideology and Society (London: NLB, 1972), pp. 85-86. 97

47

commodity as such, we conclude that the labor theory object precisely capitalist production. Only under capitalism the requisite process of conversion of concrete into abstract labor becomes actual in practice, allowing us to take it for granted in theory.98

4.4 Surplus labor and surplus value Let us retain Morishima’s model as presented in sections 2.1-2.2. Call λIIΒ the value of labor power. It is the amount of abstract labor embodied in the wage-goods bought; by the worker. It is considered that, as any other commodity, labor power has a value given by the labor time socially necessary for its production (or its reproduction); since the reproduction of labor power presupposes the reproduction of the laborer, this value becomes given by the labor time embodied the necessaries, or wage-goods that the worker consumes. As before, the working day is given by T. The worker will receive per hour ϖ=1/T of units of the daily means of subsistence, what means the payment ϖΒ in wage goods per hour of work. In value terms, this is equivalent to ϖΛIIΒ hours of labor. As before, we define ϖΛIIΒ as paid labor and 1-ϖΛIIΒ as unpaid labor. If we now express the total amount of paid labor and unpaid labor per working day, we have respectively, λIIΒ and T-λIIΒ. The former is also called necessary labor and the latter surplus labor. Since this surplus labor will become embodied, as value, in a commodity, it is called surplus-value.99

4.5 Surplus value and profits The essence of the capitalist mode of production, its sole driving force, is capital accumulation, from which derives the “profit motive”: … The expansion of value, which is the objective basis or mainspring of the circulation M-C-M, becomes the capitalist’s subjective aim, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operation, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and will. Use-value must therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profitmaking alone is what he aims at.100 The distinctive feature of the Marxian economic theory of capitalism, however, is 98

An important contribution to a critique of some ahistorical versions of the labor theory of value -- to which, actually, Engel’s name has been associated -- is M. Morishima and G. Cathepores, “Is There an ‘Historical Transformation Problem’?”, The Economic Journal, June 1975, pp. 309-328. 99 Surplus value is thus specific to capitalist production, while surplus labor is of more general character.

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not restricted to bringing to the forefront this essential nature of capitalist production; in addition, it seeks to establish a connection between accumulation and production of surplusvalue; this is for the reason that profits, the funds out of which capital is accumulated, are definitely connected to surplus value: The individual capitalist (or all the capitalists in each individual sphere of production), whose outlook is limited, rightly believes that his profit is not derived solely from the labour employed by him, or in his line of production. This is quite true, as far as his average profit is concerned. To what extent this profit is due to the aggregate exploitation of labour on the part of the total social capital, i.e., by all his capitalist colleagues -- this interrrelation is a complete mystery to the individual capitalist; all the more so, since no bourgeois theorists, the political economists, have so far revealed it.101 On the basis of the simple model of production that we have been using, Morishima has proved that he has called a “Fundamental Marxian Theorem,” and as a means to our discussion we shall summarize it briefly.102 Every good in the economy is produced for the market, being, therefore, a commodity, the Pi be the price of commodity i, and write the price vectors of capital goods, and necessaries and luxuries, as PI = (Pi, …, Pn ),

PII = (Pn+1 , …, Pm)

Respectively. These prices must cover, with a profit, the unit costs of production, constituted by the inputs of capital goods and of labor. The labor costs consist of a exchange value w of the subsistence goods vector B per hour of work, which is equal to PIIϖΒ. When every 100

Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 152-153. Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 170. The reasons why the “individual capitalist … rightly believes that his profit is not solely derived from the labour employed by him” have to do with the actual manner profits are distributed, i.e., as a proportion to total capital, and not merely to the wages. Capital, vol III, chapters I-II. For an important contribution to a correct interpretation of Marx, on this connection between surplus value and profits -- and the associated “transformation problem” between values and prices --, see W.J. Baumol, “The Transformation of Values: What Marx ‘Really’ Meant (An Interpretation),” Journal of Economy Literature, March 1974, pp. 51-62. 102 Marx’s Economics, chapters 5-6. A brief statement of this theorem, in a manner even more relevant for our purposes, is presented by Morishima in “The Fundamental Marxian Theorem: A Reply to Samuelson,” Journal of Economic Literature, March 1974, pp. 71-74; in another mathematical formulation, this “theore” is also proved in Wolfstetter, op.cit. The relaxation of the assumption of absence of joint production requires new definition of values, and the “theorem” is shown not to hold anymore; see I. Steedman, “Positive Profits with Negative Surplus Value,” “The Economic Journal, March 1975, pp. 114-123. See also Morishima’s “Marx in the Light of Modern Economic Theory,” Econometrica, July 1974, pp. 611-632; in Steedman’s works, the new “theorem” presented in this recent paper by Morishima has “a distinctly Marxist flavour, [but] by abandoning the traditional Marxist analysis .” (op.cit., 121, n.2) It must be made clear that there is no intention here to vindicate Marx’s fundamenta1 proposition on the basis of Morishima’s simple model: rather, it is being presented merely because it makes clear the nature of the relationship, precisely because it is in this simple 101

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industry earns positive profits, we have inequalities: PI > PI ΛI + wLI

(10)

PII > PI ΛII + wLII

(11)

Then we may ask what conditions are necessary and sufficient for the existence of a set of non-negative prices and wage-rate w yielding positive profits in every industry. It is found that there exists a set of prices and a set of prices and a wage rate fulfilling (10) and (11) if and only if the “real-wage rate” ϖ is given such that the rate of exploitation e is positive.103 In order to prove the sufficiency condition, however, Morishima assumed that commodities are sold at their values, i.e., that the price vectors PI and PII could be formalized so that PI = ΛI and PII = ΛII. However, it Is known that equilibrium prices, corresponding to an equilibrium rate of profits, are equal to values only in the assumption of organic composition of capital for every industry.104 The question then is to show whether such an equilibrium rate of profits, determined in the “price system,”105 is positive if and only if the rate of exploitation is also positive. As Morishima argues, this problem is more than the problem of finding a relationship of the rate o profit to π to the “rate of real wages” ϖ, in view of the inverse relationship between e and ϖ (cf. Figure 1). The figure below depicts the “wage”-profit curve π = g(ϖ), its location below the exploitation-rate curve being due to Morishima’s additional proof that π is always smaller than e.

form. The actual verification of this proposition -- as it will be argued later in chapter – is not merely formal matter, but a matter of reality itself. 103 Morishima, Marx’s Economics, pp. 53-54. 104 Marx, Capital, vol III, chapters VIII-IX. 105 I.e., PI = (1+π) (PIΛI + wLI) (12)

PII = (1+π) (PIΛII + wLII)

(13)

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Figure 2. The “wage”-profit curve

4.6 Labor market and exploitation

The previous theorem establishes a causal relation between exploitation and profits (“profits derive from surplus-value”) to the extent that the working day T, the value vectors ΛI and ΛII, and the subsistence vector B are said to be determined outside the price system; i.e., they are taken as data in that system, and therefore are logically prior to price and profit determination. It is our purpose now to show that, actually, this corresponds to a theoretical framework where the social relations of production are explicitly introduced into the analysis of price and profit determination in such a way that they become the ultimately determining sphere. In the case of a slave economy it is transparent that the working day T, the vectors ΛI and ΛII, and B are determined in the context of the relation between the master and the slave in production. To say, therefore, that prices and profits are determined only after those variables are also determined corresponds, at a theoretical level, to asserting the determining role of the master-slave relation. Distribution becomes therefore inseparable of the social form of production. In what sense can we make a similar assertion regarding a capitalist economy? Let us start this discussion by taking for target an author that tried to deny, at the logicomathematical level, the causality that is that theorem’s raison-d’etre. We shall argue the fact that causality is chosen at the formal level is the result of a substantive theory; if Morishima’s “fundamental Marxian theorem” is to be accepted, it is because it expresses a causal relation in the real world. Samuelson has thus “denied,” … that “surplus value is the source of profit” in any useful sense. I deny that Marx (or Morishima or Baumol) have anywhere congently given us reason to believe that one can get to profits only after we know the laws of surplus value. …106 Samuelson’s main argument, stated elsewhere,107 is that: 106

Samuelson, “Insight and Detour in the Theory of Exploitation: A Reply to Baumol,” Journal of Economic Literature, March 1974, p. 63. 107 Ibid., “Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation: A Summary of the So-Called Transformation Problem Between Marxian Values and Competitive Prices,” Journal of Economic Literature, June 1971, pp. 399-431. (The quotations are from pp. 418-419.)

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By now the crucial issue is no longer whether volume III’s prices are more realistic under competition than volume I’s values: critics and Marxians are agreed that these prices certainly are. The issue has been narrowed down to whether, as Marx and his modern defenders have claimed, the profit rate upon which volume III’s Walrasian (sic) equilibrium depends is itself crucially determined by volume I’s analysis of surplus values… First, this section demonstrates that Marx and Engels -- and in modern times, Dobb and Meek -- are simply wrong in their identification of what aspect of the labor theory of value is intrinsically involved in working out a price-profit configuration that corresponds to the minimum-wage theory of exploitation. The most clear cut proof is mathematical. We shall take Samuelson’s mathematical proof and show the source of his mistaken statement above. Simultaneously, it will become clear why Morishima has succeeded in establishing what Samuelson has denied so cogently.108 Samuelson’s proof is rather brief; he says: … from knowledge of technology alone we know the a0 and a coefficients. After these have been supplemented by specific subsistence requirements, m, volume III’s prices stand on their own feet and are defined by P/W = a0 (1+r) [I-a(1+r)]-1 = A0 (r), mAo (r) = 1. These relations require no prior consideration of the volume I value relations ... and no transformation procedure in either direction. …109 Making explicit reference to Morishima’s theorem, Samuelson considers the value system and the price system as “alternative accounting systems,” and argues that … there is complete reversible symmetry between the two alternative accounting regimes: “profit is the source of surplus value” is as formally valid as vice versa; “only if the profit rate R* can be positive [in the matrix sense, R* > 0 in ao (1+r*) [I-a(1+R*)]-1 m = 1], can the rate of surplus value r* be positive [in the same r* . 0 in ao [Ia]-1 (1+r*) m = 1]” – this is a valid as vice versa; and preferable to either is the strengthened Hawkins-Simons condition ao [I-a]-1 m < 1 if 108

The curious thing is that Morishima has replied to Samuelson (cf. Journal of Economic Literature, March 1974. pp. 71-75) restating his theorem using Samuelson’s notation, but the latter still sticks to his position, saying that “… apparently the challenge must still stand.” (Journal of Economic Literature, March 1974. pp. 76) 109 Samuelson, “Understanding ...,” op.cit., p. 419. In Morishima’s notation (adopted in this chapter), a0 is the vector of labor input coefficient L = (LI, LII) a the matrix of physical-input coefficients I A=

AI 0 

AII  0 

r the equilibrium rate of profit π and m the subsistence-consumption vector per man-hour B/T.

and only if R* > 0].110

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One should notice immediately that Samuelson’s m corresponds, in Morishima’s model, to B/T. Samuelson’s m, consequently, can only be defined after a prior determination of B, the vector of the daily subsistence goods of the worker, and T, the working day. 111 To the extent that in the real world both these variables are determined outside the price system – specifically in the “value system” – then one can and must assert, at the formal level, that (1) the competitive price-profit set that is defined by P/W = a0 (1+r) [I-a(1+r)]-1 = A0 (r), mAo (r) = 1, does require consideration of the volume I value relations; and (2) that the transformation procedure of the rate of exploitation into the rate of profit, and values into prices, is not reversible, since the price system cannot be defined but after the value system; there is not a “reversible symmetry” between these systems, that are not, therefore, “alternative accounting systems.” The first thing that must be seen is that the amount of work a given worker (i.e., a given labor-power) can perform depends upon the working day, the intensity of labor, etc. The substance of Morishima’s Marxian theorem is to contrast the amount of value-creating labor performed by an individual worker with the amount of labor embodied in his wagegoods; this surplus value becomes the source of profit. The production of surplus value, however, becomes enforced in the context of the capital-labor relation, to which we must turn now. Value analysis – and the theory of exploitation – among other things, has for purpose to disclose the reality behind the appearance of equivalent exchange, implicit in the daily life of a labor market, where the laborer – and the capitalist – are induced to think that “labor” is being paid the “due” price. Value analysis denies this appearance by saying that unpaid labor is the reality hidden at the level of the market.112 In order to get at the root of 110

Samuelson, “Insight and Detour...,” op.cit., p. 64. It is interesting to note that there is a tradition, that goes back to the Leontief closed model and von Neumann model, of framing the problem as Samuelson did. Even avowed defenders of Marx’s causal relation between the value system and the price system have framed the problem in this tradition, being open consequently, to Samuelson’s critique. See, for instance, A. Brody, Proportions, Prices and Planning, A Mathematical Restatement of the Labor Theory of Value (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970); A. Medio, “Profits and Surplus Value: Appearance and Reality in Capitalist Production,” in E.K. Hunt and J.G. Schwartz, eds., A Critique of Economic Theory (Penguin Books, 1972); and WoIfstetter, op.cit. “For the sake of simplicity,” Wolfstetter took the working day as the labor input’s time unit, so that the vector of the daily means of subsistence per worker become also the “real wages per labour unit.” Brody and Medio do not have even such a mention of the working day. All of this only distiguishes Morishima’s formal treatment. 112 “Secondly. Although one part only of the workman’s daily labour is paid, while the other part is unpaid, and while that unpaid or surplus labour constitutes exactly the fund out of which surplus value or profit is formed, it seems as if the aggregate labour was paid labour. “This false appearance distinguishes wages-labour from other 111

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the matter, however, we must leave the sphere of circulation, the exchange sphere: This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom both buyer and seller of a commodity say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together nd puts tem in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all shrewd province, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all. On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange commodities, which furnishes the “Free trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatic personae. He, who before was moneyowner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but – a hiding.113 Of course, Marx’s irony has to do with the real inequality that goes along with the formal equality in the capital-labor relation. … according to Marx, what makes this relation of equality historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labor seems to be paid labour. Which the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing. Take, on the other hand, the peasant serf, such as he, I might say, until yesterday existed in the whole East of Europe. This peasant worked, for example, three days for himself on his field or the field allotted to him, and the three subsequent days he performed compulsory and gratuitous labour on the state of his lord. Here, then the paid and unpaid parts of labour were sensibly separated, separated in time and space; and our Liberals with moral indignation at the preposterous notion of making a man for nothing. In point of fact, however, whether a man works three days a week for himself on his own field and three days for nothing on the estate of his lord, or whether he works in the factory or the workshop six hours daily for himself and six hours for his employer, comes to the same, although in the latter case the paid and unpaid portions of labour are inseparably mixed up with each other, and the nature of the whole transaction is completely masked by the intervention of a contract and the pay received at the end of the week. The gratuitous labour appears to be voluntarily given in the one system, and to be compulsory in the other. That makes all the difference.” Marx, Wages Price and Profit, pp. 213-214 113 Marx, Capital, vol I, p. 176.

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formal and conceals the real inequality is the fact that the property at the disposal of the worker (his own laboring capacity) is only property in appearance. In reality, it is the opposite, a state of need, so that ‘if his capacity for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel, nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will continue to do so for its reproduction.’114 The key point is to understand that, while it is true that, “Unlike the slave or the serf, [the wage laborer] has some freedom to choose the individual who will control his labour-power,” and in this sense “can within limits choose the

capitalist for whom he

works,” it is an objective fact, imposed upon the laborer, however, that “he cannot free himself from the despotism of capital as a whole. He must still work for some capitalist. Hence the formal rather than real nature of his freedom.115 Having bought the commodity labor power, the capitalist, as it happens with any other commodity-purchaser, acquires the right (power) of appropriating its use-value. He appropriates the use-value of the commodity labor power by putting the worker to work. But this means that the capital-labor relation, from one of “Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham,” in the exchange sphere, metamorphoses itself into its contrary in the factory, where no such freedom and equality exists. In the factory, the capitalist is a boss that rules over the worker. The labor process acquires an specific social form: it becomes a capitalist labor process. Hierarchical work organization, intensity of labor – and the working day – rather ten having to do with the material-technical form of production, become the expression of its capitalist form.116 The fact, however, that production is carried out in this social manner is rooted in the existence of a proletariat that, in a dispossessed condition, conforms another class that monopolizes the ownership of the means of production. This proletariat has to supply labor power in a manner suited to production of surplus value, what involves essentially the 114

Colletti, op.cit., p. 94. Colletti here is quoting Capital, vol I, p. 173. In the Neoclassical tradition, however, the worker is said to derive utility by not working, so that the supply of labor is reduced to a matter of exchange of a good (“leisure”) for another (“income”). 115 Rowthorn, “Neoclassical Economics ...” op.cit., p. 334. 116 It is sometimes argued that the working conditions – including the intensity of labor, absence of freedom for the laborer, etc. – are part of the definition of a method or production, being therefore a-social. Granted that the individual “firm” has no option but to adopt such a technique – as a condition to earn the average rate of profit – one nust leave such a microeconomic perspective – the price system, that is to say – in order to see the connection between control over abor in the labor process and production of surplus value. For a systematic critique of the conception mentioned in this footnote see S. Marglin, “What do Bosses do? The origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production,” mimeo., August 1971.

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question of the reproduction costs of labor power as well as the working day, the intesity of labor, etc. These are matters, of course, around which some bloody chapters in the history of the working calls have been written.

x-x-x-x-x-x

The crucial role assigned to the working day, intensity of labor, etc., in Marxian economics contrasts with a virtual silence on this matter in classical and Neoclassical economics. Regarding the former, Marx has said that the labourer must first be compelled to work in excess of the necessary time, and this compulsion is exerted by capital. This is missing in Ricardo’s work, and therefore also the whole struggle over the regulation of the normal working day.117 A critique of the Neoclassical theory of production, precisely on account of the failure to make explicit the working day, has been the object of several works by GeorgescuRoegen; in a recent paper,118 this author has vindicated Marx’s insistence on the importance of the time of production and of the working day for the theory of value. By comparison, we can see how far removed from the basic economic facts standard theory of production is because of the superficial treatment of such a fundamental concept as the production process. In the standard theory of production there is no room for the time of production or for the working day. …119 The fact that the working day, the intensity of labor, etc., are determined in the context of an antagonistic relation, on the other hand, is denied to the very extent that the capitalist labor process is conceived of a expressing the worker’s “preferences,” in a general equilibrium fashion: An objection sometimes raised to an analysis like the above [i.e., the Jevonian theory of the labor supply as expressing the worker’s leisure-income preferences – G.C.R.] is that individuals cannot determine for themselves the number of hours they work: this is an institutional datum [i.e., determined in the capital-labor relation, outside the price system -- G.C.R.] which the individual must take or leave. This objection is entirely specious. In the first place, we have seen that much of the adjustment may take the form of the fraction of 117

Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 2, p. 406, f. Rowthorn, “Neoclassical Economics …,” p. 341. “Process Analysis and the Neoclassical Theory of Production,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, vol. 54, n° 2 (May 1972), pp. 279-293. 119 Ibid., p. 286. 118

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the people in the labor force. In the second place, even at any given time, a particular individual has some leeway. He can work overtime or not, take off more or less time during the year, choose the kind of occupation or employer that offers the number of hours he wants, etc. But neither of these is the basic fallacy. The important point is that the individual is like the perfect competitor: to each individual separately, the number of hours of work per week may be fixed, yet the level at which is fixed is the result of the choices of the individuals as a group. If at any moment this level of hours is, say, larger than on the average people prefer at the given wage rate, this means that any employer who makes them shorter, who adjusts them to the worker’s preferences, will make employment with him more attractive than employment with others. Hence, he can attract the better people at a lower wage rate. Employers thus have an incentive to adjust working conditions and hours to the preferences of the workers. (In our earlier terminology, because of the tie-in character of the transaction, employers are sellers of conditions of work as well as buyers of labor.) Competition in this way permit individuals in effect to determine for themselves the number of hours they work.120 Of course, no one would think that this is actual reality, as against mere fantasy, in a slave economy; applied to a capitalist economy, this amounts to saying that proletarian is ultimately sovereign regarding the working conditions; he determines the features of the capitalist labor process as much as an independent peasant does on his holding. The tirannic character of the capitalist labor process is thus into its contrary -- consensus, harmony.121

120

Friedman, M., Price theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1971), pp. 204-205. “It may be slightly ironic that na important necessary condition for the indifference-curve model to be applicable to one of the most fundamental problems of economic choice is inconsistent with capitalism. For the indifference-curve model to be applicable to goods-leisure choices, control of the hours of work must rest with the worker. But this is inconsistent with capitalist control of the work process, and hence with capitalis m itself.” Marglin, op.cit., pp. 45-46. 121

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CHAPTER IV IV. LABOR AND LABOR SUPPLY (III) AN ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

Introduction

In this chapter the historical evidence presented in chapter II will be discussed with the help of the analytical framework presented in the previous chapter. In the first section, the social relations constituted trough slavery, debt peonage, contract labor, etc., are analyzed in what they have in common as means for a specific mode of production of surplus labor. In section two, the so-called “labor problem” faced by those capitalist sectors is related to the specific historical conditions in the countries where such a production of surplus labor was to be carried out. In section three, the pervasive doctrine of the “backward-sloping” labor supply curve in the underdeveloped countries is subjected to criticism; finally, in section four some tentative elements for the analysis of the specific mode of production of surplus value itself are presented.

Section 1 -- The evidence and surplus labor: a general perspective

Placing ourselves at the most abstract level, the social re1ations established through the indenture system, debt peonage, forced labor legislation, taxation, and other “devices” -- not forgetting African slavery --, can be seen now in terms of what they represent as means for production of surplus labor: in effect, through every and all these “mechanisms”, both the necessary labor ΛIIΒ as well as the total labor time T N were being determined in such a manner that a maximum surplus labor was being extracted frorn labor. The determination of the necessary labor ΛIIΒ took the form of determining Β, the vector of subsistence goods of the worker, while simultaneously both the rate of labor force participation and the working day, intensity of labor, etc. were being stretched to their limits. A theoretical meaning can be given, in this way, to the South African mines’, or the Peruvian sugar hacendados’, search for and establishment of a supply of cheap labor: for the means through which the social costs of labor, i.e., the necessary labor (ΛIIΒ), became determined in

the system took the form of directly determing Β, the subsistence-basket of labor.122 At the

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same time, however, one must see that such a “cheapness” was only a part of the story: not only the laborer should live under “squalid conditions”; but he should also work in the “supervised ranks of a labour camp”-- in other words, the laborer should subject himself to particularly oppressive, blood-sucking, working conditions. It was on such basis, and no others, that surplus labor was extracted in every case surveyed. Let us take, for instance, indenture labor. The backwardness of the “laborexporting” countries (India, China, etc.), together with population pressures on the land, were, to be sure, fundamental premises for the rise of the system. However, the rise of the system was also premised on a highly-developed apparatus of repression in the “laborimporting” countries, such a repressive situation being not at all alien to the political subjection of the “labor-exporting” areas in a colonial context. Every small detail of this pervasive labor-repressive system acquires a meaning -- it is our contention -- if we look at it from the perspective of production of surplus-labor: to begin with, the enforcement (by the planters) of a “contract” attributed (by the planters) to the immigrant, guaranteed the subjection of labor to the planter’s understanding of what the labor process should be like; while this very subjection of the laborer put him at the mercy of any one individual planter -and therefore also at the mercy of the planter class as a whole in matters relating to the determination of Β. Debt peonage is a similar mechanism. To the extent that, either officially or unofficially, a repressive apparatus is imposed upon a laborer due to the mere fact of being a debtor to a planter, it is clear that such a relationship is reproduced to the very extent that the laborer cannot be “mobile” -- i.e., cannot refuse the wages and/or the working conditions being “offered” by any one hacendado for the reason that he is a debtor! Indeed, it is no wonder why the hacendados -- assured, preliminarily, of the effectiveness of the repressive apparatus were so eager to advance money: to do so is to initiate a condition of bondage for labor. These advances are the exact opposite of “incentives” to labor migration123 : were not 122

In the Neoclassical framework, however, no factor of production can be either “cheap” or “dear”; in connection to slave labor, this argument has been presented both by Engerman, “Some Considerations…”, and Domar, “The Causes of Slavery…”, p. 22, n°.4 123 As Scott (op.cit., pp. 10-19) has interpreted the “enganche system” in Peru. He has missed completely that the true nature on the advances was disclosed in the subjection of the Indian on the coastal sugar plantations: the latter, in any case, were willing to give only advances as “incentives”, but not increased wages, etc.; they had good reasons indeed to be so selective as far as “incentives” are concerned. This perspective allows us to perceive that financing of indenture immigration was also the first step to initiate bondage; in this sense, every “abuse”, fraud, cruelty, etc., in the field of recruiting was due to the fact that the profits founded on indenture-

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for the premise of repression – “catching the run-aways” -- no such advances would have been made. In this sense, they are equivalents to the purchase prices of slaves, and it is this the planters’ perception of them. 124 It is clear, therefore, the adequacy of seeing these labor systems as “disguised slavery”, or “neo-slavery”, or a “new system of slavery”; while serving to characterize them in this way, the meaning and purpose of slavery itself is well understood, so that we do not have to show how this “peculiar institution” provides the means for extraction of surplus labor from the enslaved working population. As against these mechanisms, in which political subjugation were the very means through which surplus labor was extracted, we have also surveyed cases where no such political means were present neither in forcing the laborer to “supply”

his labor nor in

“tying” him to an individual plantation or mine. Considering the “migrant labor system” one such case, we have argued, however, now temporary migration was ultimately an outcome of a complex mixture of political and economic factors that led to the necessity -- rooted in a compulsion of an economic character -- of wage labor. Such a “spontaneous” labor supply, however, was indeed a finding for a South African mine, for the latter had ipso facto guaranteed its control over labor in the labor process, and consequently the extraction of surplus labor. Hence the crucial importance of proletarianization, of transforming labor power in a commodity hence, also, the rationale for all the violence in land expropriation, in blocking economic development in the Reserves, etc. Such a proletarianization, however, as we have tried to argue, had a particular character of its own: it was a process of proletarianization only in part, and clearly this feature made it all the more cruel for the African population; nevertheless, the necessary labor relevant for the capitalist sector was being shortened, while surplus labor was being enlarged not only in this extent but also due to the derived political weakness of labor.125 based labor exploitation would make such activities profitable. There is no such a thing, therefore, as an independent supply of labor in the system: the form that this supply assumes is endogenous in the system, due to political factors! 124 It is interesting to see the comparatively large amount of money that the coffee plantations visited by Ramos (op.cit.) in his journeys to Southeast Mexico and Guatemala considered necessary to carry out production, on account of needed “advances” to laborers. These advances were condidered by them as investments as much as the formation of the coffee trees, say. And indeed they are, from the perspective of capital. 125 A useful figure was drawn by Wolpe (op.cit., p. 435) to help make things clear: “The Relative Proportion of Surplus to Necessary Labour in the Capitalist Sector where: (a) (b) The Working Class is wholly dependent upon wages The Working-Class derives a portion of its means of for its Reproduction Reproduction from the Reserve Economy.

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Looked at from a general standpoint, therefore, the extra-economic, political “mechanisms” of labor control that have arisen in the export sectors in the backward countries (slavery, contract labor, etc.), as well as particular structural relations such as the “migrant labor system”, become so many means for labor control so that production of surplus labor in that specific form becomes possible. In this sense, they would share a common feature as systems of labor exploitation. Such a common feature can be considered as identical to Kloosterboer’s “same function”: “It is indeed not clear why precisely slavery should exist if there is not sufficient voluntary labour. As labour systems, serfage, debtslavery, and even contract labour under penal sanction fulfill exactly the same function. The form compulsory labour takes will in the first place depend on the spirit of the times.”126 (ours the emphasis)

Section 2 -- The “labor problem” analysed Seen from another angle, the demand for labor from those export sectors was constrained by the requirement of production of surplus labor in that specific mode. To the extent that the labor process had to satisfy this requirement, it took a definite social form; in other words, it was the case not only of demanding labor in order to combine it with the other factors of production, but of making this combination in a particular social manner. From the African villager it was being demanded not only that he “supply” his “labor services at a given “price”, but that he enter into a definite social relation of production, whose content would be to enforce “labor discipline”, “regularity of work”, etc., to name only some features of the labor process linked to the production of surplus labor. Such a villager had to subject himself to the overseer; he had to subject himself to the intensity of labor in the “labor gangs”, etc. Arising out of the need for production of surplus labor, it was therefore not only S

S¹

N

N¹

(Note: This figure is not drawn to scale) Where: S= surplus labour time/product N = labour time/product necessary for reproduction of labour-power N¹= the decreased proportion of labour time/product devoted to the reproduction of labourpower by the capitalist sector where portion of the necessary means of subsistence is provided by the Reserve economy (N²) S¹= the increased surplus labour time/product.”

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a question merely of a “demand” for labor, but really a question of giving rise to a definite socio-economic structure; it was not merely a question of producing sugar, diamonds, cotton, etc. but of producing these use values in a determined social manner. The fact that a “labor problem” was posed for these export sectors -- perceived by the planters as a “shortage of labor” for their plantations -- can be tackled now. For besides the specific social form that the labor process had to assume, there was the crucial requirement of the labor costs. The African villager was being asked not only to leave “the companionable freedom of his village” for “the supervised ranks of a labour camp”, but he should do that at a definite pay, since his pay would be a cost for the plantation Confronting such a demand, however, was labor not yet dispossessed, not yet separated from the means of production, able to satisfy his needs independently. Such was the general feature that encompassed the Yaquis and the Maya in Mexico, the peasantries in Peru, British Guiana, Africa, Puerto Rico, etc. As Greaves put it for Africa: “(…) The population is not comparable to a proletariat which has no alternative to wage labor, for when they are left free backward people have a choice between the conditions of thoir customary system of production and the terms offered by the foreign employer”127 . Had they been left free, the imaginary world drawn in Neoclassical theory would certainly follow: i.e., the plantations and the mines would be able to produce sugar or gold only if their working conditions satisfied the African “preferences”; only if their economic and technical superiority -- as it is so often taken for granted -- allowed them to “bid” the opportunity cost in the “subsistence sector”, etc. Instead of abiding to these conditions, and consequently materialize on the Peruvian coast or in the South African mines a world of consensus and harmony, these “foreigner employers” could only see in these conditions the source of a “labor problem”, producing “labor shortage”. The crucial point is to realize that indeed a fundamental contradiction existed between these historical conditions and the specific modes of production of surplus labor that characterized those “capitalist sectors”, “Establishing a capitalist system in backward territories”, then, becomes a “problem”, namely that “(...) of grafting a structure which arose in one place in consequence of a certain set of 126

127

Kloosterboer, Involuntary Labour, p. 1. Modern Production, p. 59.

conditions on to a completely different set of conditions in another place (...).”128

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Section 3 -- The evidence and the hypothesis of “backward-bending” labor supply curve: a critical discussion

The impressive historical record of the actual means of “grafting” such a structure, rather than bringing about a serious attempt at going behind the phenomena and seeking for the crucial factors at work, has merely led to a translation, in academic jargon, of the ideology of oppresion adopted by the “foreign employers” in justifying their squeezing of labor from the “subsistence sector”. Extra-economic means are then said to arise due to “preference for leisure” on the part of the native: “Few discussions of labor supply in underdeveloped countries fail to bring up the backward-sloping labor supply function. Wageearners in newly developing countries are alleged to have relatively low want schedules or high preference for leisure as against income, so that they work less at higher wage rates and more at lower ones. In the underdeveloped world, and notably in Africa, this has been the almost universal opinion of foreign employers of native labor, na opinion shared by outside observers. (...). The widespread conviction that labor supply functions in countries in early stages of development tend to be backward-sloping is no mere intellectual curiosity. (...) It has served as a rationale for wage and labor policies which influenced the course of economic and political development not only in Africa but elsewhere as well. (...).”129

128

Greaves, op. cit., p. 153. Or , as Marx himself has put it, “(...) It is otherwise in the colonies. There the capitalist regime everywhere comes into collision with the resistance of the producer, who, as owner of his own conditions of labor, employs that labour to enrich himself, instead of the capitalist. Contradiction of these two diametrically opposed economic systems, manifests itself here pratically in a struggle between them. Where the capitalist has at his back the power of the mother-country, he tries to clear out of his way by force, the modes of production and appropriation, based on the independent labour of the producer. (...)” Capital ,vol. I, p. 765. Some recent contributions to the analysis of capitalist development in the backward countries, as well as Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis on the matter, are critically discussed in Bradby, B., “The destruction of natural economy”, Economy and Society, vol. 4, nº 2 (May 1975), pp. 127-161. 129 Berg, “Backward-Sloping Labor Supply Functions...”, pp. 114-115. Myint has said also that “Wathever its weaknesses, the doctrine of the ‘backward-bending’ supply curve of labor was used to rationalize the policy of using negative pressures to squeeze more labour out of the subsistence economy when the voluntary supply of migrant labour became inadequate for the expanding demand of the mines and plantations. (...).” Economics of Developing Countries, pp. 60-61. According to Magubane and O’Brien (op. cit., p. 100), “(...) The ‘target worker hypothesis’, built uncritically by economists upon the analysis of the social anthropologists and accepted as social reality, formed the basis of government and employer policy, and entered into the folklore as justification for paying Africans the most paltry wages. (...).”

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A clear statement of this argument is advanced by another author precisely in accounting for the same kind of evidence we have been discussing: “This recourse to constraint has been based (...) even more, on the absolute shortage of voluntary labor. In primitive areas, especially those where nature requires little work for subsistence and where much of such work as has to be done is performed by women, it is often impossible to attract labor by means of money, at least at first; and even such labor as is recruited is relatively unresponsive to increasing reward (the supply curve bends backwards once income expectations are fulfilled).”130 If the literature we have surveyed has conveyed anything, it is precisely the fact that the “foreign employers” did not try to adjust wages and working conditions to the peasants; instead, they had recourse to forceful means. If this was the case, clearly the peasant was not given any opportunity to express such a “preference for leisure”. Going more to the point, what data has been used to infer such a peculiar characteristic of “primitive” peoples? Which reality has produced this data? flow could this data, after all, have become real if the “foreign employers” refused to abide to the strong bargaining position implicit in the alternatives open to labor in the subsistence sector (before the process of encroachment set in)?131 One wonders, therefore, how could Berg infer from the same evidence we have been discussing that: “In these early years (...) the positive elasticity of labor supply with respect to wage increase tended to be slight. (...) Most villagers were deaf to the appeal of wages. They went out of the village to earn money when necessary. Most of them were unconcerned with marginal differences in income-earning possibilities; they were simple out of the labor market. (...)”132 130

Landes, D. S., “Some Thoughts on the Nature of Economic Imperialism”, The Journal of Economic History, vol. XXI, n. 4 (1961), pp. 496-512. The quotation is from the reprint in Boulding, K. E. and M. Tapan, eds., Economic Imperialism (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 129. 131 This same fallacy has been perceived by Myint (op.cit., p. 60): “(…) It is difficult, therefore,. To accept this doctrine of the ‘backward-bending’ supply curve of labor in developed countries without further evidence that a systematic application of wage incentives in favour of extra work, such as bonuses and overtime payments, had failed to induce a greater supply of labour over the long run.” 132 “Backward-Sloping Labor Supply Functions”, pp. 126-127. Berg has tried to present a more soprusticated model of the African's labor supply decision “to the exchange sector” by incorporating explicitly his alternatives in subsistence and/or petty commodity production. “Leisure” then, “p1aced within quotation marks througnout the discussion in [his] paper, becornes “the sum of village activities not immediately or directly concerned with production.” (op.cit., p. 133, n. 12) (Perhaps Greaves’ “companionable freedom in [the African’s] village”?) In this more realistic model, then, he concludes that “(…) The major factors determining the individual’s decisions therefore are: (1) the intensity of his preference for money income as against ‘leisure’ in the village; (2) the level of his income from village production; (3) the effort-price of income earnable in the village; (4) the effort-price of income earnable outside the village.” (op.cit., p. 117) In proposing the “target income hypothesis”, however, as an explanation for the Africans leaving the village to earn money “only when necessary”, berg has abstracted

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Clearly, in all of this the “demand” side is being taken for granted. To the capitalist sector it is imputed behavior that has been completely absent in its actual record of enslavement, “recruiting”, transforming self- sufficient peasants into half-proletarians, etc.133 The lack of any attempt at offering the necessary incentives is conveniently overlooked; the inherently oppressive character of the labor process is turned into “modernity”, “civilization”, etc. On the other hand, the peasant’s resistance against economic and cultural destruction is implicitly despised -- not without a touch of racist ideology -- as a “preference for leisure” over “income-earning possibilities”. The South African mines have their overall oppressive conditions turned then into “income-earning possibilities”; they are even pictured as providing “increasing reward” to the peasant.134

completely from the particularly oppressive conditions of wage employment, including the “cheap labor policy”. The Africans’ supposed “great attachment to their traditional social system”, is then made into the reason for the Africans’ being” (…) re1uctant-indifferent to the appeals of money income attainable outside the village; the fact that higher incomes were available (sic) outside was not sufficient to induce them to emigrate. “For berg, therefore, “(…) it is no surprise that until about 1930 in most of the continent the securing of a labor force in the exchange sector depended largely on the exercise of direct or indirect coercion. (...).” (op. cit., p. 121) For a thorough critique of berg’s and other authors’ misleading analyses, see Magubane and O’Brien, op.cit. 133 In passing, one could refer to a 1arge body of literature that seeks to attribute to a situation of “open resources” (free access to the land, mainly) the rise of compulsory labor; in a very subtle manner, this is a way to de-emphasize the demand side of the market. For early presentations of this approach see Nieboer, H. J., Slavery as an Industrial System (The Hague, 1910), and Thompson, E. T., “The Natural History of Agricultural Labor in the South”, in Jackson, D. D., ed., American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd (Durham: Duke University Press, 1940), esp. pp. 117-122. It is this hypothesis that Domar tried to formalize in Neoclassical terms, stripping the “openess” of resources of any social content and instead making it a thing of Nature: the land-labor ratio. Addressing himself specifically to Nieboer’s book, Kloosterboer shows many instances where there were “closed resources” but nevertheless there was compulsory labor; in a very interesting summary of his worldwide survey, among other important conclusions, this author points out that” (…) ‘closed resources’ do not always yield sufficient labour; additional measures being in many cases necessary if the ruling class are to satisfy their desire for profits.” (op.cit., pp. 213-214). 134 The demand side of the market has returned to its proper place in Greaves’ work (op.cit., pp. 157-169); for this reason she is able to conclude that “In fact, what is condemned as laziness or dislike of work on the part of the of the native has often been essentials a reluctance to expend a large amount of effort upon inefficient and poorly remunerated forms of labor.” (op.cit., p. 162) Or, as “Some investigators have (...) been to conclude,” “the supposed ‘fixed demand’ of native laborers for money, or for the goods obtainable with money, is more than likely an erroneous inference drawn for the prevailing ‘fixed supply’ of money represented in low wages and the cheap-labor policy.” Moore, op.cit., p 82. Moore, however, while conducting an impressive survey that “(…) testifies to the importance of coercion and poverty as the effective circumstances for the initial transition from non-industrial to industrial [i.e., capitalist wage-] employments” (op.cit., p. 304), has reduced the problem to “attitudinal and structural barriers” on the part of the “non-industrial” sectors, leaving aside the very nature of these “industrial employments.” (op.cit., pp. 302-305.) This demand side is also completely overlooked in Evans, R., “Some Notes on Coerced Labor”, The Journal of Economic History, vol XXX (1970), pp. 861-866. For a relevant critique of the “preference for leisure” doctrine, see also Rottenberg, S, “Income and Leisure in an Underdeveloped Economy,” The Journal of Politic Economy , vol. LX, nº 2 (April 1952), p. 95-101. The demand side is introduced in Rottenberg’s analysis of the West Indian case by his demonstration that the supposed “preference of leisure” is peculiarly “confined, generally speaking, to the cane industry. (…) The explanation for the difference in willingness to work between sugar-cane-estate workers and other wage workers must therefore be sought in some factor other than aspiration for income and the goods for which income exchanges or intensity of desire for leisure.” From our previous knowledge of what it meant to be a sugar

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Section 4 -- The especificities of capitalist development in the form of “capitalist sectors”: some elements for analysis

The analysis presented so far has for purpose to present a rationai basis for an explanation of the particularly oppressive conditions that have been present in the development of “capitalist sectors” in the backward countries. The pervasiveness of the phenomenon in itself suggests the operation of forces of a genera1 character. We have tried to argue, on the basis of the evidence itself, that these specific features have been the result of equally specific features of the process of production of surplus labor in these capitalist sectors, namely, a manifest drive for “cheap labor” -- satisfied through a myriad of “mechanisms” -- as well as stringent working conditions. To say so is tantamount to concretize capitalist development in the periphery. For, as an author has pointed out: “The production of surplus value and its appropriation by capitalists are characteristic of all capitalist societies. This is therefore significant for the study and understanding of no particular society. Left propagandists often make this mistake: they present a general theory of capitalist economy and social classes based on the analysis of surplus value, and then proceed to try to understand some particular society on the basis of the general idea. (...). (...) Without going beyond a general formulation of surplus value theory, we have no basis for a theory of economy or history. (…).”135 The foregoing fundamental conclusion specifying the particular mode of surplus value production that has been reached on the basis of concrete analyses of several cases -including, as we shall see in the next chapters, the Brazilian “plantation system -- can not be attributable to a general theory of capitalist production; it can not, in other words, be shown to derive from a “general idea” of capitalism as a mode of production. This is for the reason that production of surplus value has not taken this specific form everywhere under capitalism -- production of relative surplus value being a most fundamental (alternative) basis for

worker in British Guiana, it is not difficult to accept, with Rottenberg, that “Other causes do, in fact, suggest themselves.” (op.cit., p. 100) 135 O'Connor, J., “The Theory of Surplus Value”, in The Corporations and the State (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 16-17.

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production of surplus value.136 To be sure, this latter alternative, stripped of the concrete

conditions under which it indeed has taken place can only become just another abstract, or “general idea”. We have seen how such a specific feature has implied, necessarily, a “labor problem” for these export sectors; how “labor shortage” should follow necessarily from the particular form assumed by the labor needs of these capitalist sectors, confronted as they have been with historically specific conditions regulating the supply of labor. To the extent that we emphasize the importance of the specific mode of production of surplus value for the explanation of the “labor shortage” and hence the extra-economic means devised for solving such a “labor problem”, we are also ipso facto denying that this evidence can be shown to derive solely from the needs of capitalist development conceived in its generality, and therefore also in its abstract form, i.e., in the form or a “general idea”. The problem becomes then to explain the specificities of the situation. It is not enough to point out the specific political conditions that were present in the development of these capitalist sectors; for these political conditions, while fundamental for the enforcement of the particularly oppressive conditions of production of surplus value, have, themselves, being created for this purpose; they are not, consequently, independent factors in the situation, however a premise -- and what a premise! --- they might have been for the several cases at hand. Although we consider such an issue -- i.e., what accounts for the particular form surplus value production has assumed -- of a complexity that goes beyond the self-imposed boundaries of this thesis, we shall present some tentative elements that may lead to a satisfactory theoretical solution to the problem. The starting point of analysis must be the most basic premise that those capitalist sectors should satisfy, as a sine qua non condition of existence: the capitals invested in one form op another -- be it in the form of slaves, sugar-processing machinery, and what not -should earn a profit rate, at least as nigh as the ruling rate of profit; preferably higher. In this sense, those capitalist sectors should fulfil their role in capital accumulation at the world level. Another way to put the same thing is to say that those capitalist sectors have arisen only to the extent that they have contributed for capital accumulation. It is in this precise sense that they are indeed capitalist sectors, despite the presence of obvious extra-economic 136

For the meaning of production of relative surplus value, as against (production of) absolute surplus value -the latter being the case in the evidence being discussed -- see Marx, Capital, vol. I, chapter XII.

means in the extraction of surplus labor.137

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The issue then becomes to show if there is any connection between this requirement of production and the specific features the process of production of surplus labor has taken. For we would have then a way to translate the drive for profits through expanded productions on those capitalist sectors -- and therefore the actions of the planters and other capitalists involved -- into a drive for a specific mode of producing surplus value, in the assumption that from their practical experience they would learn about this connection. The argument tnen would be as follows: in order to reproduce capital on an expanded scale incorporating the backward countries, surplus value should be produced in a determined manner; in other words, only on this condition production in those capitalist sectors could become part of the overall process of reproduction of capital, and consequently contribute to it. In this precise sense, we would say then that to produce surplus value in that specific mode would be a requirement for accumulation and hence profitability -- in those specific historical conditions. Such an hypothesis has indeed been advanced, emphasizing the determining role of the material conditions of production, in particular the technical conditions of production of necessaries. The hypothesis then would be that, given (1) the drive for accumulation in the historically specific conditions that gave ne to the “capitalist sectors” in the backward countries, and (2) the material conditions of production in the production of necessaries, production of surplus value had to assume the particular mode it has indeed assumed. Let us present this hypothesis.138 The key analitical insight is presented in the following passage: “The capitalist character of the export sector and its high productive level does not imply that the rate of surplus value is high. Such a rate, in effect, is determined in the first place by the value of labor power, and the value is not directly influenced by the productivity in the export sector, being determined instead by the material and social conditions of production of subsistence goods, in which the productivity of the export sector does not have any influence. To the extent that the value of labor power is high, the rate of surplus value of the export sector will be low, no matter its level of 137

A distinction should be made between merchant capital, industrial capital and finance capital. The question must be raised, then, as to whether the dominance of one form of capital or another -- and in what sense such a '1dominance" should be characterized -~ has to be made explicit as a condition for establishing really the connection between the mode of production of surplus value and capital accumulation. (This question bears, for instance, or the obvious role of merchant capital in the rise of the modern slave Systems.) 138 What follows draws heavily on Corten, A., “Valor de la fuerza de trabajo y formas de proletarizacion,” Revista Latinoamericana de Sociologia, 1974, nº. 1 (Nueva Epoca), pp. 45-64. For a broader theoretical discussion relevant to the subject here see Bettelheim, C., “Theoretical Comments”, in Emmanuel, A., Unequal Exchange (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), Appendix I, pp. 271-322.

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productivity.139 This situation allows us to define two fundamental features of the relations of production of the export sector. On the one hand, since no increase in relative surplus value can be obtained, the extraction of surplus value by capital can only take place by lengthening or intensifying the working day, i.e., increasing absolute surplus value, or by paying the labor force below [the value of labor power], super-exploiting it. (...). The super-exploitation and the increase in absolute surplus value have limits. The first one is of an absolute character: the physiological minimum of subsistence and the capacity of the worker to fatigue. (...) There are also relative limits, whenever the relations between the proletariat and the semi-proletariat arise. As exploitation becomes harshest, the population seeks to move to other sectors, in particular, to subsistence production. This new tendency leads, once more, to strengthen the social relations in which the semi-proletariat enlist itself (…).”140

Backwardness in the “subsistence sector”, therefore, to the extent that “necessaries” are still to a great extent produced there, would be a constant threat to the ability of the capitalist sector to extract surplus value, for inherent in these material conditions is the tendency for necessary labor to absorb the totality of labor time allocated in society; in the absence of transforming these technical conditions, this contradiction can only be solved by constantly limiting or reducing the size of B, the vector of subsistence goods of the worker (hence the drive for “cheap” labor); and by stretching to the utmost the time during which the worker is producing surplus labor -- i.e., produce absolute surplus value. The fundamental determining role of the material conditions of production in the “subsistence sector” must have become clear now. It must have become clear, also, how it is that the value of labor power “(…) is determined dialectically by the level of productivity of subsistence goods and by the class struggle.”141 The question then is what determines the material conditions of production of “necessaries”, i.e., what prevents them from being revolutionized, opening for the capitalist 139

This theoretical insight is indeed welcome. For by looking only at what is happening in the export sector, one could not but be puzzled by the great technical advances in sugar production, for instance -- both in the agricultural sphere proper as well as in the processing activities -- and yet the permanence of the drive for “cheap labor”. To have overlooked this fundamental theoretical insight may be the reason for the implicit (substantive) assumption that the capitalist sector could afford to attract labor from the subsistence sector by covering the opportunity cost of this labor (Lewis model); on the other hand, the abstraction of these specific material conditions in the backward countries has led, in the Marxist field, to the “unequal exchange” literature; see, e.g., Emmanuel, op.cit., and especially Bettelheim’s “Theoretical Comments”. 140 Corten, “Valor de la fuerza de trabajo ...”, p. 56. 141 Ibid., p. 46.

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sectors the possibility of producing relative surplus value. Here no abstract theory will do; if this happens, it is solely due to the concrete forms capitalist development has assumed in the backward countries. It is, therefore, not an abstract attribute of capitalism as a mode of production; it pertains to no “general idea”. The evidence presented in chapter II is suggestive of the nature of the phenomenon. Indeed, in the several cases surveyed, the development of the capitalist sectors have meant a definite encroachment upon the non-capitalist sectors, not only so that the best lands could become avail able for export production, but also -- especially in the cases of mines, say -- so that the needed labor power be “supplied”. It suffices to recall the formation of the Reserves in Africa, the “apathetic” situation of the peasantry in British Guiana, etc.; examples are abundant.142 The back ward countries were inserted in the worldwide process of reproduction of capita1 as “primary producers”, lot us say, of diamonds, sugar, coffee, etc.; the “capitalist sectors” were entrusted with the task of fulfilling this mission to begin with, and not in going to produce manioc, yams, maize, etc. The very fulfillment of this task, in the specific manner it has actually been carried out, led to the deterioration in the material conditions of production of “necessaries”, as part and parcel of the encroachment upon the non-capitalist sectors; as part and parcel of the process of “grafting” the social conditions necessary for this 142

See Corten’s brief discussion of the cases of Haiti and Dominican Republic. (op.cit., pp. 51-53). See also the impressive accounts of Rosa Luxemburg in her Accumulation of Capital (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), chs. XXVII-XXIX. From his studies of the Caribbean area, Mintz has drawn the conclusion that “Tout au long de cette histoire, le systeme de la plantation a presque toujourds beneficie de plus grands soutiens officiels que l’agriculture du petit proprietaire, et cette preference a affecte de maniere significative le jeu de ces differents modes d’ exploitation agricole. Il est dans la nature de l’economie de plantation, ou qu’elle se developpe -- et ceci est encore vraie dans une certaine mesure --, de s’attribuer les meilleures terres, de monopoliser toutes les resources utiles disponibles, et de retrecir la sphere de l’activite du petit proprietaire. Particulierement importantes dans la traditionelle domination de la plantation sur la petite agriculture sont les infiniment plus grandes facilites qu’elle a d’acceder au capital et les forces politiques qu’elle peut generalement engager dans sa lutte pour la suprematie regionale ou insulaire.” “Petits Cultivateurs et Froletaires huraux dans la Region des Caraibes,” Les Problemes Agraires des Ameriques Latines (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1967, pp. 93-94). See also Beckford, G. L., Persistent Poverty, Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972), where the author shows how the development possibilities of the peasant sector are frustrated by its weakness in the face of plantation dominance manifested in the distribution of landholding and in control over credit institutions, transport facilities, price and marketing structures, and so on. For a critique of Beckford’s important work, from a Marxist standpoint, as well as for the presentation or the case of Java, see Bernstein, H. and N. Pitt, “Plantations and Modes of Exploitation”, Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 1, nº. 4 pp. 514-526.

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process to develop. In this sense, “the material conditions of production of subsistence goods [are] related to the social conditions in which the peasants and laborers insert themselves in the process of production.” In other words, these material conditions become inseparable of these social conditions, and both “express the subordination of the precapitalist modes of production to the capitalist modes (…).”143 The capitalist sectors, therefore, establish the social and economic conditions necessary for profitable production in sugar, diamonds, etc.; once this is accomplished, and therefore backward country A becomes integrated in the reproduction of capital at the world level, by the same token yam or manioc or maize are expelled to marginal lands, with backward technique etc. (example: “provision grounds” under slavery). Such a situation determines necessarily an inner drive in the capitalist sectors towards production of absolute surplus value as well as super-exploiting labor; this tendency, however, would produce an attempt by the laborers to engage in subsistence production; but these very conditions under which such a production is carried out explain the reproduction of technical backwardness, and even a deterioration of the technique. The fact that capital does not move to the subsistence goods sector, once this duality has arisen and therefore be comes a visible phenomenon, is a very simple matter to explain, indeed a trivial one: it is just that the profit rate is higher in sugar, coffee, cacao, etc., than in manioc, yams, maize, etc. What is not trivial, however, is the very rise of this duality, and why there is its reproduction. The explanation has to be sought, as it was suggested above, in the particular set of social relations that arise and are reproduced as these capitalist sectors also arise and are reproduced. This means that only by focusing on these social relations can we locate any tendency for capital to revolutionize the technical conditions of production of necessaries by making them a field for industrial capital.144 In the absence of this revolutionizing, the capitalist sectors become able to be fields for capita1 accumulation only by adopting a distinctive solution: to produce absolute surplus value on the basis of the “mechanisms” we have surveyed. The essence of these mechanisms becomes now clear: their function would be to make available suited supply of “cheap” labor. To the very extent, however, that this “solution” leaves unaffected -- i.e., leads to the reproduction of -- the 143

Corten, “Valor de la fuerza de trabajo ...”, p. 46.

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technical conditions of production of “necessaries”, the continued existence and expansion of those capita1ist sectors is being constantly threatened by an inherent contradiction -- the source of a “labor problem”, only solved when the paradise of labor abundance becomes a historical reality (together with underdevelopment). It is against this theoretical perspective that one must under stand the recurrence, the permanence of the drive for “cheap” labor (Peru: slaves-coolies-enganchados; Guiana: slaves coolies; etc.) as expressed in the historical evidence and as manifested also in the Brazilian case, to be tackled from now on.

144

Corten has presented an example of such an analysis for the case of Haiti and Dominican Republic; see op.cit., pp. 59-63.

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CHAPTER V V. COFFEE AND LABOR SUPPLY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY BRAZIL

Introduction It is our purpose in this chapter to present a detailed account of the experience of the Brazilian coffee economy in the nineteenth century, focusing on the concrete means on the basis of which labor was supplied to such a capitalist sector. African slavery is shown, in part I, to have founded the development of this economy up to the 1880’s; while, in part II, we attempt to analyze the fundamental social and economic conditions that have allowed a fantastic expansion of coffee production, after abolition of slavery, in the face of constant or even falling real wages. (In this sense, we will speak of “development with an unlimited supply of labor”). An important additional historical evidence is provided, in this way, for the critique of the conception of capitalist development in the periphery of the world as a “spontaneous process,” following Arrighi. This is most clearly seen, before the 1880’s, not only by the enslavement of Africans as laborers, but, in addition, by the actual means land was taken away from corn, beans, etc., and “allocated” to coffee. Freedom of contract after abolition, it will be seen, was just an appearance, denied by the objective conditions of economic dispossession of free labor; the terms of such a “contract”, furthermore, were determined in a fundamental sense by a conscious immigration policy designed and implemented, directly or indirectly, by the planters themselves.

Part I The Slave-Based Period, 1820’s-1880’s

Section I – Coffee and expansion of the slave economy Coffee

production

expanded

continuously

economy, as can be seen in Table 1. Table 1

in

the

nineteenth

century

Brazilian

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Brazil: Coffee exports, 1821-1910

Source:

Period

Exports (thousands 60 Kg sacks)

Period

Exports (thousands 60 Kg sacks)

1821-1830 1831-1840 1841-1850 1851-1860 1861-1870

317.8 974.4 1,712.1 2,625.3 2,884.7

1871-1880 1881-1890 1891-1900 1901-1910

3,663.6 5,332.6 7,449.1 13,059.9

Anuario Estatistico do Brasil (1939), pp. 1381-82.

In areas where coffee production developed – located predominantly in parts of the provinces of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Minas Gerais slave labor had been, throughout the colonial period (1500--1822), relatively less important in their economies, where a population of free producers, in conditions of a relatively easy access to the land, carried out their economic activities geared, for the most part, to their own needs. Only in some apparently minor cases did coffee replace other slave-based production, as with sugar cane in Sao Paulo 145 . As coffee production established itself in these lands, so slave labor became more important, leading to an absolute as well as a relative increase in their slave population146 . In addition to this extension of the geographical area of s1ave-based production, coffee led to an increase in the slave population in nineteenth century Brazil, as can be seen in Table 2: the absolute increase reported. in the country as a whole, for the period 1823-1872, is to a great extent accounted for by the coffee provinces, this role of coffee becoming somewhat blurred in the cases of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro because in both provinces slave-based 145

An author has pictured the rise of the coffee economy in the province of Rio de Janeiro (Paraiba Valley) as a change from “wilderness to plantation”; see Stein, S., Vassouras, A_Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), Description of the forest zone of Minas Gerais, prior to the development of coffee production, is presented in Mercadante, P., Os Sertoes do Leste, Estudo de uma Regiao: A Mata Mineira (Rio: Zahar, 1973). The province of Sao Paulo is analyzed, on the basis of an 1818 registry of landholdings, in Canabrava, A. P., “A repartição da terra na capitania de Sao Paulo, 1818” Estudos Economicos, vol. 2, n°. 6, pp.77-130; for the particular case of Rio Claro, see Deen W., The Brazilian Plantation System in Rio Claro, 1820-1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming) pp. 7-15. The areas where sugar preceded coffee have been discussed in Petrone, M. T. S., A Lavoura Canavieira Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo: Difusao Europeia do Livro, 1968)

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activities had already developed in the colonial period (in areas other than the ones that were to become the coffee lands). The case of Sao Paulo, however, appears in full light. We can say with Furtado, therefore, that the coffee plantation “(...) establishes itself (...) bringing its own labor force (…);”147 from an economic point of view, inherent in this social form of coffee production, was a solution to its labor needs: on the basis of African slavery, this capitalist sector, rather than taking as given, outside itself, the conditions of labor supply and therefore founding its labor process and labor costs in consonance with

Table 2 Slave Population in Brazil by Provinces in the Nineteenth Century

Provinces

1823

Imperial Court Minas Gerais Rio de Janeiro Sao Paulo Bahia Pernambuco Sergipe Alagoas Paraiba Maranhao Parana Santa Catarina Rio Grande do Sul Others

n.a. 215 151ª 21 238 150 32 40 20 97 n.a. 3 7 174

N°. of slaves (thousands) 1872 1885 49 370 293 157 168 89 23 36 22 75 11 15 68 212

n.a. 226 218 128 158 66 20 22 16 48 5 8 49 36

1887 n.a. 191 162 108 77 41 17 15 9 n.a. n.a. n.a. 17

Total n°. Of slaves 1,148 1,511 1,000 638 n.a.-- not available ª Rio de Janeiro and Court Source: Graham, D. H. and S. B. Hollanda F°., Migration, Regional and Urban Growth and Development in Brazil: A Selective Analysis of the Historical Record 18721970 (Sao Paulo: IPE – USP,1971), p. 31.

these conditions -- constitutes, according to its needs, such a supply. This is accomplished to the extent that the enslaved laborer is made 146

For the data at the level of the municipios (counties) where coffee production developed, see Costa, E. V., Da Senzala a Colonia (Sao Paulo: Difusao Europeia do Livro, 1966), pp. 19-64, 148-153; in Rio Claro, for instance, the slave population rose from 500 in 1822 to almost 5,000 in 1884 see Dean, Rio Claro, p. 86;

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“[to go] wherever the master wanted, [to perform any activities that were attributed to him, [to dwell] wherever the master ordered, [to eat] whatever was given him, and what was even more important [to guarantee] a continuity, a permanence, that could not be expected from a free worker (...)”148 . Such a capitalist sector, therefore, managed to establish and expand production on the basis of an absolute control over labor; the significance of this fact must be perceived ni the light of the objective conditions of nineteenth century Brazilian Center-South, where free producers had an effective alternative of carrying out independent production149 .

Section 2 -- Structural aspects of the coffee economy The development of the coffee economy was not only thus based on a social mechanism by which the economic system was able to determine, in an absolute way, both the features of the labor process such as the working day, intensity of labor, etc., as well as the (social) cost of labor -- i.e., ΛIIΒ --; in addition, a latifundia system and a marginalization of the non-slaveholding, free population, seem to have been the general pattern wherever cooffee production developed in nineteenth century Brazil.

This general process has been pictured, in this way, for the case of Sao Paulo: “In general, in Brazil, the easy access to the land made possible the social adjustment of the poor man through his incorporation to rural groups relatively self-sufficient. In the Paulista region, whose settlement was rather widespread, and whose economy had been of little importance for a long period in Brazilian colonial history, these small population nuclei -- the bairros -- established and reproduced 147

“A Estrutura Agraria no Subdesenvolvimento Brasileiro”, in Analise do ‘Modelo’ Brasileiro (Rio: Civilizacao, 1972) p. 100. 148 Costa, Da Senzala, p. 28. 149 The transfer of slaves from decadent mining regions, as well as of free people -- potential masters or otherwise -- has been emphasized in the literature; see, e.g. Mercadante, P., op. cit., p. 92. Such a transfer, in view of slavery itself, did not require higher “wages” to the laborer, and therefore the economy’s labor costs had not to change the effect such a transfer. The crucial role of slavery in making possible this economic feature of nineteenth century Brazilian plantation system has been over-looked by Furtado in A Economia Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Editora A Noite, 1954), pp. 9l-92; instead, he ascribed coffee economy’s capacity to expand without increase in social costs of labor (i.e., necessary labor) to the exis tence, in Brazil, of a “large pool of labor resulting, from the previous colonial cycles,” without specifying clearly the social form of this labor, and the derived attributed as far as transferability is concerned.

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themselves, in a situation where the ecological conditions, the economc life, the culture and the social organization became integrated in terms of minimum standards of living, consistent with their autonomous functioning. This equilibrium was broken up and the corresponding life style disappeared as a possibility of peculiar social adjustment, with the development of the profitable exploitation of the land. In this manner, the independent petty producer disappears, being replaced instead either by the small landowner (sitiante), or by the morador (squatter) in alien lands. In this last case, the social category of the agregado is completely defined as it is consolidated the occupation of the land in the form of the large landholding and as commercial agriculture on the basis of slave labor expands”150 . Associated to the rise and reproduction of such a socio-economic structure, it must be pointed out, was a fundamental duality export production subsistence production. Indeed, one could argue that the marginalization of the petty producers was really an expression of the subordination of subsistence production. This hypothesis is suggested by the very fact that, while expelling the petty producers and their production of maize, beans, manioc, etc., to worse lands, so that the best lands could become available for the allpowerful coffee, the planters attributed to the slaves -- and certainly also the plantation’ worse lands --, the production of necessaries carried out within any plantation unit. This duality within the plantations sector seems to be just an extreme form of the pervasive duality export

production/subsistence

production

that

would

manifest

itself

socially

as

the

marginalization of the petty producers, on the one hand, and the hegemony of the planters on the other hand. Such a duality, and the uneven development of productive forces that follows from it, will become a permanent feature in the coffee economy, as it will be pointed out continuously in this chapter.151 150

Franco, M. S. C., Homens Livres na Ordem Escravocrata (Sao Paulo: Editora Atica, 1974), p. 91. For penetration general discussion of the subordinated insertion at petty producers in the plantation-dominated coffee economy in Sao Paulo, see Ibid, pp. 91-106. For the case of Vassouras, see Stein, Vassouras, pp. 6, 5758. A detailed analysis of the complete process developed in Rio Claro is presented in Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 130; Dean notices connection between their “being marginalized” as suppliers of commodities” -- expropriated as they were from their lands by the planters -- and their becoming “part-time suppliers of labor, in the condition of camaradas “a floating population of laborers”, “most obviously dispossessed”; see Ibid., pp. 27-30. In this subordinated position, some petty producers became the capangas,a private police, “elements of resistance in a ‘system of caution and vigilance’ against possible slave insurrection (…)” Stein, op.cit., p. 60. While pointing out that these petty producers within the coffee regions were “relegated to activities on the economic system of production and marketing of coffee”, “residual services that for the most part could not be carried out by slaves and did not interest men with wealth”, Franco emphasizes very much the fact that they did not constitute a source of surplus labor the plantations; see Homens Livres, pp. 14, 60. 151 “(...) the slave was expected to shift for himself or do without,” Dean, op. cit., p. 90. This theme of the duality subsistence production export production, and the systematic domination of the labor over the former, as a general feature of Brazilian agriculture, constitutes a recurrent issue in the writings of Caio Prado, Jr.; see, for instance, “Distribuição da Propriedade Fundiaria Rural no Estado de São Paulo,” Boletim Geografico, vol. III,

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For an analysis of these structural features, one must realize, first of all, that the coffee economy, rather than unique, seems to fit a general process whose pervasiveness has been suggested in the selected survey presented in chapter II.152 The need to make explicit the coffee economy’s relation to accumulation at the world scale – and hence the requirement of profitability – become evident once the generality of the process has been established.153 It is ultimately in the context of this relation, in other words, that the phenomena of expropriation of a land, consolidation of the latifundio, the purchase of slaves (and putting them to work), etc., acquired a definite meaning, had a rationale: these phenomena were merely aspects of the more basics process of setting-up, in a specific form, a profitable production for exports. This specific form included not only the extra-economic compulsion inherent in African slavery, but also the political means which the petty producers were expropriated from their lands in order that these lands could be taken away from maize, say, and be “allocated” to coffee.154 The interconnection between the political and economic spheres manifested itself in a striking form in the fact that the sesmaria system benefited generally men of wealth, capable therefore of holding slaves, establishing connections with financiers and traders, and consequently be responsible for the setting up of plantations155 . The power structure served, n°. 29 (August 1945); “Contribuicao para a Analise da Questao Agraria no Brasil,” Revista Brasiliense, n°. 28 (March/April 1960), pp. 165 ff.; “Nova Contribuicao para a Analise da Questao Agraria no Brasil,” Revista Brasiliense, n°. 43 pp. 11 ff.; and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universitv of California Press 1967), esp. pp. 148-194. One could notice, in passing, that the subordination of the production of necessaries seems to have been just a particular instance of the general subordination of nonexport production, the atrophy of the industrial sector being, of course, a distinctive feature of this economy, whose dynamics was given in its functioning hacia fuera (of itseif). 152 In addition to all the cases we have already discussed, one could mention the instance of the French and British Antilles, where na agricultural exploitation of the family type was quickly disloged in favor of slavebased sugar production. See Furtado, “A Estrutura Agraria …,” pp. 104-105. In the case of Virginia, tobacco was the crop involved, but the developments were the same. See Novais, F. A., “ Estrutura e Dinamica do Antigo Sistema Colonial (Seculos XVI-XVIII)” (São Paulo: Cadernos CEBRAP n° 17, 1973), p. 25. It may be interesting to notice that, for the U.S. South, “In every Census count from 181 to 1860, about forty-five percent of the population in the lower South were slaves. A large proportion of the white population – about two-thirds in 1860 – did not own slaves, and substancial number of these whites scratched a bare living from the land in a manner little different from the ‘self-sufficiency’ (that delightful euphemism for rural poverty) of farmers in the backward areas of the world today.” Rothstein, M,, “The Antebellum South as a Dual Economy: A Tentative Hypothesis,” in Genovese, E. D., ed., The Slave Economies (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973) vol. II, p. 160. 153 Dean has concluded that foreign capital played a key role in the setting-up of the coffee plantations in Rio Claro; see op. cit., pp. 50-54. 154 This interconnection has been very much emphasized by Dean, that recalls “In Sao Paulo, it has been asserted, ‘The latifundium dates only from the nineteenth century, with the cultivation of coffee’.” (op. cit., p. 71). For data on concentration of production in coffee in Rio Claro, see Ibid., 71-76. See also, in this matter, the data presented in Mello, P. C., “The Economics of Labor in the Coffee Plantations, 1850-1880,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975, Appendix A, pp. 8-12. 155 Dean has noted that in the case of Rio Claro, “(...) Except for the grant made to the Pereira clan, all were bestowed upon persons of considerable wealth, with positions in the militia or civil service, all of whom already

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therefore, to the reproduction of a given economic base, whose character was dictated in the relation with the international economy. On the other hand, given the property relations characteristic of a slave-based plantation system, the very cost-price relationships that were founded on slave labor implied to petty, non-slave production a competitive disadvantage, that would result solely on this account, rather than being a matter technical inefficiency156 . This competitive advantage of slave-based plantation production could only, in this turn, reinforce the economic and political hegemony on the planters, to the detriment of petty production.

Section 3 – Suppression of the African slave trade and internal slave trade While basing itself on slave labor, the coffee economy obtained a supply of this labor power both from other sectors -- as the decadent mining regions in Minas Gerais -- as well as from the African slave traffic. With the effective suppression of the African slave traffic in the early 1850’s, the coffee economy became restricted, for its needs of placement and expansion of the slave labor force, to an internal slave trade. The first source of this labor power was the Northeastern sugar plantations. According to one estimate, between 1852 and 1862, 34,688 slaves arrived by sea at Rio de Janeiro from the provinces of the Northeast; in the 1870’s this traffic was still continuing, which suggests that between 1850 and 1880, the Northeast provided 90,000 slaves to the coffee provinces.157 A second source of slaves to the coffee regions can be located in the CenterSouth itself; in Minas Gerais, for instance, the mining counties, in the period 1874-83, had their slave population decrease from 150,638 to 99,991, while the non-coffee counties in the owned plantations elsewhere (…)”. (op. cit, p. 16). Stein has stated, for Vassouras, that “(… The linking of land and slaves, the pillars of plantation society, was more than fortuituous; not only was slave labor indispensable in working the land, its ownership in adequate amounts had been a perquisite in obtaining the sesmaria from the Portuguese crown”. (op. cit., p. 55) More generally, Furtado has observed that “(…) in the condition that prevailed in the beginning of of occupation, land was a good of hardly any value. The establishment of the agromercantile enterprise depend mainly on financial capacity. It is understood, therefore, why the first land grants were given to men that had the means to leads the establishment of such enterprises. In this manner, the ruling class is formed, from the beginning, of economically powerful men (…) that invested considerable amounts in imported facilities and in slaves no less expensives (…)”. “ A Estrutura Agraria …”, p. 97. in this connection, another author has also observed that (…)”. Prado, Jr., C. Evolucao Politica do Brasil e outros Ensaios (Sao Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1957), p. 16. 156 The argument about economies of scale – in abstraction from social form acquired by the labor process under slavery – has an obvious difficulty, for the counter-example of Colombia is very significant. Dean, However, has pointed out the different types of coffee produced in Brazil and Colombia; see Rio Claro, p. 77. 157 Galloway, J. H., “The Last Years of Slavery on the Sugar Plantations of Northeastern Brazil”, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 52 (1972), p. 590. Stein refers contemporary estimates according to which the

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Rio de Janeiro province, similarly, went from 152,557 to 112,822 in the same period. The coffee counties in these provinces, as well as in Sao Paulo, have shown, however, a significant increase in their slave population in this period.158 The development of an active internal slave trade, while representing, a mechanism to satisfy the labor needs of the coffee plantations, was an expression of the fact that the production of coffee remained based of slave labor, despite the stoppage of the trade and the higher slave prices that followed159 . As it will be argued later, however, this permanence of slavery itself has been an option over some forms of free labor that were actually tried by planters in this period. If it is possible to argue that the suppression of the African slave trade did not mean immediately a “labor problem” for coffee production, one should have in mind, however, the long run of the stoppage of the trade, in view of the demographic patterns characteristic of the slave population in Brazil – the African slave traffic had always been indispensable for the labor needs (replacement and expansion) of the slave economy. A comparison with the United States helps to shed light on the situation in Brazil. While the Brazilian slave population remained constant, around 1,500,000, in the period 1798-1871, the slave population of the United States rew from about 700,000 to nearly 4,000,000 between 1790 and 1860; on the other hand, the total importation of slaves into the United States ha been estimated at 399,000 between 1701 and 1870, while the total number said to have been transported to Brazil is 3,646,800. In the period 1800-1860 alone probably 1,600,000 were imported into the country160 . In a word, not even mere reproduction was possible for the slave

supply of slaves from the Northeast “(…) compensated for the extinction of the traffic because ‘they began to work immediately in the fields’.” (op. cit., p. 65). 158 Conrad, R., The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) p. 29. The absolute increase in the slave population of the coffee provinces, and the concentration of slaves in these regions after 1850 is discussed in Costa, E. V., Da senzala, pp. 148-153, 203-208. In an important contribution to the issue, an author estimated that at least 5,000 or 6,000 slaves per year were traded into the coffee region between 1850 and 1870; on the basis of an analysis of historical records, he found that out of 978 slaves, 579 came from the Northeastern region and 136 came from non-specified ports north of Rio; see Klein, H. S., “The Internal Slave Trade in Nineteenth Century Brazil: A Study of Slave Importations into Rio de Janeiro in 1852”, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 51 (1971), pp. 565-85. In Rio Claro, Dean found also a growing importance of purchases from other provinces; see op. cit., pp. 91-97. 159 For the rise of the slave prices in the period 1850-1880 see Stein, Vassouras, p. 228; Eisenberg, “Abolishing Slavery …”, p. 583; Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 90-92. A systematic statistical analysis of several independent series of slave prices, for this period, is presented in Mello, “The Economics of Labor …”, pp. 58-77. 160 Conrad, op. cit., p. 26. Curtin estimates that between 1811 and 1860 a total of 1,145,400 Africans were imported into Brazil; cf. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 234. Stein presents a total of 371,615 for the period 1840-51; cf. op. cit., p. 25. Furtado, in Formacao Economica do Brasil (Rio: Fundo de Cultura Econômica, 19612), p. 135, estimates that the number of slaves in the early nineteenth century was around 1,000,000 and that in the first half of that century 500,000 slaves were

population in Brazil161 .

80

The stoppage of the African slave traffic, in its turn, was to a great extent exogenous to the Brazilian plantation sectors; ad as the second half of the nineteenth century unfolded itself, the centuries-old mechanism of labor control represented by African slavery showed itself increasingly problematic, as abolition was enacted, peacefully or otherwise, everywhere in the new World. In this broader context, a “ labor problem” was posed for the coffee plantations162 .

Section 4 – The “labor problem” and the “Land Law” of 1850 The planters’ perceptions of this “labor problem”, as well as the specific solutions sought for, became manifest in the discussions that led to the enactment of the “Land Law” of 1850. In the colonial period, land was property of the Portuguese Crown, and private property in land was a royal grant (a sesmaria). Land appropriated otherwise was said to be a posse; most of such posses, however, were appropriated by petty squatters163 . With independence in 1822, such a sesmaria system was abolished, leading the large-scale appropriation of land under the form of posses164 . The need of a “land law” became acute, as an author has keenly perceived: “The Imperial government could not go on indefinitely permitting the private engrossment of crown lands. Posse fundamentally denied the authority of the state. The crown had to be able to maintain its rights over public lands and -- even more probably imported into Brazil; these two estimates he contrasts with the 1872 (first) census, according to which 1,500,000 laves existed in Brazil. 161 A careful analysis of this lack of reproduction in the case of Rio Claro is presented in Dean, op. cit., pp. 103117. He stresses the high death rate, due to infant mortality, as well as a “regime of unremitting labor and vile living conditions (…).” (p. 117). Another author has tried to make this barbarous conditions of existence of the slaves a rational economic choice on the part of the planters; see Leff, N. H., “Long Term Viability of Slavery in a Backward Closed Economy”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. V, n° 1 (Summer 1974), pp. 103-108. Leff’s argument, however, is apparently circular, for he takes as dictating the planters’ decisions conditions supposedly to follow from their decisions themselves. 162 For discussions of the issues involved in this worldwide movement against slavery, led by the British, and in particular the British pressures on Brazil for suppressing the African slave traffic, see Conrad, op. cit., pp.20-23; Stein, op. cit., pp. 62-65; Costa, op. cit., pp. 30-43; Prado Jr., C., Historia Economica do Brasil (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1963), pp. 145-157; Bethell, L., The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Williams, E., Capitalism and Slavery (New York, 1966). For a classic statement of the coffee economy’s “lbor problem”, see Furtado, Formacao, chs. 21-24. 163 Dean, W., “Latifundia and Land Policy in Nineteenth Century Brazil, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol 51 (1971), pp. 606-625; Costa, E. V., “The Brazilian Land Law of 1850 and the Homestead Act of 1962: A Comp arative Study”, paper presented at the LASA meetings, Madison, 1973; Caldeira, C., Origens e Evolucao da Propriedade da Terra no Brasil”, mimeo., n.d., pp. 39-42. 164 “(...) squatting became the onlv form of obtaining land. This created an anarchical situation in the system of land property, since the rights of the squatters were not recognized by law (...)”. Costa, “The Brazilian Land Law ...”, p. 8.

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important it had to establish a legitimate means of a1ienating them. If most of the land in private hands was illegally acquired, then how was the state to guarantee any individual’s property rights? If the state recognized the validity of none of these claims, it would have no basis for arbitrating disputes, and inevitably, they would be settled violently. ‘Lamentably, in the interior killings are almost always the result of claims and disputes over lands’, Carneiro da Cunha dared remark in the 1850 debates, provoking considerable nervousness in the Chamber. (...) (...) “The absence of a legal means of establishing title, then, undermined the authority of government, divided the landowning class, and gave practice to the landless in the employment of weapons against their social superiors”165 . In addition to providing state’s defense of the private property rights, however, the land law was conceived as an instrument for the solution of the “labor problem” face by the planters. In the proposal drawn up in the Council of State in 1842, Wakefield’s “systematic colonization” was a key objective166 . “It provided that henceforth crown lands could be alienated only by sale, at prices to be set deliberately above the market value. The purpose was to create a self-sustaining system for the introduction of European farm workers. The immigrants would be unable to buy land upon arrival because of its high price. They would therefore be obliged to work for a time on the plantations. The income received through the eventual sale of crown lands would be used to subsidize further immigration, thus maintaining the flow of field hands and preserving the existence of the plantations. “(...) [Wakefield] saw that cheap land diverted laborers from the great estates, forced up the price of labor, and made it necessary for the great landowners to import slaves. (...) “The proposal of the Council of State was presented to the Chamber of Deputies in June 1843. Rodrigues Torres, as its sponsor, declared its purpose: ‘We want to keep free workers, who come to us from other parts of the world, from being able to arrive in Brazil and, instead of working for the land-owners for some time at least, … finding crown land immediately’”167 . 165

Dean, “Latifundia...”, pp. 610-11. Wakefield, see Marx, Capital, vol. I. ch. XXXIII; Pappe, H. O., “Wakefield and Marx”, Economic History Review, vol. IV (1951), n°. 1, pp. 88-97. 167 Dean, “Latifundia ...’, pp. 613-14. Costa (“The Brazilian Land Law …”), after describing the bill’s provisions and the Parliamentary’ s debates, concludes (p. 12) that “Underlying all these particular arguments, the bill’s supporters all insisted, was the fact that the law would create conditions under which the planter could obtain free labor to replace slaves, whose supp1y was threatened by the imminent interruption of the slave trade. It is obvious that, for them the law was designed to help solve the agonizing problem of manpower.” 166

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While the deputies, “with few exceptions,” agreed with the ministry’s view that the “problem vias to increase the supply of labor for the plantations, there were two contradictions that made such a Wakefieldian scheme only a planters dream. First of all, European immigrants would not necessarily have to come to Brazil, in the terms supply to the planters. The United States “was emerging as an economic success, attractive to the landless European immigrant. The Marques de Abrantes, returning from Europe in 1846, gave the reasons behind the reticence of Europeans in embarking for Brazil: the indignity of working alongside field slaves, the tropical fevers, the possibility of ruination or death in a rebellion. Only one incentive could effectively counterbalance these real disabilities -- cheap land”168 . Secondly, under such a scheme land appropriation, after all, would become very expensive, while “The arrangement which best suited the possessors of sesmarias would be unconditional revalidation without any formalities. Those who were engaged in absorbing more posses desired no new law at all. They would simply insist upon the recognition of squatter’s rights. These claimants were squatters in the Australian usage, latifundists on a scale even beyond that of the sesmaria holder, and unrestrained by any legal obligation to cultivate their claims (...)”. It is no wonder, then, that in the final bill, signed into law on September 18, 1850, “The Wakefieldian scheme (...) was completely abandoned”169 . After all, the manner land actually vias appropriated was so interlocked with the socio-economic structure of the country that a land policy could no more than “(...) facilitate appropriation of land by the large plantation owners, to the detriment of squatter families. (…)”170 . Consistent with this, the law reserved to the petty squatters fine and imprisonment up to six months, and Dean notes that “The support for this clause, in contrast to the other, suggests that it was intended to be applied against the backwoods ‘intruders’ on private lands, not against the great squatters on crown 1ands”171 . Although the final bill had it stated that crown land was to be alienated only by sale, it should be no surprise, however, that “land continued to be acquired by squatting under the cover of forged documents.”172

168

Dean, “Latifundia ...”, p. 617. Ibid., pp. 608, and 618. 170 Leff, N., “Economic Retardation in Nineteenth Century Brazil,” The Economic History Review, August 1972, p. 491. 171 Dean, “Latifundia ...”, p. 616. 172 Costa, “The Brazilian Land Law ...“, p. 30 n. 40. 169

83

Section 5 -- Experiences with free labor and “retreat” to slave labor, 1850-1888

A concrete experience with free labor that has received much attention in the literature may be taken here as an additional evidence of the specific kind of labor being demanded by the coffee plantations. The experiment took shape in the early 1850’s, and in its beginning it seemed as if an alternative labor system had been found by the planters; as it turned out, however, deep contradictions soon developed, and by the end of the 1850’s it was already a failure, with the coffee planters “retreating” to slave labor173 . In the discussion of this issue, one must point out, in a preliminary way, that, side by side with this experiment, the planters still had the option of African slavery, what means that the economic system had thus determined a maximum rate of time wages -- or, alternatively, minimum rate of profits -, as well as specific social forms of the labor process. Any other labor systems, in other words, should compare favorably with slavery; otherwise it would not be adopted by the planters. The scheme was very simple: the Government either lent finance or gave subsidies for the importation of European colonists174 ; upon arrival in Brazil they were distributed to the coffee plantations, where they were supposed to cultivate and harvest a given number of coffee trees. They were paid, for this work, half of the not profits on frio harvested coffee; as against this credit, they had for debts their transportation expenses not only to Brazil but also to the interior, plus interest, as well as the cost of their subsistence in the first year in the “colony.” Within such a system of debt peonage, the planter had guaranteed the profits on the capital represented by the coffee trees, with the immigrant sharing in the risks of climate and price vagaries; since the immigrant could move from the plantation only after paying his accumulated debts, he was compelled to allocate the maximum of his labor time -- including his family’s -- in such a way so as to earn the most cash income and simultaneously spend the least possible; he could do that in the cultivating and harvesting of coffee, on the one hand, and in the production of necessaries on the other hand, both for own-consumption and sale; these latter activities he developed on a plantation173

The most critical discussion of this important experience is to the found in Dean, Rio Claro, Ch. IV; see also Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 78ff.; Holanda, S. B., “Prefacio do Tradutor, ‘ in Davatz, T., Memorias de um colono no Brasil: 1850 (Sao Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1972), pr. Xv-xlv; Davatz, op. cit.; Hall, M. M., “The Origins of Mass Immigration in Brazil, 1871-1914 Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1969, pp. 11-27; Holloway, T. H, “Migration and Mobility: Immigrants as Laborers and Landowners in the Coffee Zona of Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1886-1934,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974, pp. 73-79. 174 Dean, in Rio Claro, p. 170, was probably the first to point out the European background for this immigration to Brazil -- i.e., the “potato failure;” the subsidies’ policy, moreover, would allow the poorest to come.

84

assigned plot. Since the labor time allocated to coffee, and the corresponding rate of pay, would be determined by the alternatives the immigrant had in the production of necessaries, it becomes apparent that for the planter, and his coffee, the size and the quality of the plot assigned to the colonist was of key importance the duality export production subsistence production, once more, invades the plantation sector itself, in a manner now consistent with the freedom of the laborer175 . To the extent, however, that this restriction of the development possibilities of the subsistence sector implied the socio-economic subordination of the immigrants that could very easily be turned into debt peons --, this economic logic of the p1antation had to face their resistance176 . They could see the whole thing as a trap, and a process of organizing seen developed among the “colonists”, culminating, in February of 1857, in the so-called “uprising” of Ibicaba, the “model-colony” of the experiment177 . Three years later, in 1860, throughout Sao Paulo still “vegetated” twenty-nine colonies; in 1870 their number had been reduced to thirteen178 . While reinforcing slavery, despite the slaves’ higher prices, the coffee planters, in the aftermath of the “uprising,” turned the surviving free labor systems still into more oppressive forms;179 contrary to what has been commonly propagated, one must say, with Dean, therefore, that “(...) The plantations of the Paulista West (...) were at the same time the most progressive and the most retrograde sector of Brazilian society.”180 175

Interestingly enough, the Bahian sugar planters were trying similar experiments with free labor: the colonos were asked to plant cane on a certain amount of acreage, to be ground on the plantation mills; in addition, they should not engage in commercial activities with outside traders. Finally, the size of the plot would depend only on the number of working-age colonos, regardless of the size of family. See Pang, Eul-Soo, “Bahia’s Planter Elite and Their Attempt to Modernize Agricultura, 1842-1889,” mimeo., Vanderbilt University, 1974, pp. 1819. 176 Dean, in Rio Claro, has tried to argue that in the “sharecroppinq system” “the typical family was able to free itself of debt within a reasonable period” (p. 175); the prospects for advancement were good (pp. 179-480). On the other hand, after estimating that the investment per family by the planter would yield 20 percent (pp. 182183), Dean concludes for the feasibility oh “liberalizing thee terms of the contracts,” and therefore for the economic viability of the system. All these calculations, of course, were based on the very conditions that led to the “uprising,” so that one wonders about their relevance in an analysis of the contradictions inherent in the “sharecropping system”. What is “feasible”, or “reasonable”, of course, must not be decided by an alien party, as the planters themselves taught Dean, by refusing to satisfy the demands of the workers, seeking, instead, the use of force. “(...) The government, however, (...) refused to apply the massive force that would be required, and the planters retreated to the employment of slaves.” (p. 183). 177 The colonists’ movement is described vividly by Davatz, the colonists’ leader, that was finally expelled from Brazil, as an “agitator.” The various European governments involved soon barred further immigration to Brazi1. See Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 93-94. 178 Holanda, op. cit., pp. xxxix-x1. See also Eisenberg, P. and M. Hall, “Labor Supply and Immigration in Brazil Comparison of Pernambuco and Sao Paulo,” paper present at the LASA meetings, Madison, 1973, p. 110; Holloway, op. cit., p. 78; Prado Jr., Historia Economica, p. 192. 179 For the evolution, for thc worse, of the experiments, with free labor, see Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 190-203; a somewhat rosier picture, however, is presented in Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers,” pp. 79-87. 180 Rio Claro p 05. On the “retreat” to slave labor and its predominance in coffee production to the last minute, see Ibid., pp. 201-2; Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 148-53; Mello, “Economics of Labor ..., Appendix A, pp. 17-19.

85

It is interesting, in passing, to refer the implications, for the country’s immigration policy, of the labor needs of the plantations. To the scarcely attractive opportunities of employment and socio-economic advancement in a slave-based plantation system, the planters added all their power to prevent any other kind of immigration but to solve their labor needs. “(...) They insisted that any immigration scheme must force the Europeans to contract their labor to them rather than expend it (sic) on their own land in the West. Nicolau Vergueiro, a shrewd and wealthy merchant-planter of Sao Paulo who began experimenting with Portuguese colonists in 1842,181 expressed this desire under the guise of altruism. Crown lands available for small holding were necessarily (sic) frontier lands, where the inexperienced European family would be without transportation to market and without capital to begin cash-cropping. Let the colonists; be placed on the plantations instead, he advised. There they would learn local farming techniques, and would accumulate working capital, eventually to buy a plot of their own from the plantation owner. (...)”182 . At the same time the planters sought alternative solutions to their “labor problem.” Extensive discussions and concrete measures were taken both by the Federal and Provincial governments to initiate the large-scale immigration of “contract labor” from China into Brazil. The experiences; of the Caribbean sugar plantations (including Cuba), and Peru were often mentioned as good examples of a hard-working, cheap labor force. As late as 1883, negotiations were under way to establish the means for large-sca1e importation of the Chinese; the British pressure, however, as well as domestic reaction against a form of perpetuating slavery disguised as a “transition” to free labor are mentioned as causes of the failure of this “solution;” the fact, nevertheless, That an alternative source of labor power for the plantations was soon found cannot be sufficiently emphasized183 .

Section 6 -- Free Brazilian population and “labor shortage” for coffee

181

Vergueiro was a Senator, and, being a planter in Limeira (Sao Paulo), also had a Company that used the Government’s money (voted in the Parliament with his and other planters’ representatives’ votes, of course) in order to import the European “colonists.” The so-called “uprising” took effect, precisely, in one of his fazendas (Ibicaba). 182 Dean, “Latifundia ...”, p. 613. See also Conrad, op. cit., pp. 34-35; Hall, “The Origins of Mass Immigration …”, pp. 4-11. An interesting discussion of the imperial Governments policy of “settings colonization” is presented in Prado Jr., Historia Economica, pp. 137-190. 183 Elias, M. J., “Os debates sobre o trabalho dos Chins e o problema da mao de obra no Brasil durante o seculo XIX”, Anais do VI Simposio Nacional dos Professores Universitarios_ de Historia (Sao Paulo, 1973), pp. 697713; Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 140-44.

86

In the arras where coffee developed, we have already pointed out, a previous subsistence economy was dislodged and the petty producers “that did not want to become depend on the agro-mercantile enterprise, were forced to go to more distant lands, without immediate commercial interest. These lands would probably be reached some time later by the moving coffee fronts. (…)”184 . It would appear that in view of these precarious socio-economic conditions of the petty producers, the slave-based plantation system should find in the petty production sector a so-called “labor reservoir,” but this does not seem to have been the case: even the “agregados” and other social categories whose existence depended completely upon the planter -- destituted from the ownership of the means of productions as they were --, did not seem to have constituted a source of labor power.185 The analysis of this problem must start by focusing on the concrete conditions of wage employment that characterized the slave-based coffee economy. As it has already been printed out, the slave-master relation, to the extent that it is dominant, becomes of necessity a pattern for the other labor systems, determining therefore, not only a maximum rate of time wages that becomes actually the ruling rate of wages but, in addition, the features of the labor process such as the working day, intensity of labor, etc, enforced, furthermore, in a specifically authoritarian way (“seigniorial mentality”). Because these concrete -- and barbarous -- condition; of wage employment in the plantations are usually left outside the discussion, the absence of a “spontaneous” labor supply on the part of the free Brazilian population to the coffee plantations is commonly imputed to misleading factors. Thus, lack of an “efficient transport system,” or the bigness of the country and the consequently “thinly distributed” subsistence sector would make “recruiting” difficult or expensive; the subsistence sector would he characterized by a social organization that “tied” the roceiro; etc.186 All these explanations, evidently, take for granted the very character of the wage employment of the plantations. To the planters, of course, such an uncritical perspective was a matter of class’ interests, that could not but take expression in an ideological form: “The prevailing opinion was that of the incapacity of the national labor of keeping a continuous activity. It was common to 184

Furtado, “A Estrutura Agraria ...”, p. 101. Franco, Homens Livres, p. 14. 186 For an interesting critical discussion of those points, see Werneck, R. L. F., “Unsuccessful Export-Led Development: The Brazilian Coffee Economy (1820-1913),” discussion paper, Harvard University, Spring 1974, pp. 20-23. 185

87

characterize him by his aversion to work and his natural idleness. Loiterer, idle, these were the attributes that are repeated at all times and places. This is the thought of the majority of the plantations’ representatives at the Agricultural Congress of 1876. Explanations for this fact were sought in the climate, in the lack of education of the people, in a matter of mentality, as if laziness were a national vocation.187 “‘Work’, scoffed deputy Manuel Antonio Galvao; ‘You want to oblige these simpletons to work? Are these the people the noble deputy is very seriously going to talk political economy to, inviting them to pick up a hoe and go to work? For them there are many forests, full of fruit and game …’”188 “(...) Millions were idle, reported a planter delegation to the agricultural Congress of 1878 at a time when declining slavery had. sparked a new interest in the indigent and unemployed Brazilian. Millions lived in partial or complete barbarity, rarely working because they were accustomed to deprivation and misery. ‘Six million persons,’ wrote an inquiring French defender of Brazilian slavery about 1881, ‘are born, vegetate and die without having served their country. ‘The back-landers were completely unemployed, said another foreigner in 1883 with a touch of scorn, ‘beyond being possessors of redlined ‘ponchos’ and guns to slaughter little birds with.’”189 The translation of the planters’ words into academic jargon, saying that the petty producers “(...) had a very low level of aspiration which in turn made them consider relatively small the marginal utility which could be derived from additional income,”190 is of course entirely fallacious, for it supposes that the petty producers had been effectively offered the alternative of more work “in exchange” for a higher income; where was this alternative? In their backward production? Or, within the slave-based plantation? All these attempts to locate in the petty production sector itself, disconnected to the plantation sector, the reasons for a lack of supply of free labor to the plantations must fail for the simple reason that petty production --and therefore the “subsistence economy” in itself constituted an alternative to the plantation wage labor in its concrete form; to engage in petty production was a refusal, not “to earn additional income in exchange for leisure, but to enter into slave-like relations, at the corresponding rates of pay. 191 The petty producers subjective perceptions, “preferences”, etc., became organically related to the objective world -- for instance, they presupposed the slave, the master, the fazenda, etc.:

187

Costa, Da Senzala, p. 128. Dean, “Latifundia “, p. 613. 189 Conrad, R., Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, p. 739. 190 Werneck, “Unsuccessful Export-Led Development pp. 24-25. 191 This same conclusion has been reached by Dean, when he says that “The plantations were less attractive to the rural propertyless population than the alternative of squatting on still unclaimed land (...).“ op cit., p. 340. 188

88

“[For the petty producers] to work in a fazenda, in the situation of camarada, was the same as to accept [their] degrading to the condition of a slave.”192 “[The camarada] perceived the intention of the plantation owners to adapt him to unremitting toil in the groves (…).”193 To the extent that this perspective is brought to the problem, one may see, furthermore, that the mere fact of “abundance” of land cannot account for the absence of a labor supply to coffee. Such an “abundance” becomes relevant, first of all, only because the alternative is “to work in a fazenda, in the situation of camarada.” If it is true that “abundant land” opened a possibility for a free producer not to become a camarada, the realization of this possibility, however, was an expression of a social relation; it presupposed the other, the plantation.194 It was only to the extent that “abundant land” made possible independent, petty production, as an option to the plantation, that it became a factor in the explanation of the “shortage of labor.” The study of the concrete conditions of access to the land by the petty producers, not only in the coffee regions themselves, but also within the itinerant subsistence production in the frontier and in areas outside plantation activity, becomes, however, very difficult because, having been petty production in actual reality a subordinated sector, its written history has been equally poor.195 Part II The Colono System in Coffee, 1884-1914: A Critical Discussion

Section 1 -- Expansion of production and European Immigration As can be seen in Table 3, coffee exports in the 1910’s reached a level three times as high as in the 1880’s. Since the coffee tree starts bearing fruit only after the fourth year, it 192

Costa, Da Senzala, p. 128. Dean, Rio Claro, p. 29. 194 “Abundance” must be left in quotes, for as the plantations appropriated the land, nothing “free” was left. As to the march of the subsistence economy to the frontier, again it presupposes the plantations and their monopo1ization of the best lands. 195 As a distinguished exception, see Candido, A., Os Parceiros do Rio Bonito (Sao Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1971). In this study, a persistent subordination of petty production -- and the petty producers -- to plantation production is characterized by the author in its several forms, and periods; what is important to learn, however, is the equally persistent attempt by the petty producers to reproduce their petty production and therefore remain independent from the plantation. In another very useful work, a concrete case of petty production is carefully analyzed, including a process of proletarization of the petty producers; see Garcia, L. F., “O Sertao de Itapecerica,” in Les Problemes Agraries des Ameriques Latines (Paris: Centre National de la 193

89

becomes clear that the expansion began in the late 1880’s, and especially in the 1890’s. As the last column shows, relatively high prices prevailed during this period of expansion of productive capacity. In such a conjuncture of favorable prices, the expansion of coffee was carried out on the basis of a new social form of labor, as the colono system replaced, virtually over-night, African slavery. In addition, this great expansion came after important improvements had been introduced in the means of transportation and in the processing activities.196 Together, these social and technical changes must have affected the conditions of Supply of coffee, adding therefore to the favorable market situation. 197

Recherche Scientifique, 1967), pp. 288-292. For a merely descriptive, but nevertheless usefulwork, see also Muller, N. L., Sitios e Sitiantes no Estado de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo: Universidae de Sao Paulo, 1951). 196 Detailed discussions of the “1eap” from a primitive pack mule system to the age of the railroad are presented in Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 154-176; Franco, Homens Livres, pp. 60-61; Stein, Vassouras, pp. 91-110; Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 63-68. Technical advances in the post-harvest processing of coffee are described in Costa, Da Senzala, pp. 178-188. 197 For an historical analysis of the coffee market, including the period focused above, see Delfim Netto, A., “O problema do cafe no Brasil,” in Ensaios sobre cafe e desenvolvimento economico (Rio de Janeiro: IBC, 1973).

90 Table 3 Brazil – Coffee Exports Year

Volume (1,000 bags)

Value (in contos)

Value (in 1,000 gold sterling) 11,604

Price (in gold sterling)

1881

3,660

126,134

1882

4,081

1883

6,687

104,753

9,553

2.34

122,643

10,817

1.61

1884

5,316

130,083

11,681

2.29

1885

6,238

152,434

13,140

2.10

1886

5,436

124,792

9,671

1.77

1887

6,075

186,925

14,543

2.39

*1887

1,694

74,411

6,958

4.10

1888

3,444

103,205

10,857

3.15

1889

5,586

172,258

18,953

3.39

1890

5,109

189,894

17,850

3.49

1891

5,373

284,167

17,561

3.26

1892

7,109

441,443

22,028

3.09

1893

5,307

452,326

21,712

4.09

1894

5,582

499,615

20,884

3.74

1895

6,720

543,336

22,385

3.33

1896

6,744

524,338

19,663

2.91

1897

9,463

525,682

16,506

1.74

1898

9,267

465,664

13,830

1.49

1899

9,771

470,993

14,459

1.48

1900

9,155

484,342

18,889

2.06

1901

14,760

509,598

23,979

1.62

1902

13,157

409,841

20,327

1.54

1903

12,927

384,298

19,976

1.47

1904

10,025

391,587

19,958

1.99

1905

10,821

324,681

21,421

1.98

1906

13,966

418,400

27,616

1.97

1907

15,680

453,764

28,559

1.82

1908

12,658

368,285

23,039

1.82

1909

16,881

533,870

33,475

1.98

1910

9,724

385,493

26,696

2.74

1911

11,258

606,529

40,401

3.58

1912

12,080

698,371

46,558

3.85

1913

13,268

611,690

40,779

3.07

3.17

*Second semester. Source: Anuario Estatistico do Brasil, 1939, 1940, compiled by Graham, D. H., “Migracao Estranqeira e a Questao de Oferta de Mao-de-Obra no Crescimento Economico Brasileiro -- 1880-1930,” Estudos Economicos, vol. 3 (1973), n° 1, pp. 23-24.

91

This increase in the coffee exports came predominantly from Sao Paulo, where the “frontier” and “mature” coffee zones were located; there alone, also, arose the colono system.198 This labor system seems to have developed very quickly, its design and implementation having taken place at a time when the abolitionist process seemed to be irreversible, production.

destroying

199

entirely

the

economic

and

financial

basis

of

slave-based

On the other hand, it so happened that at the time abolition was officially

decreed (1888) -- sanctioning a de facto situation -- the planters seemed to have already initiated the large-scale introduction of “colonos” in coffee. “During 1887, the crucial year of the labor crisis, it became evident that Sao Paulo, largely because of the provincial government’s importation scheme, was so well-supplied with immigrants that slaves were no longer essential to its continued prosperity. Slavery was becoming, in fact, something of a menace to the planter class because of the disorder accompanying its collapse.”200 Table 4 shows the significant increase in European immigration to Sao Paulo, beginning in the late 1880’s, and its impact in the total immigration to Brazil. The timing and size of the immigration inflow has been shown to follow closely the labor needs of coffee, expanding in periods of booming prices and contracting in periods of depression.201 In addition, it has been estimated that the amount of labor supply associated with this immigration alone has exceeded the labor needed for cultivation and harvesting of coffee, leaving a substantial margin for expansion of coffee-producing trees, in such a way that “after the first years of rapid expansion, the plantations could not have continued to absorb the inf low of manpower had there not been a con-current high rate of labor turnover and migration of workers or of the coffee area.”202

198

For the absence of colonos in the old coffee zones in the Paraiba Valley, see Stein, Vassouras, pp. 250-76. On the basis of state records of destination of immigrants, Holloway has shown that “The economically stagnant Paraiba Valley received only a handful [of them].” “Immigrants as Laborers,” p. 245. 199 “(…) The final blow to the planters was the refusal by banks and private lenders to accept slaves as loan collateral. The last mortgage in Rio Claro based on slave property was dated Dec. 17, 1886.” Dean, Rio Claro, p. 242. A sharp decline in slave prices in the period 1881-1887, in the face of relatively constant hire rates has been established by Mello, op. cit., ch. V, such a result, as the author argues, is to be expected in a situation where slavery is in a process of social disintegration, losing its legitimacy, becoming economically “moribund”. The role of the slaves themselves in this process has been emphasized, for the case of Rio Claro, by Dean (Ibid., ch. 5), in an important contribution to the growing literature on the subject, whose treatment, however, is beyond the boundaries of this work. 200 Hall, “Origins of Mass Immigration ...”, pp. 109-110. Similar conclusions have been reached by Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers ...”, pp. 157-164 and Conrad, op. cit., pp. 257-262; while acknowledging that the planters had “weathered the storm, Dean stresses, however, that “It was not (...) until slavery was already in collapse in Sao Paulo that measures were taken by the planters to replace their field labor.” Rio Claro, p. 271. 201 Holloway, op. cit., pp. 169-175. 202 Ibid., p. 225; for the presentation of the analysis that led to this conclusion, see Ibid., p. 248-258.

92

Table 4 Immigration to Brazil and Sao Paulo, 1882-1914 Year

Total Immigration to Brazil

Foreign Immigration to Sao Paulo

1882

29,589

2,743

1883

34,015

4,912

1884

24,890

4,868

1885

35,440

6,500

1886

33,486

9,534

1887

130,056

32,112

1888

133,253

91,826

1889

65,246

27,664

1890

103,474

38,291

1891

216,110

108,688

1892

86,203

42,061

1893

134,805

81,755

1894

60,985

44,740

1895

167,678

136,142

1896

158,132

94,987

1897

145,778

94,540

1898

78, 100

42,674

1899

54,529

28, 367

1900

40,300

21,038

1901

85,306

70,348

1902

52,204

37,831

1903

34,065

16,553

1904

46,164

23,761

1905

70,295

45,839

1906

73,672

46,214

1907

67,787

28,900

1908

94,695

37,278

1909

85,410

38,308

1910

88,564

39,486

1911

135,967

61,508

1912

177,387

98,640

1913

192,683

116,640

79,232

46,624

1914 Source:

Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers …,” p. 168.

93

A policy of subsidization of the immigrants’ transportation costs has been crucial for such a result. On this premise, any increase in the demand for labor was translated (...) into increased funding for the recruitment, transport and distribution of workers.”203 These subsidies’ relative financial weight can be appreciated by the fact that the provincial authorities contracted a loan in London in 1888, whose sum of 7,000 contos (£749,000), “represented almost twice the annual revenues of the Sao Paulo government”. About three fourths of the Sao Paulo regular budget for the years 1887-88, in addition, were devoted to subsidizing immigration.204 The role of the Sao Paulo budget, while of importance in the first years of the program, was soon taken over by the Federal government, as the Paulista planters occupied the key cabinet posts.205 Table 5 shows both governments’ expenditures with this policy.

203

Holloway, op. cit., p. 172. Eisenberg and Hall, “Labor Supply and Immigration …,” p. 12. 205 For detailed discussions of the role of the planters in devising and, on the basis of their political power, implementing such a policy, first through a provincial government-financed, planter-run, association (the Sociedade Promotora de Imigracao), then through the state government itself, and finally involving the Federal government, see Hall, op. cit., pp. 81-115 and Holloway, op. cit., pp. 126-152. 204

94

Table 5 Subsidies to Immigration in Brazil, 1885-1913 Amount in £ Sterling Year

Federal Gov.

Sao Paulo Gov.

Total

1885

80,430.78

28,343.82

180,774.01

1886

160,619.27

88,172.13

194,179.40

1887

251,734.00

299,447.62

551,181.62

1888

405,395.21

304,383.88

709,779.09

1889

703,153.53

17,541.18

720,694.71

1890

327,322.21

83,918.70

411,240.91

1891

1,224,275.18

37,382.66

1,281,657.84

1892

346,374.96

75,565.31

421,940.27

1893

301,319.60

180,554.46

481,874.06

1894

99,067.25

51,318.40

150,385.65

1895

339,878.38

301,398.25

641,276.63

1896

679,561.38

175,406.26

854,967.64

1897

30,887.30

190,619.57

221,506.87

1898

40,485.88

82,039.20

122,525.08

1899

7,942.15

70,607.19

78,549.34

1900

75,213.94

44,685.92

119,899.86

1901

203,601.51

213,326.18

416,927.69

1902

6,953.19

104,444.84

111,398.03

1903

6,465.11

11,882.60

18,347.71

1904

9,616.73

34,001.00

43,617.73

1905

12,863.59

210,056.91

222,920.50

1906

14,144.17

176,027.37

190,171.54

1907

90,363.36

105,180.15

195,543.51

1908

644,364.02

126,363.15

770,727.17

1909

1,000,350.24

164,787.66

1,165,137.90

1910

209,943.90

1911

240,512.47

1912

400,489.20

1913

441,129.34

Source:

Grahem, “Migracao Estrangeira …,” p. 35.

95

Table 6, on the other hand, leaves no doubt as to the relationship between the upsurge in the immigration into Brazil and the subsidies’ policy. Table 6 Immigrants that Entered Sao Paulo With Subsidies, 1889-1913 Years

Total of Immigrants

Number of Subsidized

Proportion of Subsidized (%)

1889-1893

298,727

281,18

94

1894-1898

433,625

321,046

74

1899-1903

184,346

96,912

53

1904-1908

195,903

71,2

36

1909-1913

366,847

146,117

40

Source: Boletim da Diretoria de Terras, Colonizacao e Imigracao, nº. 1 (October 1937), as compiled in Graham, op. cit., p. 49.

Section 2 -- The immigration policy and its conditions

The immigration policy designed by the planters involved the government’s paying full passages of agricultural workers from Europe to Sao Paulo.

The subsidy was

limited to families, and only adults were granted full passage; in addition, there was a preference for families with a high ratio of working-age members. In this screening process, strictly enforced, the planters were consciously seeking to guarantee the maximum amount of labor power while preserving the family unit, a feature that will become crucially important for the economics of the colono system (see next section); in addition, family units promoted greater stability of the labor force, and made more difficult to raise the relatively high price of return passage.206 Upon their arrival by sea in Santos, the almost totality of the subsidized immigrants (but not the non-subsidized ones) were directed by rail to the Hospedaria dos Imigrantes in the state capital; this facility, built in 1886 with a capacity for a maximum of 4,000 persons, had to lodge during the early years as many as 10,000 immigrants, “in a state of confusion, deprivation and frustration;” with scarce knowledge of the concrete conditions on the fazendas, they were supposed to establish “colono contract” with the planters coming from all over the state. Strict security measures, on the other hand, “checked to ensure no 206

For detailed exposition of the mechanics of the system as well as its effectiveness in bringing families, see Holloway, op. cit., pp. 202-223, 238-243. The planters’ immigration program is also discussed in Hall, op. cit., pp. 92-103.

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immigrants left without authorization and that no one entered without official business. Immigrants and consuls objected that the security system made the Hospedaria into a prison from which the only escape was through signing on as a coffee colono and taking a train for the interior.”207 Available information shows that the great majority of the immigrants “processed” through the Hospedaria went really to the Western coffee plateau. 208 As one studies every particular aspect of this system, one cannot see it but as a consistent, principled expression of the drive by the planters to solve their “labor problem” in a particular way. From beginning to end, this immigration policy showed its coherence in bringing workers for the plantations; even the “desultory attention” paid to the establishment of nucleus of small farmers acquired “certain rhetorical usefulness since they permitted the claim that the immigrants who wished to become small landowners could easily do so.” Martinho Prado, the planter that led the whole process, did not disguise his hostility toward the nucleus, stating frankly that “The establishment of nucleus is going to interfere with satisfying the need for workers on the plantations.”209 The effectiveness of this system, on the other hand, was premised on the availability of people “who were indigent or nearly so at the time of their departure from Europe.”210 The connection between this economic condition and their becoming suppliers of labor power to the plantations was clearly perceived by the planters, and the same Martinho Prado pointed out that “for the time being, only those individuals without resources, attacked by necessity in all its forms, emigrate to Brazil, and they do it by seeking free or reduced passage (...).”211 “Immigrants with money, Martinho Prado frankly stated, ‘are not useful to us’.”212 The agrarian question and the economic crisis in Italy, significantly, attracted much 207

Holloway, op.. cit., pp. 231-2. Holloway has presented a detailed characterization of the workings of the immigration service, after the immigrants’ arrival in Santos; see Ibid., pp. 223-248; see also Hall, op.. cit., p. 119. 208 Holloway, op.. cit., p. 245. 209 Hall, op. cit., p. 101. In Holloway’ s words, “The government of Sao Paulo kept its nucleo program alive partly for propaganda purposes, to provide a visible alternative to colono work. (…).” (op. cit., p. 366) Interestingly enough, the planters conceived of them as “labor pools” (viveiros de mao de obra) -- see Holloway, op. cit., pp. 334-368, and Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 317-321. While describing the precarious conditions of development of these nucleos, Dean adds a further role performed by them, namely, “bailing out influential but bankrupt members of the ruling elite.” 210 Holloway, op. cit., p. 141. This same author has concluded that (…) the people who went to Sao Paulo tended to b e from the low economic levels of the groups who emigrated to the new world. The Paulista planters organized the subsidy program in the 1880’s with the explicit intent to import workers so destitute they would have no choice but to work on the plantations. (...).” op. cit., pp. 376-7.) Or, as other authors have put it, “Brazil looked for and received desperately poverty-stricken immigrants -- ones so poor that they could neither buy their own land nor open small businesses but had to work on the plantations instead. (...).” Eisenberg and Hall, op. cit., p. 13. 211 As quoted in Holloway, op. cit., pp. 141-142. 212 Hall, op. cit., p. 102.

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attention of Prado in his visit to Italy in 1887.213

Table 7 shows that these “indigent” people came pre dominantly from SouthernEurope. Until the turn of the century Italians preponderated; in March 26, 1902 it was issued the Prinetti decree, prohibiting pre-paid emigration to Brazil – “a sore point in BrazilianItalian relations for many years;” from this time on, other nationalities replaced the Italians.214 Table 7 Composition of the Gross Annual Immigration to Brazil, 1884-1913 (%) Periods

Italians

Portuguese

Spaniards

Others

1884-1893

57.8

19.3

11.7

11.2

1894-1903

62.4

18.2

11.8

7.6

1904-1913

19.5

38.2

22.3

20.0

Source:

Graham, “Migracao Estrangeira ...,”, p. 22.

Italy had become, since unification, a country of strong emigration; during the period 1886-1890 alone a total of 1,100,000 emigrants left the country, most of them (60%) having crossed the Atlantic. In the next five years, between 1891-1895, Brazil took the lead as a receiving country with 330,000 Italians, while the totals for Argentina and the United States were 259 and 170 thousand respectively. 215 Given the prolonged economic crisis in Italy through the 1880’s to 1896, the conjuncture of a recession in the United States and Argentina, when added to the subsidies’ policy, may have played a crucial role in the massive immigration to Brazil; the fact, moreover, that the simultaneous decline of industrial and agricultural activities was pronounced in the North of Italy is highly significant, since, especially until the early 1900’s, most Italians who migrated to Brazil came from the Northern part of the peninsula.216 It would seem, therefore, that the planters were “fortunate” in that the Sao Paulo 213

For reference to Prado’s activities in his visit to Italy, see Petrone, T. S., “Imigracao Assalariada,” in Hollanda, S. B., ed., Historia Geral da Civilizacao Brasileira, vol II, pp. 282-3. 214 Holloway, op. cit., p. 191. As early as 1889, due to reports on the conditions of colonos, “artificial aids” to emigration to Brazil were banned; this order was rescinded in July 1891 -- to be reissued at the time Prinetti was Foreign Minister. See Ibid., pp. 189-192. 215 Balan, J., “Migracoes e Desenvolvimento Capitalista no Brash: Ensaio de Interpretacao HistóricoComparativa,” Estudos CEBRAP, nº. 5, pp. 15-16. For similar data, see Graham, op.. cit., pp. 21-22. 216 Graham, op. cit., pp. 14-28. For the composition, by region of origin, of the Italian immigrants, see Holloway, op. cit., p. 186. Additional references to the Italian economic crisis are presented in Hall, op. cit., pp. 119-121; Holloway, op. cit., pp. 187-189, and Dean, Rio Claro, p. 272.

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labor crisis coincided with, as an Italian economist has termed, “the most critical years of the Italian economy.”217 In this way, objective conditions of deprivation and misery in Italy gave to the planters -- given their unchallenged control over the State apparatus in Brazil -an almost complete freedom in designing and implementing their immigration policy. As a result of the particular use they made of this freedom it happened that "on a population base of some one and one-quarter million people [in 1886], roughly two and a half million immigrants entered Sao Paulo from that year to the early 1930’s.”218 The numbers acquire importance here, to be sure, only because the large majority of the immigrants, at least in their first years in Sao Paulo, were actually suppliers of labor power to the coffee plantations. To the extent that new arrivals of similarly “indigent” people could be made a permanent feature through the immigration policy, a powerful mechanism of holding constant real wages, for any given rate of expansion of production, was thus introduced in the coffee economy, to be handled by the planters themselves. This role of the immigration policy, and its actual understanding by the planters themselves, has been emphasized in the literature; thus Hall’s main thesis is that “[Sao Paulo immigration program’s] major purpose (...) was the broader one of flooding the labor market in a largely successful effort to keep down wages,”219 while Leff has pointed out that “(...) it would be misleading to overlook the fact that the greatest effect of large-scale immigration was to increase the supply of labour and exert a downward pressure on wages.”220 In a similar vein, Holloway has advanced that, in the face of competition among the planters -- given the freedom of movement of the laborer in the framework of the colono system – “ample manpower” became soon a target for the planters: “Sao Paulo government authorities were well aware of the close relationship among immigration, repatriation, the size of the labor pool, and the colono wage levels. From the beginning of the mass immigration program there was a conscious effort to import workers in such numbers that competition among them would keep wages relatively low and provide ample manpower for the expansion of the coffee industry.”221 217

As quoted in Hall, op. cit.,p. 119. Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers …,” p. 1. In this period about one million people departed from Santos, so that the impact of immigration is sometimes reduced to the "net" number of one and a half million. As Holloway has pointed out, however, this is fallacious, for demographic growth of the immigrant population must be included in the analysis. See op. cit., pp. 175-181. 219 Ha11, op. cit., p. 165. 220 Leff, “Economic Retardation …,” p. 494. 221 Holloway, op. cit., p. 270. In Hall’s words, “The crux of the Sao Paulo system (...) was not the coercion of workers but rather the creation of a cheap and tractable labor force by means of the massive importation of immigrants (op. cit., p. 133). 218

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As Table 8 shows, available information on key wage rates in the task-and-piece wage rate system that predominated in coffee seems to indicate that indeed such a mechanism has been highly effective; the coffee economy, in this manner, built for itself an ingenious mechanism that allowed its fantastic expansion in conditions of an “unlimited supply of labor.”222

222

See Hall, op. cit., pp. 142-147, for a discussion of this data and additional evidence, that led the author to conclude that “(...) The very least one can say is that the Italians labored to create a espectacular prosperity in which they rarely shared. The condition of immigrants in rural Sao Paulo, for example, was quite likely worse in 1914 than it had been thirty years before. (...).” (Ibid., p. 172). Using actual records of Santa Gertrudes plantation, Dean has also presented data covering the period 1886-1915; see Rio Claro, p. 291. Further research is necessary in the analysis of this issue, however, for these are nominal wage rates, whose meaning cannot be ascertained before the inflationary waves in the period are analyzed more carefully in their implication for real wages.

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Table 8 Wages in Sao Paulo Coffee Plantations, 1884-1920 Year

Carpa (per 1,000 trees)

Harvest (per 50 liters)

Occasional labor, per day

1884

50$

500$

1886

80

400

1888

50

300

1890

60

300

1895

90

600

1898

90

680

1899

85

650

1901

65

500

2$500

1904

60

450

2$000

1906

80

500

2$000

1909

70

500

2$000

1912

100

600

2$500

1914

80

400

2$500

1915

100

500

2$500

1916

95

500

2$500

1917

95

500

2$500

1918

95

600

2$500

1919

100

600

2$500

1920

120

600

2$500

Source: Hall, op. cit., p. 186, for the period 1884-1914, and Holloway, op. cit., p. 100, for the period 1915-1920, as well as for the last column (daily wages). Holloway's data, however, come from “ a single representative fazenda.” (“Immigrants as Laborers …” p. 99.)

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This mechanism of determination of real wages, however, must be seen as but an aspect of the totality of the socio-economic relations that characterized the post-abolition plantation system in coffee. The analysis of these relations, that became known as the “colono system,” constitutes the objective of the next section.

Section 3 -- A structural analysis of the colono system in coffee

The plantation labor needs consisted in the carpa (hoeing of weeds) and harvesting of the fruit-bearing coffee trees, of developing and planting new fields with coffee (formacao), processing of the berries, maintenance and construction works, etc.; typically, however, the colono’s work in coffee was restricted to the carpa and harvesting of the trees already planted, and for this reason only these activities will be included in the ensuing discussion. While the activities attributed to the colono were carried out independently, with only periodical inspection and supervision, the processing of the berries, the maintenance and construction works, on the contrary, resembling the “labor gangs” of the times of slavery, were carried out, under close “supervision” by the feitor, by Brazilian-born workers, freedmen and camaradas. Brazilian-born families worked also as colonos.223 In the coffee system, the carpa was carried out in a task system: for a specified number of hoeings of an assigned area planted with coffee, the colono received a previously contracted amount of wages. The harvesting of coffee, on the other hand, was paid in proportion to the amount of berries picked and delivered to the planter. At the same time, the laborer -- or better, the family unit -- was given the possibility of producing, on his own account, on p1antation~assigned land that could be in between the rows of the coffee groves -, staple food (corn, beans, etc.). Poultry, small livestock, vegetables, etc., were also developed in this petty production sphere. Housing was supplied free by the plantation.224 223

This is clearly seen in the description and pictures of Santa Gertrudes plantation as presented in Bassanezi, M.S.C.B., “Fazenda de Santa Gertrudes, Uma Abordagem Quanti-tativa das Relacoes de Trabaiho em uma Propriedade Paulista, 1895-1930”, Doctoral thesis, Faculty of Philosophy, Science and Letters of Rio Claro, Sao Paulo, 1973. See also Dean, Rio Claro, pp. 289-303. An issue that will be left outside our discussion is the fate of the freedmen vis -a-vis the plantations, as well as the petty producers from the slavery period. In passing, one could point out that, since they were indeed employed on the plantations, as the evidence shows, it would seem that avowed “prejudices” on the part of the planters -- the same ones that for more than 300 years led a daily life with the blacks, while enslaved -- have little to do with a supposed marginalization of these freedmen after abolition. 224 On the basis of actual records of Santa Gertrudes plantation for 10-12 families, Dean has estimated that on average in the period 1885-89, a colono family earned an income of 500 milreis, of which 334 milreis came

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For the analysis of the rise of this system, as well as the concrete forms it assumed in different circumstances, some elements of a simple model will be presented in the following, without attempting a formalization. This model has for premise an “unlimited supply of labor in the system a structural feature of the post-abolition coffee economy that has already been discussed --, it takes also as given a drive by the plantation to minimize labor costs per unit of coffee produced and harvested1 such a drive for “cheap labor”, it must be recalled, has already been posed, as a theoretical issue, in chapter IV, and it will not be discussed here. Given these conditions, any plantation will allocate its resources of labor and land in a definite pattern; in particular, it will seek for a simultaneous determination of (I) the number of the coffee trees assigned to each working-age family member, (II) the carpa task rate, and (III) the harvest piece rate, so that, even by allocating every possible family member in the carpa and harvesting of coffee, the colono family should not be able to fulfill completely subsistence needs -- that would have, therefore, to be complemented by production of a staple food. To the extent, however, that production of food cannot imply a higher rate of pay to the family unit relative to work in coffee, the size and the quality of the land plot have to be determined consistently: at the margin, the family must be indifferent in allocating one labor unit in either sector (coffee or food).225 Premised on the family unit’s necessity of fulfilling subsistence needs, and while satisfying the above “consistency” condition, production of staple food must in addition satisfy a further condition: the value of the staple food produced by the colono family must be greater than the planter’s opportunity cost, in foregone coffee profits, of the colono’s land plot. This last condition is the key secret of the colono system, and that it had to be satisfied can be easily shown. The plantations labor costs consisted in the colono family’s money wages plus the opportunity cost of the colono’s from cash wages; the other 166 milreis came from sale of corn (46 milreis) and imputed value of production for own-consumption (120 milreis). Rio Claro, p. 303. Data on the relative importance of these items for the colono family ’ s income are also presented in Holloway, op. cit., pp. 96-105. 225 Dean has perceived why the economics of the plantation depended crucially on this point: “The provision of subsistence plots (...) contained the same element of opposing interests that had been present in the parceria regime. The worker would tend to carry out the hoeing of the trees quickly and superficially in order to devote as much time as possible to his food and cash crops. (...).” Rio Claro, pp. 310-11. Holloway, on the other hand, summarized a planter's perception of this contradiction: “(...) The planter’s goal was to maintain his labor supply and get his coffee cultivated, while the colono’s interest lay mainly in the production of food crops. Ramos admitted that coffee work, from the colono's point of view, symbolized 'meager, disputed, and at times uncertain wages.' Corn, on the other hand, symbolized abundance and well being. It meant polenta (the cornmeal mush staple of the Italian colono’s diet), feed for chickens, plenty of eggs, fattened pigs, salt pork, and smoked meat. From the sale of his excess food products he bought clothes, wine, and other needs. Coffee was dependence, subservience, the source of justified but disagreeable conflicts, mistrust, and disciplinary measures. Corn was

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plot. On the other hand, the reproduction costs of labor power satisfied by the colono family's income were given by the colono money wages plus the staple food. It is evident, therefore, that, in the economic logic of the plantation, the production of staple food by the family arises, and is reproduced, only to the extent that the value of the staple food is greater than the opportunity cost of the land plot -- for the plantation, production of staple food becomes a means to save on wages. Actually, it will allocate land to the family unit until, at the margin, the value of staple food is equal to the opportunity cost of the land. One must see that to the coffee plantations it was open the alternative of allocating the colono family’s available labor power totally in coffee: it was enough to increase the number of coffee trees to be cared by a working age family member. Evidently, in this case the totality of the reproduction costs of labor power would have to be satisfied out of money wages. In the colono system, however, less trees were allocated to each family unit, so that some labor time might be available for the staple food; for this reason more family units became necessary. But the labor costs per unit of coffee harvested were lowered in the process. This economic logic of the plantation becomes possible, evidently, on the premise of a definite socio-economic structure. Within this structure, the reproduction of the “subsistence” activities become related, in a definite manner, to the activities in the capitalist sector (coffee). It also follows, necessarily, an uneven development of the productive forces in this duality coffee/food. It is interesting to see how this analytical perspective of the colono system helps to clarify some important features of the coffee economy. To the extent that labor productivity in staple food was higher in new plantations (fertile land), they could evidently attract workers without incurring higher labor costs. Actually, given the fact that “coffee seedlings were planted 10 to 15 feet apart to allow for the full development of the trees,”226 interplanting of cereals became possible, in such a manner that the opportunity cost of the land was zero; in addition, a lower wage was specified for hoeing.227 In older coffee plantations, on the contrary, the lack of fertile land to be allocated to food production, as well as absence of young groves, meant higher labor costs to the plantation. This situation may be clearly perceived in the following quotation of a (possibly) coffee planter: freedom of action and economic autonomy. (op. cit., p. 264). Of course, the planter could see that corn could not become all of this, thus the fundamental importance of the size and quality of the colono’s plot. 226 Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers ...,” p. 261. 227 Dean, Rio Claro, p. 290.

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“The expansion of the coffee industry, in its tendency to seek fresh land in previously unexploited areas, is drawing the workers now located in the older areas toward the interior. The workers do not stay in the older zones be cause they can no longer obtain there the income, equal or perhaps greater than their money wages, from the cereals by which the virgin lands amply repay the labor of those who cultivate them. “The result is that the fazendas of the older municipios are slowly becoming depopulated. And the planter, in order not to lose his work force, must raise wages and close his eyes to the quality of the workers luck gives him. On the fazendas where there are new groves alongside the old, the problem is easier to solve. A small increase in the rates for the care of the older groves and for the harvest is usually sufficient to retain the coffee, who is compensated by the allotment of new trees where he can plant corn and beans. Where there are only old groves, however, and especially where the soil is exhausted, it is very difficult to get workers, and the prospects for the future are not promising.”228 In a word: within the socio-economic mechanism of keeping down unit labor costs represented by the colono system, opening up new plantations would mean a higher rate of profits solely on account of their lower labor costs, while simultaneously allowing a higher real income to the family unit, as compared to the older plantations.229 This contradiction of interests between these two kinds of plantations may help to explain why the coffee system -with its peculiar combination of a mobile, but abundant labor pool -- and not any other labor system, based on some form of extra-economic coercion, has arisen in coffee. The older plantations that might exist at any moment would perceive the problem as one of “nstabi1ity” of the work force, to be solved by continuous immigration inflows.230 The other possible solution coercion would face the opposition of the frontier planters. “(…) Since the planters 228

As quoted in Holloway, op. cit., p. 285. The attraction of colonos to the newer plantations, in these terms, derived from their higher rate of profits relative to the older plantations. There was thus an incentive of constantly opening-up plantations, so that colonos would always be moving. Their mobility therefore would reflect the permanently renewed coexistence of new and old plantations, the ones leading the expansion of coffee and the other in a process of decadence. Labor mobility, consequently, would not be, as Holloway has tried to argue, the cause for the rise of this moving frontier, but rather its effect. See Holloway, op. cit., ch. 6; a preliminary version of his argument was presented in “Condicoes do Mercado de Trabalho e Organizacao do Trabalho nas Plantacoes na Economia Cafeeira de Sao Paulo, 1885-1915,” Estudos Economicos, vol. 2, n°. 6, pp. 145-177. 230 As one author put it, “(…) In the case of our coffee fazendas, it was striking the instability of its agricultural workers, were they freed Negroes, Luzo-Brazilians or Italians. One hardly can understand how the coffee fazenda managed to struggle, and, for some time, overcome such a situation. This instability explains the fazendeiros’ struggle for continuous arrival in Brazil of new immigrants. It was necessary that their number were much beyond the actual needs of the crop, that the supply of labor very much exceeded demand, so that the 229

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competed among themselves for workers they were reluctant to allow state intervention in the rural labor market.231 That the “flooding” of the labor market with “indigent” people was seen as an alternative to coercion was openly acknowledged by the planters: “(...) In 1896, at the same time he proclaimed the success of the immigration program in compensating for worker instability, the Sao Paulo Secretary of Agriculture saw fit to observe that the system of constant large in-flows was a more practical means of solving the problem than trying to coerce the colonos into staying in one place. Coercion, he warned, would have a negative effect, causing potential immigrants to avoid Sao Paulo and the governments of supplying countries to restrict or prohibit emigration to Brazil.”232 This freedom of movement of the laborer, on the other hand, may have been a crucial factor in the immigrants' fate in Sao Paulo: at the least, they could go back to Italy, if conditions became unbearable, or go to the urban areas and become factory workers. On the other hand, competition among sections of the planters for their labor power in itself may have been a strong factor in making possible, for some colonos at least, to leave the plantations and become smallholders. This last possibility could have been further strengthened by the permanent process of decadence of older areas, leading to the bankrupt plantations being divided up; in addition, the very concept of viveiros shows that smallholding, in the form of latifundia, was not necessarily antagonistic to planters’ interests.233 And yet, through a continuous immigration inflow, there was an easy

‘colonos’ [become] satisfied with reasonable (sic) wages and could also be replaced easily.” Carneiro, J. F., Imigracao e Colonizacao no Brasil (Rio: Universidade do Brasil, 1950), p. 34. 231 Holloway, “Immigrants as Laborers ...,” p. 301. 232 Ibid., pp. 290-1. Hall has quoted Taunay in saying that “It is impossible to have low salaries, without violence, if there are few workers and many people who wish to employ them." Another meinber of the Chamber of Deputies could see the solution to this dilemma: “It is evident that we need laborers (...) in order to increase the competition among them and in that way salaries will be lowered by means of the law of supply and demand.” (“Origins of Mass Immigration ..., ii pp. 116-117.) 233 These favorable conditions to the socio-economic ascention of the immigrants have been emphasized by Holloway, op. cit., chs. 6 and 7. A growing importance of landholding in Sao Paulo by foreigners, as shown by successive censuses taken in the period 1905-1934, was attributed by him to a process of accumulation by the immigrant while still a colono in the plantation, and not despite the plantation, as some other authors would prefer. For instance, upon comparison of colonos wages in Santa Gertrudes plantation with average value of the smallholdings recorded in the 1905 Census, for Rio Claro, Dean points out that they were worth "twelve years cash wages for the average colono family. On the other hand, a close inspection of the names of the landowners (...) reveals clearly that the modest success implied by the census belonged not to colonos but immigrants who were town merchants and professionals from the begin-fling, or who were absentee members of the haut-bourgeoisie of Santos and Sao Paulo. (...) At least seven of the Italian owners had never been plantation workers, and their holdings were 54 percent of the value of Italian properties.” (Rio Claro, pp. 323-324.) Dean also points out that “Remittances from Brazil to Italy in the years before World War I, in the form of money orders, amounted to no more than 2 milreis per immigrant - one fiftieth of the rate from the United States, although the two groups of Italians were roughly equal in number by 1910.” (Ibid., p. 328.) This issue, consequently, is a controversial one among the historians, and further research, of a quantitative nature for

106

replacement of those that left in these ways. “As far as the government of Sao Paulo was concerned, there does not seem to have been anything particularly fortuitous about the large numbers of workers leaving the fazendas. It was, in a sense, an integral part of the system. The Secretary of Agriculture admitted quite openly that ‘great levies’ of immigrants would have to be imported from time to time because of what he termed ‘defections’ from the plantations. (…)234 .

instance, using actual data on colonos’ wages and corn-paring with the capital needed to start on their own not limited to isolated cases, seems to be necessary. The non-subsidized immigrants, moreover, have also to be further researched. 234 Ha11, op. cit., p. 174.

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CHAPTER VI AGRARIAN STRUCTURE AND LABOR SUPPLY IN BRAZILIAN AGRICULTURE

Section 1 -- The coffee economy and labor: Some general conclusions In the analysis of the coffee economy presented in the previous chapter, our main focus has been to show how African slavery, in the period up to the 1880’s, and the succeeding colono system, that arose concomitantly with the abolitionist process, have constituted the means through which specific labor processes, as well as labor costs, became determined in coffee production. The expansion of this capitalist sector, to this extent, became independent of the conditions regulating the supply of labor inside the areas incorporated to coffee this being the explanation, in what concerns coffee, for the following “paradox” noted by Myint, in the incorporation of the “tropical under-developed countries” into the world economy: “If we apply the ordinary demand and supply analysis to the labour market, we should expect to have a generally higher level of wages in sparsely populated countries than in densely populated countries. We should also expect the wage level to show a rising trend over a period of rapid expansion in output requiring more labour. These results are broadly borne out by experience in the newly settled regions of North America and Australia. But when we turn to the tropical underdeveloped countries which also started (...) with sparse populations in relation to the available land, these expected results failed to take place. Here the mine and plantation owners complained about “labour shortage.” But the wages they paid in the sparsely populated countries were not noticeably higher than those they paid in the overpopulated countries. Moreover these wages tended to stick at their initial level in spite of the rapid expansion in the production of the mining and plantation exports.”235 Development with “unlimited supply of labor,” therefore, has characterized the coffee economy both before and after abolition of African slavery; on the other hand, it is fundamental to understand that such a feature has been inseparable of the socio-economic

235

The Economics of the Developing Countries, pp. 53-54. Leff has expressed this way the same paradox: "Despite an abundant supply of land in natura, and high land-labour ratios, nineteenth-century Brazil did not develop as a relatively high-wage economy. (...) even in the more advanced agricultural export activities, production techniques seem to have been extremely primitive.” “Economic Retardation ...,” p.490.

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structure that has founded the development of coffee production. 236 Thus it was that,

before the 1880’s, this “unlimited supply” and African slavery were one and the same thing; and, after the 1880’s, the socio-economic relations constituted in the colono system represented the ultimate sphere of determination of the labor supply to coffee. We must consequently understand this “unlimited supply” not as something that is given exogenously to the “capitalist sector,” but rather as a structural feature of the latter, of its own creation, one could say. In this, the Brazilian case has been just a particular example of what seems to have been a general pattern of capitalist development in the backward countries; the evidence surveyed in Chapter II cannot but lead to this conclusion. 237 This having been the case, one understands why the low labor-land ratio that has characterized the Brazilian coffee economy not only in the slave-based period, but also after abolition -- has been irrelevant as far as the real wage and technical level are concerned: for, independently of the ratio they stood to one another as factors of production -- in their natural form, that is to say -- what has been crucial is the social form acquired by labor and land. It is totally off the mark, for instance, to attempt to derive how labor was “priced” in the slavebased period in abstraction from the slave-master relation -- a relation in the world of men, not in the world of things, to which pertains the land-labor ratio. Neither can the lack of alternatives to plantation work be made an inherent attribute of the labor Elsuppliedul by the colono, rather, this is a historically relative (or social) character, that is completely alien to the natural form of this labor. The problem, therefore, cannot be interpreted as merely a matter of exogenous determination of relative factor endowments, through making labor “abundant;” in this misleading perception, the attributes of being enslaved, or being dispossessed, are overlooked in an attempt to restore the applicability of the Neoclassical paradigm -- given the exogenously-determined “factor endowments,” a Walrasian equilibrium would then come 236

“Agrarian structure,” an expression very popularized in Brazil, and for this reason used in this thesis, is to be understood as a short for socio-economic structure. For a general definition of the latter, see Chapter III, pp.5859. We are subsuming under “agrarian structure” the slave-master relation; for obvious reasons, this relation is not founded on patterns of landownership, or “land tenure,” what shows that “agrarian structure” is not identical to “land tenure.” As it will be suggested later in this chapter, it is only after abolition that “ land tenure" became the foundation for the social relations of production within the plantation system -- i.e., the foundation for the socio-economic structure (=”agrarian structure”). Names are, of course, important. 237 Such an historical pattern of labor supply to coffee has been of a central concern in Leff, N. H., “Tropical Trade and Development in the Nineteenth Century: The Brazilian Experience,” Journal of Political Economy , vol. 81 (1973), pp. 678-696. On the basis of an "historical inquiry into the sources of export industry labor,” another author has concluded that '1 from the sixteenth century to the depression of the 1930’s the operation of most overseas export industries not based on peasant crops was dependent upon the supply of internationally migrating labor. (...). Levin, The Export Economies, p. 143.

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back to analysis. Thus Leff has reduced the problem to one of [making] for annual increments to the labor force which were large enough to “swamp” the relatively small “advanced” sector where productivity was increasing. Moreover, the effects of increasing labor supply from overseas were especially important for the advanced sector, since most of the imported labor went to that sector.

Thus, because of availability of imported workers, labor was made a

relatively abundant factor in the export sector.” It is obvious that the Africans went to the export sector, as “import workers,” only because they were slaves; by the same token, were it not for their dispossessed condition, the large numbers of Italian immigrants would not necessarily imply “ relatively abundant” labor supply in the export sector.238 4 This discussion allows us to see more clearly now how it is misleading to interpret Brazilian insertion in the international economy, in the nineteenth century, as reflecting a more “efficient” allocation of given resource endowments in the face of increasing trade opportunities, as the story goes in the Neoclassical (Heckscher-Ohlin) theory of international trade. In this connection, and as a result of his study of the general experience of the “tropical underdeveloped countries,” Myint has demanded that “the Heckscher-Ohlin approach in terms of the ‘original endowments of the factors’ has to be suspended.”239 On the other hand, and as Leff has put it, “In a comparative perspective, the Brazilian experience suggests how relatively unimportant abundant land was per se in the economic development of the United States.”240 The socio-economic structure, in other words, cannot be abstracted from, since it is ultimately the sphere of the social relations of production that will determine the outcome of this or that “endowment,” qua factor of production, of land. For instance, in the U.S. South, the land having acquired a specific social form within the slave-based plantation system -- became, evidently, not at all “abundant” for the slave; while in the U.S. North its “abundance” was an inseparable feature of the socio-economic structure -- it was at the social level that “abundance” of land, meaning its relatively free access in the 238

“Tropical Trade ...,” p. 688. In passing, one could contrast this experience of the coffee economy with a claim by Samir Amin that a “fundamental contribution” of the theory of unequal exchange, as presented in Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange, is the postulate of “labor inmobility” in the face of “capital mobility.” It is ironic that this is, rather than a virtue, one of its gravest weaknesses. On the other hand, it appears in full light the correctness of Bettelheim’s critique of Emmanuel’s method of considering the wage rate as na “ independent variable.” See Amin, S., L’echange inegal et la loi de la valeur: la fin d’um debat (Paris: Editions AnthroposIdep, 1973), pp. 7-13, and Bettalheim’s “Theoretical Comments, “ in Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange, pp. 271322. 239 The Gains from International Trade and the Backward Countries,” Review of Economic Studies, vol. 22 (1955), p. 136. 240 “Economic Retardation …,” p. 491.

form of a “family farm,” was determined.241

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Section 2 -- Land tenure and labor supply in the Northeastern sugar economy: the rise of the morador system

The proposition that the conditions in the labor market in Brazilian agriculture -and, by implication, of Brazilian economy -- have been inseparable of the socio-economic structure, may be further clarified by the analysis of a labor system that succeeded African slavery in the Northeastern sugar economy. Recent research has confirmed to a large extent the following general characterization of the historical process by Furtado: “In the Northeastern region the lands more appropriate to agricultural use were already occupied practically in their totality, at the time of abolition. The liberated slaves that left the engenhos met with great difficulties to survive. A surplus population weighted already upon the urban regions, constituting since the beginning of the century a social problem. As to the hinterland the subsistence economy had expanded to a great distance and the symptoms of demographic pressure on the semi-arid lands in the agreste and caatinga clearly manifested themselves. These two barriers limited the mobility of the mass of the slaves now-freed in the sugar region. The movements took place from engenho to engenho and only a reduced fraction left the region. It was not difficult, in such conditions, to attract and fix a substantial part of the old slave labor force, by means of a wage relatively low. (…)”242 Not only the ex-slaves were thus “attracted” and “fixed” in the sugar plantations; it seems also that a process of gradual constitution of a free labor system developed in the second half of the nineteenth century: while by the 1850’s “slaves had normally outnumbered free laborers on sugar plantations by ratios of over 3:1,” by 1872 “free workers outnumbered

241

For a systematic comparative analysis of the role on the “frontier in the United States and Brazil, as well as other historical cases (such as Russia), relating it to the fundamental social determinants, see Velho, O.G.C.A., “Modes of Capitalist Development, Peasantry and the Moving Frontier,” Doctoral thesis, University of Manchester, 1973. In passing, one should mention Hayami and Ruttan's "induced innovation hypothesis,” a theory of technical change in agriculture based, precisely, on the labor-land ratio. It is evident the relevance of our discussion to a critique of such a hypothesis, whose claim of generality is denied immediately by the Brazilian historical case. Cf. Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins Press, 1971). The problem with this hypothesis, of course, is its abstraction of the socioeconomic structure. 242 Formacao, pp. 159-160. The monopolization of land by the sugar plantations in the zona da mata, and a detailed analysis of a really impressive case of a Pernambuco municipio (Escada), are discussed in Eisenberg, P., The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco, 1840-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), ch. 6.

slaves in all occupational categories.”243

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To analyze this transition, one must start by realizing that, throughout the long history of the plantation system in sugar, a free population had increased in numbers but in a definite socio-economic status: most of these free men were squatters, known as moradores. “They performed errands and small duties for the planters, they often lived at remote points on the estates to keep an eye on the planter’s property and in return they were allowed to build a cabin and to cultivate a small patch of provision crops. (…).”244 While these petty producers and their subsistence production inserted themselves in such a subordinated manner in the plantation system, the planters, while owning most of the land of the zona da mata, used productively very little of it. In the 1850’s the planters probably used no more than one-fifth of available lands (…).”245 (It could perhaps be said that this situation of precarious access to the land by the moradores reflected, besides evidently their property less condition, the familiar structural feature of subordination of subsistence production vis-à-vis, now production of sugar: that this situation of “unused” land and labor should not be taken to imply an “economic irrationality” on the part of the planter is suggested by the fact that the planter did rent land but to sugar-cane growing to a class of slave-holding tenants).246

243

Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, p. 180. Galloway, “The Last Years of Slavery ...,” p. 592. Eisenberg refers to contemporary estimate that these moradores constituted 95 percent of the free population; of. The Sugar Industry, p. 183. Detailed descriptions of the moradores and their insertion in the plantations can also be seen in Galloway, J. H., “The Sugar Industry of Pernambuco During the Nineteenth Century,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 291~2; Eisenberg, “Abolishing Slavery ...,” pp. 588-9; and Andrade, M. C., A Terra e O Homem no Nordeste (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1964), pp. 78-79, 93-95, 109-110. Their dispossession is illustrated in the following quotation: “In presidential address of 1862, the president Souza Carvalho, of Alagoas, referred to the poverty of the rural population: ‘whoever travels through the interior, can see, apart from the extra-ordinary wealth of the uncultivated lands -- he said -- the miserable huts that this class dwells, the poverty, the nudity, the deprivation in which it lives. Inertia and idleness is what appeared to the president, but, in reality, a little later he would point out, although as thought of others, the true cause of the idleness: 'Some attribute in part this idleness in which they live to the circumstance of living in someone else's property, whose owners refuse to sell it, even if they cannot cultivate it, and use the arbitry of forcing them to move out at their will.” Diegues Jr., M., Populacao e Acucar no Nordeste do Brasil (Rio: Comissao Nacional de Alimentacao, 1954), p. 165. For a discussion of the “progressive impoverishment” of this free rural population, see Ibid., pp. 151-166. Similar characterization was presented in Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, p. 184. 245 Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, p. 126. Galloway, in “The Sugar Industry ... , p. 290, has informed us that “These plantations formed parts of large landholdings, to be measured in square miles rather than in acres, which had their origins in generous grants of land, or sesmarias, awarded to influential or colonial governors as rewards for services rendered but also in the hope that the new landowners would help settle and develop the colony. The cultivated land and pasture, in fact the plantation, occupied only a part of these vast estates. Plantations were often therefore widely separated, particularly to the South of Recife; and the landscape of the Forest Zone at the beginning of the nineteenth century, even after 250 years of colonization, was still dominated by forest.” 246 For an extensive account of this “sharecropping system,” see Schwartz, S. B., “Free Labor in a Slave Economy: The Lavradores de Cana of Colonial Brazi1,” in Alden, D. (ed.), Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil 244

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Premised on these structural conditions, the sugar economy, while managing to expand production from an “annual average of 61,000 tons in the late 1840’s to 136,000 tons in the late 1880’s,” at the same time that its slave labor force was in sharp decline,247 did not have to face a “labor crisis,” as it happened with coffee: “The answer to the threat presented by the abolition of slavery came not through the introduction of wage labor or immigration, but through a change in the nature of the long-existent tenant class on plantations -- the moradores. The moradores were now required to work in their landlord's fields in return for the use of a plot of land, and the term morador de condicao became current for such tenants. The size of this class grew, more men were allowed to settle on the plantation in return for labor, and some moradores became bound by indebtedness to the plantation. The transition in the function of the morador was gradual, and appears to have begun by mid nineteenth century. As slaves became more difficult to obtain and the labor needs of the sugar industry grew, so the numbers of moradores de condicao increased. (...) “(...) For this system of labor to be effective, it was essential that the lanters have a mono poly or near monopoly of land in the zona da mata. where there was abundant unclaimed land, the free men could settle as small holders and so avoid becoming moradores. The large land-holdin was thus essential to the reservation of the labor supply. (...)”248 (ours the emphasis). The fact that, concomitant with the imposition on the morador of such a “condição,” a seasonal migration of the corumbas from the Agreste developed,249 seems to support Furtado’s contention on the existence of “demographic” pressure on the semi-arid lands in the agreste and caatinga.”250 In the presence of such objective conditions -dramatized, from time to time, by death and despair as droughts hit the backlands --, and in face of the dispossessed situation of their moradores, it is only consistent to find that the plantations were assured virtually constant real wages throughout the period 1850-1900 (Table 1). (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp 147-97. See also Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, pp. 191194. 247 Eisenberg, “Abolishing Slavery ...”, p. 588. For an analysis of the expansion of mills in this period see The Sugar Industry, pp. 123-126. Galloway, in "The Sugar Indus try …, on the other hand, presents an interesting comparative analysis of the Northeastern sugar economy vis a vis the Caribbean sugar economies. 248 Galloway, “The Last Years …,” pp. 601-602. A similar picture is presented by Eisenberg; see “Abolishing Slavery ...,” pp. 588-9, and The Sugar Industry, ch. 8. 249 In “Abolishing Slavery .55, p. 589, Eisenberg suggests that “During peak harvest months, these migrants may have comprised as much as 45 percent of the plantation work force. (...).” Andrade (op. cit., pp 119-l22) presents an interesting description of these corumbas. 250 Formacao, p. 160. For evidence that the ex-slaves remained indeed in the zona da mata, see Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, pp. 180-182. Velho, ”Modes of Capitalist Development …, pp 186-189, also argues that a “surplus population” already characterized the main Northeastern regions after 1850.

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Table 1 Pernambuco -- Daily wages for unskilled rural labor (in reis)

Year 1802 1829 1842 1855 1856 1857 1859 1862 1874 1876 1880 1882 1884 1886 1888 1889 1890 1895 1896 1897 1900 1902 1910 Source:

Nominal $160 $160 $255 $580 $652 $978 1$076 1$043 1$000 1$000 $640 $800 $800 $500 $560 $600 $500 1$200 1$200 1$500 1$200 $800 1$030

Real (1852=100) n.a. n.a. n.a. $330 $295 $459 $432 $756 $625 $581 $358 $345 $415 $319 $418 $255 $240 $283 $334 $291 $396 $333 n.a

Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry, p. 190. For similar data see Reis, J., “The Realm of the Hoe: Plantation Agriculture in Pernambuco Before and After the Abolition of Slavery,” mimeo., n.d., pp. 22-23.

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Section 3 -- A structural analysis of the morador system

The analysis of the internal logic of the morador sys tern shows that, while founded on the socio-economic subordination of the laborer, this labor system becomes responsible, at the same time, for the reproduction of the laborer in this same dispossessed condition. Consider, for instance, the economic logic of the plantation in assigning to the morador a land plot “in exchange,” i.e., on the condition, that he works in the sugarcane fields, without pay. It is clear that the plantation’s cost of this labor performed in the sugar fields by the laborer is the Opportunity cost of the land plot. Since the laborer is supposed to produce his subsistence on such a plot, he has no alternative but to use whatever amount of land the plantation assigns to him; on this premise, to the plantation becomes possible to assign a relatively small plot that will be intensively used by the morador.251 The cheapening of labor costs in sugar is further accomplished by requiring from each morador family the maximum possible work in sugar, for every unit of labor will thus have its cost minimized (the opportunity cost is a fixed sum per family). Thus the morador family is faced not only with the need to produce its subsistence in a tiny parcel what itself means low standards of living -- but in addition is confronted with the requirement to give maximum amount of labor to sugar. The result is: (i) low standard of living of the worker, (ii) an extraction of maximum amount of labor from the family, (iii) definite restrictions of development possibilities of production of the staple food, but also (iv) minimum labor costs per unit of sugar produced. This last reason, of course, explains the rise of the system.

In this way, the plantation

develops the tendency to employ a large number of families, “collecting” some amount of labor from each one of them. It is interesting to notice, in passing, that a similar mode of allocation of slave labor seems to have been characteristic of the Northeastern sugar economy in its long history. Slavery itself, evidently, gave to the planter absolute power over this allocation in the cyclical fluctuations of the sugar market. No such power, on the other hand, seemed to be presenting the morador system; the analysis of the alternative ways by which the plantation solved this 251

In his model of “hacienda,” Shane Hunt has imputed to the hacienda large size the low opportunity cost of the land plot, since marginal Productivity of land would thus be negligible. In the minifundio -- the land plot --, however, Hunt depicts a falling marginal product of labor, what is nothing but an implication of the requirement of subsistence to be satisfied in this minifundlo. It is this aspect, therefore that is crucial, and it does not take long until the planter perceives what he must do. See Hunt, S., “The Economics of Haciendas and Plantations in Latin America,” Princeton University, October, 1972.

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problem sheds light on the historically new role the patterns of land tenure started to play in the sugar plantation system.252 To the extent that the plantation, in view of its control over land use, may to begin with determine the size and the quality of the land plot, it is, at the same time, determining the marginal product of labor in the minifundio (the land plot), given the subsistence needs of the laborer. It becomes able, therefore to satisfy its labor needs by offering a wage rate given by this marginal product of labor, in such a way that the morador becomes able to fulfill minimum subsistence needs in both activities, while exercising his maximum labor capacity. Any change in the labor needs of sugar, in this way, becomes satisfied, at minimum labor costs, by manipulating the size and the quality of the land plot as well as the “wage” paid by the plantation for the morador work in sugar.253 It is clear how this system “concentrates In its interior two economies with competitive interests.”254 It is, therefore, only by an inherently authoritarian way that this economic logic can be realized. For this reason, it is correct to characterize it as a power system.255 Once the laborer is free to move, on the other hand, it appears in full light the organic connection between precarious alternatives outside the plantation system in the minifundio and in the moving frontier and the reproduction of this “internal” condition in any one single plantation. Furtado has suggested, indeed, that the determination of the real wages in the plantation system is founded precisely on these precarious alternatives that are left to the worker: 252

Furtado, in “A Estrutura Agraria …”, in a general overview of Brazilian agriculture, has stressed very much the key role the plantation system's control over land use has played in the consolidation of the positions acquired on the basis of slavery.” (p. 107). It may be interesting to quote an author presenting a similar perspective of the U.S. South, in the aftermath of the Civil War: “After the war the role of the planter as master underwent considerable reduction, but his role as landlord became a much more important one. Planter and laborer in the course of time assumed new relationships to each other based upon the relations of each to the land. Land began to enter into social relationships and social organization in a new and different manner. In Southern rural society the land came to be a mass of holdings and tenures of one kind or another that spread like a net over almost all property and held almost every individual in its meshes. (...) In short, land began to function in new and different ways in the determination of Southern social organization.” (ours the emphasis ). See Thompson, E. T., “The Natural History of Agricultural Labor in the South,” in David D. Jackson, ed., American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd (Durham: Duke University Press, 1940), p. 148. 253 Hunt (op. cit.) presents an important contribution toward rigorous formalization of these results. See also, in this connection, Schejtman, A. Z., “Elementos para una teoria de la economia campesina: pequenos proprietarios y campesinos de hacienda,” El Trimestre Economico, vol. 42, n°. 166, pp. 487-508. 254 Schejtman, op. cit., p. 503. The contradictory nature of such a symbiosis landlord economy/peasant economy, as well as the divergent historical patterns that have characterized its evolution, are discussed in Kay, C., “Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System,” The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, nº 1 (Oct. 1974), pp 69-98. 255 Furtado, “A Estrutura Agraria ...”, p. 107.

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“(…) The alternatives that are posed to the free worker are to integrate himself to an agro-mercantile enterprise under one of the multiple forms of labor system -- as a morador, foreiro, rendeiro, tenant, wage laborer, colono, etc. that reflect the metamorphoses of the large landholding in its effort to preserve the monopoly of landownership, or open a roca on his own account on lands of scarce commercial value. Since the man that carries out tropical agriculture at a rudi mentary technical level with low level of capitalization Will necessarily become an itinerant producer, the precarious living conditions of the itinerant roceiro, in marginal lands, will be the ones determining the supply price of rural labor. (...).” “[The rural population] must choose between the individual roca in lands of inferior economic yield and the tutelage of the agromercantile enterprise.”256 To the extent that the economic logic of the plantation implies the subjugation of the laborer and his production of necessaries, its analysis requires a consideration of the character and level of the reaction on the part of the worker. Thus in the late 1950’s, the sugar plantations, then embarking in a booming process of expansion, began to expel the moradores from their land plots; from that time on, the labor needs of sugar have increasingly been satisfied by means of wage labor; the same moradores that had to leave the plantations and become town dwellers formed among this rootless proletariat.257 It is usual to connect the rise of the “peasant leagues in this period to such a process of proletarianization; according to Furtado, the origin of the process was the need, by the sugar planters, to use the moradores3 land in sugar production,258 but, consistently with our analysis, an author has pointed out that it was not really the land, but the moradores’ labor, that the plantations needed.259 On the other hand, since sugar had traditionally been able to satisfy its labor needs by manipulating the moradores’ access to the land for subsistence purposes, this in itself should not necessarily account for the expulsion of moradores from the plantations. As it has been pointed out by Velho, “(…) these expansions were cyclical and had never before produced such a phenomenon. Consequently, there should be some additional factors operating.” Velho himself suggests that: 256

Furtado, “A Estrutura Agraria ...”, pp. 106-107, 115. For a description of such a process, and some of its results, see Velho, op. cit., pp. 196-201. 258 See his Diagnosis of the Brazilian Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp 132-133. 259 Taylor, K. S., “Brazi1’s Northeast: Sugar and Surplus Value,” Monthly Review, March 1969, p. 26. Taylor argues quite convincingly that, while owning much of the land in the Zona da Mata, the sugar plantations utilized only a small percentage (15-20 percent) in cane. It hardly can be under stood, therefore, how could the moradores’ tiny land plots become necessary, in the first place, and sufficient, in the second place, for the land needs of king sugar. 257

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“One of the immediate reasons for this transformation seems to have been State action, coupled with action by the labourers themselves following the advice of certain lawyers and priests. The creation (or extension) for the first time of a social legislation for the countryside led to the paradoxical effect that it became burdensome for the planter to keep his workers as moradores inside the plantation; particularly since through orientation from the outside the workers became aware of their new ‘rights.’ There developed a trend to create a contingent of ‘free labourers’ that with time would be numerically more important than the traditional moradores. Thus the taking over of marginal plantation land did not represent simply a cyclical expansion of sugar cultivation, but also the definite expulsion of morador families by the landowners in order to avoid the obligations (minimum wage, limitation of working hours, etc.) put forward by the new social legislation. Many of these moradores had been on the land for more than a generation and had never before been affected in such a way by sugarcane expansion. 260

260

Velho, op. cit., pp. 196-197. In passing, one should say that these transformations, and the tragic fate of the laborers, did not become restricted to the Northeastern sugar plantations. In the Center-South, at a pace that became accelerated in the 1960’s and that goes on right now, as newspapers’ accounts constantly inform us, the volantes, bolas-frias, moradores de corredor -- as these uprooted workers are called, depending on the region -made their appearance on the Brazilian scene. See Mello, M. C. I., O “Bóia Fria:” Acumulação e Miséria (Petropolis: Vozes, 1975); also Bastos, M. J. and Gonzales, E. N., “Migração Rural e o Trabalho Volante na Agricultura Brasileira,” University of Brasilia, Department of Social Sciences, 1974. It is not at all clear, however, that, in Velho’s words, “This seems to na important and decisive development which marks the passing of the plantation as a distinct mode of production,” (op. cit., p. 197); neither does it seem correct, in the light of our analysis of the character of the plantation system – given by its insertion in the process of accumulation at the world level – to perceive these transformations as reflecting “capitalist penetration” in the Brazilian countryside; for na insistent allusion to such a “penetration”, see Lopes, J. R. B., “Tipos de Areas Rurais no Brasil”, CEBRAP, São Paulo, 1974.

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CHAPTER VII AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF A CONTEMPORARY PLANTATION SYSTEM: THE “CACAO REGIONS OF BAHIA, BRAZIL Introduction ‘The purpose of this chapter is to analyse a Northeastern region whose economic and social life has been dominated, since the last decades of the nineteenth century, by the production and export of cacao. The data that will be used has been gathered by a Federal Government agency -Comissao Executiva do Plano de Recuperacao Economico-Rural da Lavoura Cacueira (CEPLAC) -- established in 1957 in order to cope with financial problems of cacao production, then, as now, a predominantly export crop, being, in addition, highly concentrated in Southern Bahia. (see appended maps.) As a result of the broadening of its objectives, this agency developed a sophisticated apparatus for technical and improvements in cacao production, expanding its activities, furthermore, to other crops. An “economic and social survey”, supposed to load to concrete policy measures of relevance for regional development, has been conducted since 1971, convering 89 municipios with na area of 92,000 km² and more than 2 million inhabitants261 . For such a survey, and as a result of sampling procedures that do not seem to lead to any systematic bias (see comparisons with the universe in this chapter’s appendix tables), questionnaries were applied to about 3,000 agricultural establishments; thanks to na elaborate regionalization of the survey region -- the “cacao regions” latu sensu --, the date has been made available by “subareas”, one of which, the “cacao zone” proper, is for all practical purposes identical to the cacao sector. Our analysis of this data has been framed in a form suited to disclose the concrete forms assumed in the particular case of cacao by the duality capitalist sector/”subsistence” sector that has been discussed in the previous chapters. To the extent that the results confirm the existence of such a duality in the cacao regions, a contribution to the empirical characterization of the phenomena is thus accomplished, in a manner that does not seem to have been done so far. In section 1 we analyse in detail the cacao zone proper, while in section 2 we bring the other subareas in order to see, in a comparative manner, what is

261

For more detailed information see “Diagnostico Socio-Economico da Regiao Cacaueira do Estado da Bahia”, prepared by the CEPLAC group in charge of the survey and presented to the X annual meeting of the Brazilian Society of Agricultural Economists, Brasilia, July 1972.

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general and what is peculiar in the cacao sector stricto sensu. Section 3 seeks to add the empirical aspect of the issue of the greater intensity of land use in smaller-sized establishments, as compared to the larger-sized ones. Finally, an attempt has been made, in section 4, to use results in order to contribute to the analysis of the socio-economic structure in the Brazilian countryside. This has been done by relating the inferior technical and economic conditions of production in the “subsistence sector” to the subordinate insertion of the “subsistence” producers and their “subsistence” crops in the plantation-dominated agrarian structure. Every aspect of the region’s agricultural sector becomes therefore connected to its dominant capitalist pole -king cacao.

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Map II

Source:

Leeds, A., “ Economic Cycles in Brazil: The Persistence of a Total Culture Pattern, Cacao and Other Cases”, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1957, p. 21.

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Map III

Source:

Leeds, A., op. cit., p. 37.

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Map IV

Source:

Leeds, A., op. cit., p. 60.

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Section 1 – Plantation production and petty production in the cacao zone

1.1 – Characterization of production by sector according to type and amount of labor used

A production unit (UP) is included in the plantation (or capitalist) sector if more than 40 percent of the labor effectively used (equivalent man-years) is paid (wage-) labor. Otherwise it is classified in the petty production sector. The operators of plantation production are called capitalist producers, distinguishable from the petty producers. Tables 1-2 present the classification of the Ups according to these sectors and by size in hectares. Considering the capitalist sector as a whole, an average UP employs 6 wage laborers, requiring about half of a man-year as “operator labor”. In the plantation s larger than 500 hectares, to be sure, there is an average of 39 wage laborers per unit, but even in the Ups under 20ha., 1.6 wage laborers, on average, are employed. The circumstance that the operation of a capitalist UP is carried or with less than a full man-years “operator’s labor”, helps to explain the high proportion of hired labor in total labor force even in the smaller Ups. It is interesting to note that in petty production, on the contrary, more than one and a half man-year in “operator labor” is carried out in the average UP 262 . It is clear from Table 2 that in the case of the cacao zone the small acreage of an UP does not mean necessarily that it is a petty production unit; indeed, it is significant that almost one quarter of the capitalist sector’s wage-earning class works in the units with sizes smaller than 50 ha., although it is still true that the bigger plantations (above 100 ha.) employ about 59 percent of the cacao proletariat. Further information on the size distribution of the capitalist Ups in terms of the amount of labor hired is present in Table 3, where it can be seen that those employing four or more wage laborers account for almost 88 percent of the total wage employment. The relatively large number of capitalist units employing less than four wage-workers, it should be pointed out, adds to the need to consider more carefully the peculiarities of the cacao plantation system vis-a-vis other plantation systems in terms of the

262

This is, evidently, an expression of the fact that, as one author put it, “Unlike the fazenda, [the petty UP] is a family-living and -working unit”. Leeds, A., “Economic Cycles in Brazil: The persistence of a Total CulturePattern, 1957, p. 157. The complex hierarchical organization of the cacao fazendas studied by the author, in a field trip in 1951-52, is described on pp. 184-206, where the role of the “administrator” is depicted.

125

size of the UP.

126

Table 1 Cacao zone -- distribution of the UPs by size in hectares and composition of the labor force – petty production sector

Total 532 10,382

%

1. Nº. of UPs 2. Area total 3. Nº. Total labor force (man years) 856 100.0 3.1 Operators' labor 823 96.1 3.2 Wage Laborers' labor 32 3.7 3.2.1 Temporary labor 31 88.6 3.2.2 Permanent labor 4 11.4 Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(size in hectares) % 50-100 49 3,124

0-20 349 2,121

%

20-50 124 3.759

%

100-500 10 1.378

%

451

100.0

253

100.0

438

97.1

239

13

2.9

13

-

>500 -

%

115

100.0

42

100.0

94.5

109

94.8

40

95.2

-

-

14

5.5

6

5.2

2

4.8

-

-

100.0

12

85.7

5

83.3

1

50.0

-

-

0.0

2

14.3

1

16.7

1

50.0

-

-

-

127

Table 2 Cacao zone -- distribution of the UPs by size in hectares and composition of the labor force -- capitalist sector

Total 413 38,212

%

1. Nº. of UPs 2. Area total 3. Nº. Total labor force (man years) 2,745 100.0 3.1 Operators' 238 8.7 labor 3.2 Wage Laborers' labor 2,507 91.3 3.2.1 Temporary labor 947 37.8 3.2.2 Permanent labor 1,557 62.1 Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(size in hectares) % 50-100 76 5,285

0-20 98 956

%

20-50 144 4,533

%

100-500 83 15,94

%

>500 12 11,499

%

203

100.0

555

100.0

510

100.0

990

100.0

480

100.0

42

20.7

94

16.9

46

6.0

41

4.1

11

2.3

161

79.3

461

83.1

464

91.0

949

95.9

469

97.7

92

57.1

210

45.6

196

42.2

351

37.0

98

20.9

69

42.9

251

54.4

168

57.8

598

63.0

371

79.1

128

Table 3 Cacao zone -- Distribution of the UPs by sectors and by size and composition of the labor force Stratification according to amount of labor used, in equivalent man-years, and by sectors I. Petty Prodution <1 1-2 2-4 4-8 >8

(1) Nº. Ups 532 187 176 130 38 1

II. Capitalist Prodution 413 <1 45 1-2 70 2-4 95 4-8 112 8 - 16 51 16 - 32 31 32 - 64 6 > 64 3 Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(2) Area (ha) 10,382 1,772 3,120 3,625 1,824 42

(3) Area per UP (ha) 19.5 9.5 17.7 27.8 48.0 42.0

(4) Operator's labor (manyears) 823.3 88.9 219.1 324.0 181.4 9.9

(5) Hired labor (man-years) 32.4 2.3 6.4 17.8 5.9 -

38,212 925 2,400 4,818 8,650 6,739 7,065 4,053 3,562

92.5 20.6 34.3 50.7 77.2 132.1 227.9 675.5 1,187.4

238.0 2.7 14.8 50.7 94.4 40.5 27.4 4.5 3.0

2,506.7 16.3 74.2 212.4 518.7 530.6 599.7 253.7 301.2

% 100.0 7.1 19.8 54.9 18.2 -

(6) Total labor used [=(4)+(5)] 855.7 91.2 225.5 341.8 187.3 9.9

(7) Labor per UP[=(6)/(1)] 1.6 0.5 1.3 2.6 4.9 9.9

100.0 0.7 3.0 8.4 20.7 21.2 23.9 10.1 12.0

2,744.7 19.0 89.0 263.1 613.1 571.1 627.1 258.2 304.2

6.6 0.4 1.3 2.8 5.5 11.2 20.2 43.0 101.4

129

Table 4 presents the results on off-farm work by the producers in both sectors, and according to the size of the UP. Looking closer into the petty production sector, one can see that almost half of the producers work in UPs of an average size close to 3 hectares, with an intensity of land use significantly greater as compared with the other petty producers. Already at this point we can say that these smaller petty UPs constitute clearly the minifundia, the petty producers off-farm work being, most likely, “ out-hiring”, i.e., parttime wage labor on the bigger plantations. A measure of the insufficiency of their means of labor -- first and foremost, their land resources -- in relation to their subsistence needs is presented in this table as the “rate of outhiring”, defined as

Off - farrn work Off - farrn work + operator labor the denominator being a proxy for the family’s total labor capacity and also, to a lesser extent, the family’s size and related subsistence needs. The interpretation of this off-farm work as part-time wage labor could be strengthened by data on income, that unfortunately did not become available. However, the results to be further presented in this chapter support completely this specific characterization of off-farm work by the minifundiarios; this is, in any case, a widespread phenomenon in plantation systems, in Brazil and elsewhere.263 263

For a discussion of the precarious economic conditions of a group of petty producers in the cacao zone, whose “lack of resources makes them work for others in search of their subsistence,” see Landim, A.D., “Cooperativa Agricola Mista de Una Resp. Ltda.” , mimeo, CEPLAC, April 1975; in his case study, Leeds has found part -time wage labor by the petty producers; see op.cit., p. 229; on p. 252 he says: “Many concurrently or alternately work on their plots and take jobs as laborers on fazendas”. For an overview of the incidence of minifundios in Brazilian agriculture, see Interamerican Committee for Agricultural Development

130

A further insight into outhiring in the petty production sector is possible with the help of Table 5, where the UPs are stratified according to the amount of labor used. The petty UPs with less than one man-year of labor used show an impressive incidence of offfarm work. By looking at the increase in the average area of these smaller UPs, however, as

(CIDA), Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economic Development of the Agricultural Sector – Brazil (Washington: Pan American Union, 1966, pp. 81-117, where emphasis is given on the inability of the minifundio to allow for the subsistence needs of the producer. Just as an example of the abundant literature on the pervasiveness of part -time wage work in plantation systems other than Brazilian agriculture, see Handler, J.S., “Small-Sca1e Sugar Cane Farming in Barbados”, Ethnolo gy, vol. V, n° 3, pp. 264-283; the author analyses a community of petty producers that “cannot depend upon the cash proceeds derived from cane alone to satisfy all or most of their cash needs. They must seek income from other sources (...) such as plantation wage labor. (...)”. (p. 280).

131

Table 4 Cacao zone – off-farm work by sectors and according to sizes in hectares (1) Nº. UPs

(2) Total area (ha)

(3) Average area (ha)

I. Petty Prodution <1 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100

533 258 91 125 49 10

10,407 839 1,282 3,785 3,124 1,378

19.5 3.3 14.1 30.3 63.8 137.8

826 281 157 239 109 40

218 124 33 49 13 -

35 6 7 14 6 2

20.9 30.6 17.3 16.9 10.6 -

II. Capitalist Prodution <1 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100

412 47 51 143 76 95

38,185 220 736 4,507 5,285 27,437

92.7 4.7 14.4 31.5 69.5 288.8

235 12 30 94 46 53

42 14 5 12 4 7

2,504 55 106 461 464 1,418

15.3 53.4 14.8 11.6 8.1 11.0

Stratification by sectors and size of UPs (ha)

Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(4) (5) (6) (7) (8) Operator's Off--farm Hired labor Rate of out- Total labor labor (m.y.) work (m.y.) (m.y.) hiring (%) used [=(4)+(6)] (m.y.)

(9) Operator labor per UP [=(4)/(1)] (m.y.)

(10) Total labor per area [=(8)/(2)] (m.y./ha)

861 287 164 253 115 42

1.5 1.1 1.7 1.9 2.2 4.0

0.079 0.335 0.122 0.063 0.035 0.029

2,740 67 136 555 510 1,470

0.6 0.3 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.6

0.072 0.304 0.185 0.123 0.096 0.054

132

well as to their relatively lower use of labor per area -- confirmed, parenthetically, by the lower amount of labor per UP -- one may conclude that two different situations (“types”) seem to be associated with outhiring in the petty production sector. In one case, land is intensively used, concomitantly with outhiring -- this is the typical minifundio; in the other case, however, other factors rather than land shortage cause outhiring. Further research would be very helpful in going deeper in this last case, whose relevance has to be established yet. In contrast to petty production, “off-farm work” as appears in the capita1ist sector can not be interpreted in the same terms. First of all, the high “rates of outhiring” appearing for instance, in Table 5, cannot be considered as meaning the same thing (i.e., an indicator of the inability of the producer to meet his subsistence needs by working solely on his own account): one can see immediately that the high “rates of outhiring” reported on column 6 of Table 5 are in part caused by the small amount of operator labor in the capitalist UPs, that by definition are based on wage labor. Further results on the economic and technical conditions of production of these capitalist UPs, to be presented later in this chapter, will strengthen this contention. In particular, it will be shown that the capitalist sector is typically characterized by multiple-property holding, what in itself implies activities in more than one UP by the capitalist producers. This is not, however, the case in petty production. 264

264

The data being presented here as “off-farm work” corresponds to an item in the questionnaire enquiring on “work on another land;” this item, in turn, was itself an attempt to capture, among those producers that were engaged in income -earning activities in addition to their own UPs that happened to be interviewed, the minifundistas’ part-time wage labor, a phenomenon whose prevalence was considered of interest to study. To the extent, however, that the producer was asked if he had "worked on another land,” in general (i.e., without specifying: as a wage laborer, as originally intended), capitalist producers also answered it.

133

Table 5 Cacao zone -- off-farm work by sectors and by size of the labor force Stratification (1) Nº. of by sectors Ups and size of labor force

I. Petty Prodution <1 1- 2 2- 4 4- 8 >8

532 187 176 130 38 1

(2) Area per UP (ha)

19.5 9.5 17.7 27.8 48.0 42.0

II. Capitalist Prodution 413 92.5 <1 45 20.5 1- 2 70 34.3 2- 4 95 50.7 4- 8 112 77.2 8 - 16 51 132.1 16 - 32 31 227.8 32 - 64 6 675.5 > 64 3 1,187.4 Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) Operator Off--farm Hired labor Rate of out- Total labor Total labor Total labor labor (m.y.) work (m.y.) (m.y.) hiring (%) used used per UP used per [=(3)+(5)] [=(7)/(1)] area (m.y.) (m.y.) [=(8)/(2)] (m.y.)

(10) Operator labor per UP [=(3)/(1)] (m.y./ha)

823.3 88.9 219.1 324.0 181.4 9.9

218.3 118.0 48.6 47.2 4.4 -

32.4 2.3 6.4 17.8 5.9 -

21.0 57.0 18.2 12.7 2.4 -

855.7 91.2 225.5 341.8 187.3 9.9

1.6 0.5 1.3 2.6 4.9 9.9

0.08 0.05 0.07 0.09 0.10 0.24

1.5 0.5 1.2 2.5 4.8 9.9

238.0 2.7 14.8 50.7 94.4 40.5 27.4 4.5 3.0

42.4 11.8 5.2 9.7 9.9 3.3 2.1 0.4 -

2,506.7 16.3 74.2 212.4 518.7 530.6 599.7 253.7 301.2

15.1 81.4 26.0 16.1 9.5 7.5 7.1 8.2 -

2,744.7 19.0 89.0 263.1 613.1 571.1 627.1 258.2 304.2

6.6 0.4 1.3 2.8 5.5 11.2 20.2 43.0 101.4

0.07 0.02 0.04 0.05 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.06 0.09

0.6 0.06 0.21 0.53 0.84 0.79 0.88 0.75 1.0

134

1.2 - Patterns of concentration of landholding A final important observation should be made on the results presented so far. In view of the predominance of wage labor in the region under study, it is obvious that an analysis of concentration cannot limit itself to operators, since the landless proletariat -being precisely the social group having no property at all -- is in this way swept away from the picture. 265 The analysis of concentration to be presented in the following, with the help of Tables 6 and 7, therefore, has the only purpose of contrasting the two sectors; it should never be taken as an analysis of concentration among the families composing the region’s socio-economic structure. In the aggregate, the distribution of the UPs according to their acreage shows the standard pattern of concentration. The UPs under 50 ha. represent more than 76% of the total number (48% alone in the class under 20 ha.), and comprise 24% of the area (the Ups under 20 ha. holding less than 7%), while, in the other extreme, the UPs larger than 100 ha., being only about 11% of the total number, represent more than 58% of the total ares. The classification of the UPs by sectors makes it clear that these patterns of concentration in the aggregate are largely explained by concentration between sectors, since 62% of the UPs in the size classes under 50 ha. (72% of the UPs under 20 ha.), representing 49% of the are~ in these classes (64% in the classes under 20 ha.), are petty production units, while capitalist units dominate in the size classes above 100 ha., representing about 85% of the number and holding 95% of the area of the larger UPs classified in these classes. It is important to note, however, that almost 59% of the capitalist units are smaller than 50 ha. (almost one quarter are smaller than 20 ha.), pointing to the need to analyse

265

This gross mistake was made by Alencar, N.H., “Aspectos da Concentracao da Producao de Cacau e da Estrutura Fundiaria na Regiao Cacaueira do Estado da Bahia”, CEPLAC, March 1970. For some specific attempts at incorporating the landless laborers in the analysis of concentration of means of production, the land in particular, in Brazilian agriculture, e.g., Hoffman, R. and Silva, J.F.G., “A Estrutura Agraria Brasileira”, Piracicaba, 1975; and Frank, A.G., Capitalism Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), esp. pp. 248-252.

135

concentration within the capitalist sector itself. For this reason, it is necessary to observe that a relatively small number of large plantations the ones larger than 100 ha., representing 23% of the sector’s UPs -- comprise almost 72% of the capitalist sector’s land area. These are the large plantations that in the region as a whole -- i.e., pooling together both sectors –

136

Table 6 Cacao zone -- Distribuition of UPs by sectors and by sizes in hectares Stratification by size in hectares Items and sectors 1. Total number of UPs 1.1 No. petty production UPs 1.2 No. capitalist UPs 2. Total area of the Ups (ha) 2.1 Area in petty production 2.2 Area in capitalist production

Total 997 532 413

% 100.0 100.0 100.0

0-20 482 349 98

% 48.3 65.6 23.7

20-50 281 124 144

% 28.1 23.3 34.9

49,639 10,382 38,212

100.0 100.0 100.0

3,330 2,121 956

6.7 20.4 2.5

8,717 3,759 4,533

17.6 36.2 11.9

Table 6 continued Cacao zone -- Distribuition of Ups by sectors and by sizes in hectares Stratification by size in hectares Items and sectors 1. Total number of UPs 1.1 No. petty production UPs 1.2 No. capitalist Ups 2. Total number of the Ups (há) 2.1 Area in petty production 2.2 Area in capitalist production

50-100 128 49 76

% 12.8 9.2 18.4

100-500 94 10 83

% 9.6 1.9 20.1

> 500 12 12

% 1.2 2.9

8,582 3,124 5,285

17.3 30.1 13.8

17,512 1,378 15,940

35.3 13.2 41.7

11,499 11,499

23.2 30.1

Source: CEPLAC Survey. Petty production and capitalist production do not have to add to the total, since not all the UPs could be classified in either sector.

137

represent less than 10% of the total number of the UPs, holding nevertheless more than 58% of the total land area. Table 7, on the other hand, is highly suggestive of the insufficiency or an analysis of concentration based on the distribution of the UPs alone, in cases like the region under study where the number of proprietors is much smaller than the number of UPs, this phenomenon of multiple-property holding being as much relevant for the reason that it restricts itself to the capitalist sector and therefore also to the larger size classes.266 This differential incidence of the phenomenon, of course, can only give strong support to our framing of the analysis of concentration of the means of production (indicated here by distribution of landholding) within the context of the 8nalysis of the duality plantation sector/petty production: indeed, it is the case that petty producers not only hold smaller UPs, but in addition they own nothing else, while in the plantation sector, not only do the planters own larger UPs, but their greater economic strength is expressed by their holding several Ups, evidently, a complete picture must include the cacao proletariat, for not a single UP they are able to hold, even less, therefore, than the petty producers.

266

Alencar, M.H., op.cit., has failed to take into account this phenomenon of multiple -property holding, a serious shortcoming of a study striving to present a rosy picture of the region’s patterns of concentration. Much emphasis has been given, in the literature, to the prevalence of this phenomenon in Brazilian agriculture, but to our knowledge no empirical evidence has been provided, up to now, in support of this claim. See, for instance, CIDA, op.cit., pp. 101-107, where a specific reference to the cacao zone is made.

138

Table 7 Cacao zone -- Multiple-property holding by sectors and by sizes of the UPs

1. Total number of other UPs 1.1 Owned by petty producers 1.2 Owned by capitalist producers 2. Total area of other UPs 2.1 Owned by petty producers 2.1.1 Area "other UPs”/area “sampled UPs" (%) 2.2 Owned by capitalist producers 2.2.1 Area "other UPs"/area "sampled UPs" (%) 3. No. of producers with more than one UP 2.1 Petty producers 3.2 Capitalist producers

Stratification by size in hectares 20-50 50-100 100-500

Total

0-20

701 102 566

163 57 95

215 27 184

130 11 110

166 8 149

27 27

97,809 2,470 23.8 90,578 237.0

4,868 930 43.8 3,613 377.9

17,243 568 15.1 16,305 359.7

19,562 197 6.3 18,345 347.1

39,707 801 58.1 35,862 225.0

16,428 16,428 142.9

279 68 199

84 37 40

87 20 64

47 7 39

52 5 46

9 9

Source: CEPLAC Survey. Petty production and capitalist production do not have to add to the total, since not all the Ups could be classified in either sector.

> 500

139

1.3 - The technico-economic conditions of production in the two sectors

We shall begin now, with the help of Tables 8 and 9, the discussion of the different technical and economic characteristics of productions in these two sectors. The “cacao zone”, indeed, deserves its name, for monoculture is a striking phenomenon.

It 18 clearly small, however, the share of the petty cacao producers --

denominated locally as the burareiros -- in the total production of cacao. Most of the capitalist units, on the other hand, are cacao fazendas: indeed, almost 78 percent of the Ups in the capitalist sector, absorbing more than 80 percent of this sector’s area are fazendas where cacao represents close to 97 percent of the (gross) output value. In contradistinction, the buraras represent less than 32 percent of the total number of the petty UPs, and absorb less than 36 percent of the total area under petty production .267 If cacao is for all practical purposes a sphere dominated by capitalist production, manioc, on the other hand, is clearly a petty production domain: it is significant that almost 32 percent of the petty producers -- as many as the burareiros -- derive most of their income from manioc production, while it is virtually absent the presence of capitalist UPs specializing in manioc production, precisely the sphere where, in sharp contrast with cacao, a basic staple food of the proletariat is produced. Thus, while the capitalist sector accounts for more than 90 percent of cacao production, leaving little more than 6% for the petty production sector, with manioc the situation almost inverts itself, since only the petty production UPs reported as percent of this crop's production, while the capitalist sector's 267

In the area he studied, Leeds has found that petty production’s chief crops were “ manioc, aipim (a type of yam), sugar cane, corn, and other fruits and vegetables. Cacao frequently provides an additional small income, occasionally the chief income ”. (op.cit., p. 230).

140

similar share is lower than 20 percent.268

268

Further investigation of the conditions of production of even this small share reported in the capitalist sector may show it to be, rather than “capita1ist”, actually “subsistence production” carried out by permanent laborers on plantation-assigned plots, being, therefore, a marginal activity within the capitalist sector. CEPLAC’s survey, however, has not made possible the analysis of this issue. It should be pointed out that, in view of relative shortage of cacao land, the worker’s access to the land plot seems to become restricted, since the opportunity cost of land is greater. Leeds has referred, in his case study, to fazendeiros’ forbidding even of “[growing] little gardens and [raising] pigs and chicken about the [worker’s] house.” (op.cit., p. 207).

141

Table 8 Cacao zone -- main economic activities by sectors Sectors and economic activities A. Zone's total B. Petty production 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs 4. all specialized UPs C. Capitalist production 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs 3. all specialized UPs

No. Of UPs No. % 997 100.0 533 53.5 168 16.8 169 16.9 45 4.5 382 38.3 411 41.2 319 32.0 28 2.8 347 34.8

Labor use m.y. 3,600 856 290 279 73 643 2,745 2,372 182 2,554

% 100.0 33.8 8.0 7.7 2.0 17.7 75.2 32.0 5.0 70.5

Total land area ha. % 49,639 100 10,382 20.9 3,698 7.5 2,895 5.8 1,185 2.4 7,778 15.7 38,212 77.0 30,646 61.8 4,163 8.4 34,808 70.2

Source: CEPLAC Survey. Only de UPs that have shown to be “specialized” in properly defined “main economic activity (ies)” have been analysed in more detail in CEPLAC’s survey.

142

A. Zone’s total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs 4. all specialized UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs 3. all specialized UPs

Table 9 Cacao zone -- structure of production by sectors and main economic activities Total value of output Value of output of cacao Cr$ % Cr$ % 24,325,434 100.0 22,095,325 100.0

Value of temporary crops Cr$ % 696,906 100

946,334 356,858 191,913 1,495,105

3.9 1.5 0.8 6.2

892,385 44,338 73,179 1,009,902

4.0 0.3 4.6

37,174 301,944 45,628 381,746

4.9 43.3 6.5 54.8

20,626,095 844,907 21,471,002

84.8 3.5 88.3

19,966,621 413,934 20,380,555

90.4 1.9 92.2

84,487 15,181 99,668

12.1 2.2 14.3

143

Table 9 continued

A. Zone’s total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs 4. all UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs 3. all specialized UPs

Production of cacao arrobas % 366,979 100.0

Production of manioc Tons % 5,516 100.0

Own consuption Rate of out-hiring (% total output) in petty production 1.2

19,604 961 1,696 22,261

5.3 0.3 0.5 6.1

263 2,659 303 3,224

4.8 48.2 5.5 58.5

2.6 19.6 15.2 8.3

324,806 9,535 334,139

88.5 2.6 91.1

737 289 1,025

13.4 5.2 18.6

0.6 3.3 0.7

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (see observation in Table 8).

18.2 21.2 19.7 19.9

144

A few additional observations must be made in connection with the analysis of petty production in the region. First, it is predominantly commodity production, as the data on own consumption shows. Secondly, the buraras (the cacao petty units) larger gross output value per UP as compared to the manioc UPs, for instance, not necessarily means that the burareiros form an upper strata within petty production, for the reproduction costs of their activity -- “depreciation”, that is to say -- have no counterpart in the petty manioc units. The prevalence of outhiring accross all petty production activities, anyway, is an indirect evidence that such a differentiation does not really exist. A study of such a differentiation within petty production, one could say, loses much of its importance in view of the much greater differentiation between petty production as a whole and capitalist production. It is to the extent that the petty producers as a whole are contrasted with the capitalist producers also as a whole that a basic homogeneity can be attributed to the petty production sector. 269 Table 10 is useful in bringing home this proposition. The virtually identical sizes of the petty UPs, in dependently of the particular crop produced (it should be recalled the point made above regarding the comparison between the petty cacao units and the petty manioc units) can be seen from the table. Their being equally small, that is to say, becomes clear when they are contrasted with the capitalist units. As Table 11 shows, furthermore, the petty UPs are not only smaller than the capitalist UPs: they are distinctly inferior than the latter, as the several indicators of resource endowments presented in the table, all consistently and significantly --, suggest. In particular, a piece of information appearing in the table is very important: as indicated by the significantly greater incidence of capoeira land in petty production, the quality of the land in this sector, by comparison with the capitalist sector,

269

This same conclusion has been re ached by Leeds when he says that “When [burareiros and roceiros] are contrasted to the fazenda, their typological similarity becornes apparent. The contrast shows the essential opposition between the fazendas and all of the small establishments.” (op.cit., p. 245).

145

Table 10 Cacao zone -- indicators of size of specialized UPs by sectors Area per UP (ha.) A. Zone’s total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs production 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs

Total labor per UP (m.y.) 3.63

Cacao arrobas per UP

49.8

Gross output per UP (Cr$) 24,399

22 17.1 26.3

5,633 2,112 4,265

1.72 1.65 1.62

116.7 5.7 37.7

96.1 148.7

64,659 30,175

7.43 6.50

1,018.2 340.2

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (see observation in Table 8).

368.1

146

Table 11 Cacao zone -- indicators of size of specialized UPs by sectors (1) Land-man (ha./m.y.) A. Zone’s total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs

Capital-labor ratio (Cr$/m.y.)

Capital-land ratio (Cr$/ha.)

13.7

(2) Capoeira land/total land area (%) 19.0

35,999

2,629

12.8 10.4 16.2

31.0 43.0 37.6

17,393 5,607 17,288

1,364 423 1,065

12.9 22.9

14.8 6.9

43,449 31,205

3,363 1,364

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (see observation in Table 8).

147

is worse270. Again, this is a distinct feature of every crop under potty production, what suggests that this is a general feature of petty production as such, having little to do, therefore, with particular technical conditions of production of crops the petty producers might “specialize” relatively more on271. A

contrast

between

the

technico-economic conditions of petty cacao

production, vis-a-vis capitalist cacao production is presented, in greater detail, in Table 12. The lower productivity per area of cacao, of course, involves in its study the whole technical production process; the lower quality of land in petty production, it must be noted, may be an important factor here. The relative lack of processing facilities, in its turn, and the probably inferior marketing conditions facing the petty producers -- not only on account of their smaller crops, insufficient processing, etc. but also due to the very precariousness of their economic situation -- must be important factors in the explanation of the significantly lower average price received by the petty cacao producers.272

270

The meaningfulness of this piece of evidence is greatly strengthened by an information provided personally in an extensive presentation centered particularly on the relative position of petty producers in the cacao region by a CEPLAC agronomist, with an old acquaintance with the region, that the petty production that exists in the region is for the most part restricted to scattered small areas, with poorer soils (“capoeira land,” in his words), truly marginal areas as far as the dominant economic activity is concerned. It has been impossible for us to use data on land value since the survey we are using was a failure on this generally troublesome data, especially so in the cacao region, where the tradition of identifying “cacao land” with “land with cacao” -- since most of the “cacao land”, anyway, is already planted with cacao -- makes it very difficult to obtain information on value of land proper, without including the value of the cacao trees. This fact was confirmed by the author in view of his access to the files of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s office in charge of collecting and publishing information on land prices all over Brazil. An idea of the differential between “cacao land” and other land can be seen in Leeds’ reference to a petty producer’s purchase of land to plant manioc, in 1952, for 300 cruzeiros a hectare, while a hectare of “cacao land” was sold, on average for Cr$17,000. See op.cit., p. 237. 271 Again using Leeds’ field work on the cacao zone, one encounters his saying (op.cit., p. 234) that “Buraras are plots of land organized on a peasant-like, non-industrial basis and scattered throughout the more marginal areas among the industrially organized cacao producing plantations. (…)” His descriptions of the buraras visited included one with “ragged, inferior orchards”, “a barcaça [a cacao processing facility -- GCR] in bad repair”. (op.cit., p. 50); another one had been formed by an acquisition of “20 hectares from Pedro Ferreira in a part of the latifundium not suitable for cacao. (…)”. (op.cit., p. 237). 272

Leeds has noticed another factor in addition to lack of processing: the burareiros’ lack of mules, so that they had to deliver their cacao, at a lower price, to the nearby fazenda or to an intermediary. See op.cit., p. 242.

148

149

Table 12 Cacao zone -- technico-economic characteristics of cacao production by specialized UPs and sectors Share of cacao in total gross output (%) A. Zone's total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs

Value of output of productivity of cacao cacao per cacao area per cacao area (Cr$/ha.) (arrobas/ha.)

90.8

1,282

21.3

60.2

Value of cacao processing facilities per cacao produced (Cr$/arroba) 163.9

94.3 12.4 38.1

786 159 446

17.3 3.4 10.3

45.5 46.1 43.1

69.0 380.8 222.3

96.8 49.0

1,426 892

23.2 20.5

61.5 43.4

167.1 197.1

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (see observation in Table 8).

Average price received for cacao (Cr$/arroba)

150

The relative lack of processing facilities in petty production, to be sure, is only an aspect of the general relative dearth of means of production in this sector; as it has been indicated in Table 11, petty production shows a significantly lower aggregate value of means of production (excluding land) per labor and per area. If the previous evidence on differential quality of land in the two sectors is added, it becomes easy to understand why output per labor differs so markedly in the two sectors, as shown in Table 13. As to the significantly higher output per area in the capitalist cacao UPs, vis-àvis the petty cacao UPs, the different qualities of this “area”, as well as the other technicoeconomic inferiorities of petty production, are obviously to be considered for an explanation. (In the cacao zone, it is interesting to notice, production in the petty sector is not at all characterized by a greater use of labor per area as compared to production in the capitalist sector. In both sectors, however, the smaller units show significantly greater use of labor per area and also larger output per area as compared with the larger units. See columns 10 in Tables 4 and 5, column 1 in Table 11 and lines H in Table 15 and L in Table 16, to be presented next. We shall return to these issues in section three or this chapter.) In the following Tables 14 to 16, holding constant the size (in hectares) of the UPs -- through a stratification of the UPs according to their area -- it is shown that a significant differentiation still takes place according to sector of classification of the UPs, in terms of (i) economic size (Table 14), (ii) the technico-economic conditions of production (Table 15), arid finally, (iii) in terms of productivity of labor and land (Table 16). Such a differentiation, in view of our previous discussion, is to be interpreted as a result not only of the different “crop mix” in the two sectors, but also of the poorer technico-economic conditions of petty production in cacao.

151

Table 13 Cacao zone -- output per labor and per area by specialized UPs by sectors

A. Zone's total B. Specialized petty UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. manioc UPs 3. other specialized UPs C. Specialized capitalist UPs 1. cacao UPs 2. other specialized UPs

Total output per labor (Cr$/m.y.) 6,714

Total output per area (Cr$/ha.) 490

3,263 1,279 2,629

256 123 162

8,696 4,642

673 203

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (see observation in Table 8).

152

Section 2 - The duality plantation-petty production as a general phenomenon: the “survey region”

The petty production that one encounters in the cacao zone, including its distinct technico-economic conditions vis-a-vis the plantation sector, can be shown now to be no more than a particular instance of a seemingly substantial sector of Brazilian agriculture, whose common denominator is precisely a subordinated socio-economic position expressed in the technico-economic conditions that we have been analysing. The results to be presented in the following, for the other subareas that, together with the “cacao zone”, formed CEPLAC’s “survey region”, can not but support this contention. Another important aspect whose analysis becomes possible with the presentation of the tables that follow is the specificity of the cacao zone vis-a-vis the other subareas. The cacao plantation sector can, in this way, be contrasted to the other dominant sectors in the survey region. Table 17 allows us to see that throughout the survey region the petty producers not only own significantly much smaller production units, vis-a-vis the capitalist producers, but in addition, in sharp contrast with the latter, they own very little else. Closer examination of Table 17 suggests that the first two subareas show a greater importance of capitalist production vis-a-vis petty production, as indicated by the respective amounts of land (this greater importance is expressed, also, in terms of amount of labor used, as shown in Table 21, below);273 the cacao zone, in addition, manifests its

273

A satisfactory comparative analysis of the several subareas cannot be carried out without developing a deeper study of each one of them, what is beyond the objective of this chapter. It is current understanding in CEPLAC quarters, however, that Pastori1de Itapetina is

153

specificity in e significantly smaller average area of the UPs in the capitalist sector, as compared to the other subareas’ capitalist sectors. In an attempt to stress even

characterized by an important livestock activity, forming with the cacao zone the economically dominant subareas. It would seem to be consistent, therefore, to find that these are the subareas where petty production is relatively less important. (The particular case of Planalto de Jagua quara should be analysed with the qualification that one single UP, with more than 8,500 ha., happen ed to be included in the sample; since it. alone repres ents more than 50 percent of the sample ’s total area, an overestimation of the importance of capita list production, no doubt, is present.)

154

Table 14 Cacao zone -- economic analysis of production by sectors and size of the UPs in ha. (I). Indicators of size. Size classes (ha.) Totals 0 – 10 10 - 20 20 - 50

Items A. N° of UPs 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production B. Area per UP (ha.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production C. Gross output per UP (Cr$) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production D. Labor used per UP man-year) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production E. Total capital per UP (Cr$) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production

50 - 100

997 532 413

326 258 47

156 91 51

281 124 144

128 49 76

50 20 93

3.5 3.2 4.7

14 14 14

31 30 31

67 64 70

18,750 2,998 40,898

1,796 1,570 3,417

6,301 3,545 12,547

11,519 4,145 18,656

30,152 4,697 46,326

3.61 1.61 6.65

1.08 1.11 1.43

1.92 1.80 2.67

2.88 2.04 3.86

4.89 2.35 6.71

130,816 20,174 286,616

9,217 7,733 18,904

30,830 21,556 52,976

83,165 29,606 133,671

156,155 43,630 230,346

155

Table 14 continued. Items A. N° of UPs 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production B. Area per UP (ha.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production C. Gross output per UP (Cr$) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production D. Labor used per UP man-year) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production E. Total capital per UP (Cr$) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Size classes (ha.) 500-1000

100-200

200-500

> 1000

55 7 47

39 3 36

7 7

5 5

130 109 132

266 205 271

646 646

1,396 1,396

57,801 10,291 65,400

80,010 15,566 85,380

115,285 115,285

584,441 584,441

8.76 3.81 9.70

14.10 5.06 14.86

18.43 18.43

70.12 70.12

388,968 82,311 437,436

609,498 141,980 648,458

1,728,137 1,728,137

4,398,253 4,398,253

156

Table 15 Cacao zone -- economic analysis of production by sectors and size of the UPs in ha. (II). Resource endowment. Size classes (ha.) Items F. Capital/labor ratio (Cr$/m.y.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production G. Capital/land ratio (Cr$/ha.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production H. Man/land ratio (m.y./ha.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production I. (Matas+capoeiras)/total area (%) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Totals

0 - 10

10 – 20

20 - 50

50 - 100 100-200 200-500 500-1000 > 1000

36,229 12,543 43,128

8,448 6,953 13,203

16,032 11,961 19,822

28,923 14,533 34,657

31,929 18,527 34,306

44,384 21,580 45,116

43,219 28.078 43,635

93,775 93,775

62,653 62,653

2,627 1,031 3,098

2,620 2,378 4,039

2,203 1,530 3,671

2,681 970 4,246

2,329 684 3,312

2,989 755 3,316

2,296 693 2,397

2,676 -

3,152 -

0.07 0.08 0.07

0.31 0.34 0.31

0.14 0.13 0.19

0.09 0.07 0.12

0.07 0.04 0.10

0.07 0.03 0.07

0.05 0.02 0.05

0.03 0.03

0.05 0.05

36.0 55.9 30.0

21.0 23.7 8.0

33.0 37.7 17.0

41.0 57.9 24.0

42.0 65.1 29.0

34.0 69.2 29.0

41.0 61.5 39.0

48.0 48.0

14.0 14.0

157

Table 16 Cacao zone -- economic analysis of production by sectors and size of the UPs in ha. (III). Productivity.

Items J. Output per man (Cr$/m.y.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production L. Output per area (Cr$/ha.) 1. Cacao region 2. Petty production 3. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Size classes (ha.) 50 - 100 100-200

Totals

0 - 10

10 - 20

20 - 50

5,913 1,851 6,154

1,654 1,412 2,386

3,277 1,967 4,695

4,006 2,035 4,837

6,165 1,995 6,899

377 152 442

510 483 730

450 251 869

371 136 593

450 74 666

200-500

500-1000

> 1000

6,596 2,698 6,745

5,673 3,078 5,745

6,256 6,256

8,325 8,325

444 94 496

301 76 316

178 178

419 419

158

Subareas and Sectors A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguaquara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Table 17 Survey region – distribution of the UPs by sectors and subareas Sampled UPs Other UPs Total Area Average area N° of UPs % % N° of Ups (ha.) (ha.) 945 100.0 48,593 100.0 51 668 532 56.3 10,382 21.4 20 102 413 43.7 38,212 78.6 93 566 342 100.0 46,954 100.0 137 162 125 62.9 5,428 11.6 25 26 127 37.1 41,527 88.4 327 136 338 100.0 10,622 100.0 31 107 265 78.4 3,905 36.8 15 55 73 21.6 6,717 63.2 92 52 202 100.0 15,847 100.0 78 49 163 80.7 2,642 16.7 16 25 39 19.3 13,205 83.3 339 24 467 100.0 35,457 100.0 76 148 380 81.4 16,345 46.1 43 65 87 18.6 19,112 53.9 220 83

Total Area (ha.) 93,047 2,470 90,578 36,251 1,693 34,558 4,802 919 3,883 4,480 226 4,256 30,468 3,305 27,164

Average area (ha.) 139.3 24.2 160.0 223.8 65.1 254.1 44.9 16.7 74.7 91.4 9.0 177.3 205.9 50.8 327.3

159

Table 17 continued Sampled UPs Items F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. SURVEY REGION 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

N° of Ups 299 230 69 129 111 18 220 191 29 2,942 2,087 855

Other UPs % 100.0 76.9 23.1 100.0 86.0 14.0 100.0 86.8 13.2 100.0 70.9 29.1

Total Area (ha.) 25,064 11,194 13,871 9,264 5,078 4,186 15,246 9,374 5,873 207,047 64,348 142,703

% 100.0 44.7 55.3 100.0 54.8 45.2 100.0 61.5 38.5 100.0 31.1 68.9

Average area (ha.) 84 49 201 72 46 233 69 49 203 70 31 167

N° of Ups 81 42 39 43 5 38 48 30 18 1,306 350 956

Total Area (ha.) 12,139 4,805 7,334 5,359 133 5,226 7,807 1,723 6,084 194,353 15,274 179,081

Average area (ha.) 149.9 114.4 188.0 124.6 26.6 137.5 162.6 57.4 338.0 149 44 187

160

further this peculiarity, we present in Table 18 the distribution of landholdings within the several capitalist sectors. A completely independent set of data seem to con firm this characteristic of the cacao sector: as it can be seen in Table 19, the “Humid Southeast” (line F) -- corresponding exactly to CEPLAC’s “cacao zone proper” --, as compared to all the other Northeastern regions, shows the greater importance of the middle ranges (100-500 ha.), and the lesser amount of land in the sizes larger than 500 ha. The specificity of the cacao zone, to be sure, manifests itself also in a significantly greater incidence of multiple property-holding in its capitalist sectors vis-a-vis the other subareas’ capitalist sectors; there would seem to be, therefore, no smaller degree of concentration in the cacao zone: what is different is the form that concentration takes.274

274

While mentioning in passing, for his case study, that “the largest [fazendas] are a couple of thousand hectares”, (op.cit., p. 158 Leeds has found intense “business connections” in the cacao sector -- bankers, merchants, “corporations”, etc., often being the owners of fazendas. (op.cit., pp. 170-172, 263-4.) On the other hand, not only did he find widespread multiple-property holding, but -- interestingly enough -- any one single property unit consisted, actually, of more than one “plantation center”, i.e., independent subdivision with complete processing facilities and geared to a nearby cacao roca. One particular fazenda, for instance, had four such “centers” (see op.cit., pp. 44-52, 158-163). It would seem, therefore, that the cacao sector, unlike sugar and coffee, is characterized by a high degree of “divisibility” of its processing facilities, and this factor might be, ultimately, crucial for the absence of a tendency to form a single continuous big plantation, and instead holding many scattered, smaller ones.

161

Table 18 Survey Region – Size distribution of the UPs in the capitalist sectors by subareas

Capitalist sectors by subareas A. Cacao Zone N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) B. Itapetinga N° of Ups Total Area (ha.) C. Tab. Valenca N° of Ups Total Area (ha.) D. Plan. Jaguaquara N° of Ups Total Area (ha.) E. Plan. Conquista N° of Ups Total Area (ha.) F. Interiorana E.S. N° of Ups Total Area (ha.)

Stratification by size in ha. % 10-20

Total

%

0-10

%

20-50

%

413 38.212

100.0 100.0

47 220

11.4 0.06

51 736

12.3 1.9

144 4,533

34.9 11.9

129 41,526

100.0 100.0

9 36

7.0 0.009

5 69

3.9 0.002

13 459

10.1 1.1

73 6,717

100.0 100.0

19 64

26.0 0.9

7 81

9.6 1.2

12 375

16.4 5.6

38 13,114

100.0 100.0

2 8

5.3 -

6 87

15.8 --

7 251

18.4 1.9

85 19,032

100.0 100.0

16 65

18.8 --

1 10

1.2 -

12 338

14.1 1.8

68 13,825

100.0 100.0

4 26

5.9 -

1 17

1.5 -

15 547

22.1 4.0

162

Table 18 continued

Capitalist sectors by subareas A. Cacao Zone N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) B. Itapetinga N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) C. Tab. Valenca N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) D. Plan. Jaguara N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) E. Plan. Conquista N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) F. Interiorana E.S. N° of UPs Total Area (ha.) Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Stratification by size in ha. 100-200 % 200-500

50-100

%

%

> 500

%

76 5,285

18.4 13.8

47 6,200

11.4 16.2

36 9,740

8.7 25.5

12 11,499

2.9 30.1

18 1,234

14.0 3.0

24 3,238

18.6 7.8

36 11,513

27.9 27.7

22 24,979

17.1 60.2

16 1,055

21.9 15.7

8 1,050

11.0 15.6

8 2,528

11.0 37.6

3 1,564

4.1 23.3

6 502

15.8 3.8

9 1,298

23.7 9.9

6 1,769

15.8 13.5

2 9,200

5.3 70.2

12 766

14.1 4.0

14 1,940

16.5 10.2

21 6,111

24.7 32.1

9 9,802

10.6 51.5

14 1,035

20.6 7.5

13 1,765

19.1 12.8

13 3,365

19.1 24.3

8 7,072

11.8 51.2

163

Table 19 Size distribution of the UPs in the cacao zone compared to othe Northeastern regions % distribution according to sizes in hectares (totals = 100.0%) Regions A. Relative Demographic Emptiness N° of Ups Total Area B. Middle North N° of Ups Total Area C. Semi-arid Sertao N° of Ups Total Area D. Semi-humid Southeast N° of Ups Total Area (ha.)

0-9.9

10-49.9

50-99.9

100-199.9

200-499.9

500 up

22.6 0.5

34.3 5.4

13.7 6.1

11.8 10.1

9.5 18.4

8.1 59.4

14.2 0.2

26.0 3.1

15.3 4.7

21.4 13.2

13.5 19.0

9.6 59.8

29.0 1.6

37.7 11.6

14.2 11.4

9.4 15.0

6.3 20.4

3.4 39.9

16.6 0.7

48.3 11.0

17.2 11.6

8.2 10.6

5.2 13.7

4.6 52.5

164

Table 19 continued

Capitalist sectors by subareas E. Humid East N° of Ups Total Area F. Humid Southeast N° of Ups Total Area G. Agreste N° of Ups Total Area NORTHEAST N° of Ups Total Area

0-9.9

% distribution according to sizes in hestares (totals = 100.0%) 10-49.9 50-99.9 100-199.9 200-499.9

500 up

49.1 1.9

34.7 9.2

7.5 5.6

3.4 21.8

3.1 8.9

2.3 52.7

25.5 1.9

39.4 13.9

12.3 11.3

13.7 25.4

6.0 23.1

3.0 24.6

59.1 6.2

27.1 16.1

5.7 9.3

3.8 11.9

2.3 15.5

1.6 41.2

32.0 1.4

35.1 9.0

12.5 8.7

9.8 14.0

6.4 18.6

4.2 48.3

Source: World Bank/SUDENE Survey (1973-74). (Unpublished)

165

As far as petty production is concerned, however, the cacao zone has no specificities, as shown in Table 20: the average size of the UPs, both in hectares and -- even more significantly -- also in terms of amount of labor used, is the same across subareas, allowance being made for particular ecological and economic conditions.275

275

This allowance would explain, perhaps, the greater average size of the petty UPs in subareas E to G, the relatively most backward subareas in the survey region.

166

Subareas A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist productio n G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Table 20 Survey Region – Indicators of size of the UPs by sectors and subareas Gross output per UP Labor used per UP Average area (ha.) (Cr$) (man-years) 51 19,550 3.8 20 2,978 1.6 93 40,898 6.6 137 25,519 2.6 25 4,121 1.7 327 61,745 4.1 31 4,331 2.3 15 1,741 1.8 92 13,732 4.3 78 14,859 3.0 16 1,356 1.5 339 71,295 9.5 76 5,649 2.5 43 2,243 2.2 220 20,528 3.6 84 8,940 2.8 49 4,016 2.4 201 25,352 4.2 72 3,125 2.2 46 1,617 2.2 233 12,423 2.7

Total capital per UP (Cr$) 136,619 20,174 285,969 150,824 53,443 315,687 41,284 15,287 135,656 94,606 6,938 461,014 32,015 11,954 119,636 43,804 20,933 120,042 13,911 8,008 50,311

167

Table 21 shows that the significantly smaller amount of “operator’s labor” in the capitalist sector reported for the cacao zone is a rather general phenomenon. The importance of wage labor in every sub-area’s capitalist sector is another established fact: wage labor represents never less than 77 percent of the total labor used in these sectors. In view of the uneven development of capitalist production across subareas, however, the importance of wage labor within the subareas’ total agricultural sector differs significantly, from less than 14 percent in sub-area G to more than 70 percent in cacao zone. (The capitalist sector in the cacao zone alone employs, consequently, more than 60 percent of the survey region’s wage labor.) Correspondingly, petty production’s relative importance as far as “labor absorption”" is concerned varies from a low of about 24 percent in the cacao zone to a high of more than 83 percent in the sub-area G (Litoranea A.E.S.).276 An important additional evidence in support of the proposition that the technico-economic characteristics of

276

The comparative analysis of the capitalist sectors across subareas must take into account, in addition, the particular economic activity carried out; this is suggested by a contrast between the cacao zone and subarea B (Pastoril de Itapetinga), the latter’s livestock activity requiring of course, much less labor per output and area than cacao production. (For the need of qualifications of the results for subarea D see footnote page27l).

168

Table 21 Survey Region -- Composition of the labor force by sectors and subareas

Subareas and sectors A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguaquara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

(1) Total labor used (2) Operator's (3) Hired (4) Proportion (5) Off-farm (6) Petty (7) Operator (manlabor (man- labor (man- of hired labor labor (man- sector’s rate of labor per UP years) % years) years) (%) [=(3)/(1)] years) outhiring (%) (man-years) 3,600 100.0 1,061 2,539 70.5 261 1.1 856 23.8 823 32 3.7 218 21.0 1.5 2,745 76.3 238 2,507 91.3 42 0.6 885 100.0 418 467 52.8 75 1.2 360 40.7 339 22 6.1 64 15.9 1.6 525 59.3 79 445 84.8 11 0.6 778 100.0 495 284 36.5 105 1.5 465 59.8 448 18 3.9 98 18.0 1.7 313 40.2 47 266 85.0 7 0.6 608 100.0 260 348 57.2 50 1.3 237 39.0 231 6 2.5 48 17.2 1.4 371 61.0 29 342 92.2 2 0.7

169

Table 21 continued (1) Total labor used Capitalist sectors by subareas E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

(manyears) 1,157 857 309 834 547 288 288 240 48 510 392 118

% 100.0 73.2 26.7 100.0 65.6 34.5 100.0 83.3 16.7 100.0 76.9 23.1

(3) Hired (2) Operator's labor (4) Proportion (5) Off-farm labor (man(manof hired labor labor (manyears) years) (%) [=(3)/(1)] years) 873 284 24.5 133 815 32 3.8 120 58 257 81.6 13 574 260 31.1 39 516 31 5.7 31 58 230 79.9 9 248 40 13.9 19 237 3 1.3 16 11 37 77.1 2 409 101 19.8 40 383 9 2.3 36 26 92 78.0 4

(6) Petty (7) Operator sector’s rate of labor per UP othiring (%) (man-years) 1.9 12.8 2.1 0.7 1.9 5.7 2.2 0.8 1.9 6.3 2.1 0.6 1.9 8.6 2.0 0.9

170

petty production in the cacao zone are not unique to that zone is the incidence of outhiring across subareas. This incidence of outhiring in petty production is to be seen as merely another expression of the subordinated socio-economic position of this sector: as Table 22 demonstrates, it is precisely those petty producers whose means of labor as indicated by the significantly smaller acreages of their UPs -- do not allow them to fulfill subsistence needs solely on the basis of independent, petty, production that become part-time wage Iaborer3. It is important to note, in addition, that these smaller petty UPs, constituting, no doubt, the minifundia, represent actually the majority of this sector in the terms of the number of the UPs. Table 23 presents an additional evidence concerning the analysis of petty production throughout the survey region. It is confirmed the importance for the petty producers of manioc as an income-earning activity. The character of petty production across subareas, on the other hand -- in contrast with capitalist production --, is clearly expressed in the greater incidence of non-commercial production; in the rel atively advanced subarea B (Pastori1 de Itapetinga), non-commodity production constitutes almost 50 percent of total production, what is really impressive.

171

Table 22 Survey Region -- Incidence of outhiring in the petty production sector according to the size of the UPs by subareas

Stratificationof the UPs by size in hectares I. Cacao zone < 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100 II. Tab. Valenca < 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100 III. Plan. Jaguaquara < 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100

N° Ups 533 258 91 125 49 10 265 160 43 39 20 3 164 96 24 28 12 4

Total area (ha.) 10,407 839 1,282 3,785 3,124 1,378 3,904 570 534 1,188 1,253 360 2,733 272 324 838 802 496

Average area Operator (ha.) labor (m.y.) 19.5 826 3.3 281 14.1 157 30.3 239 63.8 109 137.8 40 14.7 448 3.6 197 12.4 98 30.5 103 62.7 41 120.0 8 16.7 234 2.8 122 13.5 38 29.9 51 66.8 19 124.0 4

Outhiring (m.y.) 218 124 33 49 13 -98 66 17 12 3 -48 31 6 8 1 1

Rate of outhiring (%) 20.9 30.6 17.3 16.9 10.6 -17.9 24.9 15.0 10.7 6.7 -17.1 20.4 14.5 13.6 5.8 22.9

Operator Total labor labor per UP per area (m.y.) (m.y./ha.) 1.5 0.079 1.1 0.335 1.7 0.122 1.9 0.063 2.2 0.035 4.0 0.029 1.7 0.115 1.2 0.346 2.3 0.184 2.6 0.087 2.1 0.033 2.7 0022 1.4 0.086 1.3 0.449 1.6 0.117 1.8 0.061 1.6 0.024 1.0 0.008

172

Table 22 continued Stratificationof the UPs by size in hectares IV. Itapetinga < 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100 V. Conquista < 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 > 100 Source: CEPLAC Survey.

N° Ups 215 113 28 37 28 9 382 126 49 106 50 51

Total area (ha.) 5,427 276 385 1,123 1,934 1,710 16,425 417 634 3,137 3,100 9,138

Average area Operator (ha.) labor (m.y.) 25.2 339 2.4 136 13.8 52 30.4 91 69.1 43 190.0 16 43.0 817 3.3 197 12.9 85 29.6 257 62.0 117 179.2 162

Outhiring (m.y.) 64 34 7 8 12 3 120 51 23 29 9 8

Rate of outhiring (%) 15.0 20.0 11.6 7.6 22.2 17.4 12.8 20.6 21.3 10.0 7.1 4.8

Operator Total labor labor per UP per area (m.y.) (m.y./ha.) 1.58 0.062 1.20 0.493 1.86 0.135 2.46 0.081 2.1 0.022 1.78 0.009 2.1 0.050 1.6 0.472 1.7 0.134 2.4 0.082 2.3 0.038 3.2 0.018

173

Table 23 Survey Region – main economic activities and own consuption by sectors and subareas N° producers specialized in Subareas and sectors A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguaquara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

N° 507 185 322 18 13 5 41 24 17 16 11 5

Cacao % total n° producers 53.7 34.8 78.0 5.3 6.0 3.9 12.1 9.1 23.3 7.9 6.7 12.8

N° 237 219 18 99 87 12 152 143 9 94 84 10

Manioc % total n° producers 25.1 41.2 4.4 28.9 40.5 9.5 45.0 54.0 12.3 46.5 51.5 25.6

N° 60 29 31 135 46 89 11 5 6 23 10 13

Livestock % total n° producers 6.3 5.5 7.5 39.5 21.4 70.0 3.3 1.9 8.2 11.4 6.1 33.3

Own consuption (%gross output) 2.1 11.8 1.2 5.9 45.5 2.5 6.2 14.1 2.6 27.2 (*) 21.4 27.6 (*)

174

Table 23 continued

Subareas and sectors E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interioran E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

N° 30 23 7 12 8 4 7 3 4 ----

N° producers specialized in Cacao Manioc % total n° producers N° % total n° producers 6.4 123 26.3 6.1 116 30.5 8.0 7 8.0 4.0 45 15.1 3.4 39 17.0 5.8 6 8.7 5.4 35 27.1 2.7 34 30.6 22.2 1 5.6 -82 37.3 -80 41.9 -2 6.9

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (*) In cases livestock production was recorded as negative

N° 123 71 52 138 92 46 20 13 7 64 44 20

Livestock % total n° producers 26.3 18.7 59.8 46.2 40.0 66.7 15.5 11.7 38.9 29.1 23.0 69.0

Own consuption (%gross output) 10.9 23.1 5.0 11.6 19.9 7.2 20.1 38.8 5.1 (*) (*) (*)

175

Table 24, finally, presents some indicators of the technico-economic duality petty production/capitalist production. The first two columns show that, not only the 1andman ratio is significantly greater in the capitalist sectors -- with the striking exception of the cacao zone --, but that, in addition, the quality of petty producers’ land, as indicated by the incidence of capoeira-land, is also lower. The relative poverty of petty production in means of labor is further dramatized by the results on the capital labor ratio in both sectors. The cacao zone, here, is no exception, of course. It is no wonder, then to see the significantly higher output per labor in the capitalist sectors in all subareas.

Section 3 - The duality plantation/petty production and the issue of the decreasing land use intensity according to size

As we focus on the indicators of means of production per area and output per area, however, it should be seen that they do not suggest -- except for the cacao zone -- as clear cut a contrast between the two sectors (see Table 24). In this connection, it is noteworthy the fact that petty production in the aggregate shows a distinctly greater intensity of land use -- as shown by the greater use of labor per area – in comparison with capitalist production, with the single exception of the cacao zone. Upon closer examination, however, it is shown that the greater use of labor per area is not peculiar to petty production as such, but seems rather to be a feature of the smallness of the UP, no matter the sector to which this UP pertains. Table 24 leaves no doubt that this is the case.

176

Table 24 Survey Region – Resource endowment, resource use and productivity, by sectors and subareas

Subareas and sectors A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Matas & Land-man Capoeira (% ratio (ha./m.y.) total area) 13.5 35.7 12.2 55.8 13.9 30.3 53.1 19.8 15.1 41.6 79.1 17.0 13.7 57.6 8.4 60.8 21.5 55.7 26.1 43.5 11.1 51.6 35.6 41.8

Capital labor ratio (Cr$/m.y.) 35,859 12,543 43,128 58,284 31,917 76,365 17,936 8,712 31,639 31,432 4,772 48,462

Capital land Labor use per ratio (Cr$/ha.) area (m.y./ha.) 2,657 0.07 1,031 0.08 3,098 0.07 1,099 0.02 2,117 0.07 965 0.01 1,314 0.07 1,037 0.12 1,474 0.05 1,206 0.04 428 0.09 1,362 0.03

Gross output per labor (Cr$/m.y.) 5,131 1,851 6,154 9,862 2,461 14,936 1,881 992 3,203 4,937 933 7,495

Gross output per area (Cr$/ha.) 380 153 442 186 163 189 138 118 149 189 84 211

177

Table 24 continued

Capitalist sectors by subareas E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Matas & Land-man Capoeira (% ratio (ha./m.y.) total area) 30.6 53.3 19.3 66.0 61.9 42.6 30.0 20.8 20.5 26.8 48.2 16.0 32.2 48.8 21.1 56.0 87.2 40.1

Capital labor ratio (Cr$/m.y.) 12,922 5,363 33,684 15,704 8,802 28,760 6,231 3,704 18,867

Gross output Capital land Labor use per per labor ratio (Cr$/ha.) area (m.y./ha.) (Cr$/m.y.) 422 0.03 2,280 278 0.05 1.006 545 0.02 5,780 523 0.03 3,205 430 0.05 1,689 597 0.02 6,074 194 0.03 1,400 175 0.05 748 216 0.01 4,659

Gross output per area (Cr$/ha.) 74 52 93 107 83 126 44 35 53

178

The greater intensity of land use by size of the UP -- independently or its sector -becomes expressed also in the data on output per area for the subareas and sectors. Table 26 presents the results for all the survey region’s subareas. An additional significant result regarding the analysis of resource use according to the size of the UPs is presented in Table 27. It is seen that capital per labor rises according to size of the UP throughout the survey region, and independently of the sector of production. Some decrease in the capital-land ratio, on the other hand, seems to be the case, as Table 28 suggests; therefore, the rise in the capital-labor ratio is largely the result of a faster decrease in the man-1and ratio as the size of the UP increases. Given the increasing resource use per labor according to size, it is no wonder to read in Table 29 the significantly greater output per labor in the larger size classes irrespective of the sub-area or the social form of production.

179

Table 25 Survey Region – Labor per area according to size of the UPs in ha. by subareas and sectors (man-years/ha)

Subareas and sectors A. Cacao Region 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production D. Planalto Jaguaquara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Total 0.07 0.08 0.07 0.018 0.066 0.013 0.07 0.119 0.047 0.04 0.088 0.028

0-10 0.31 0.34 0.31 0.478 0.511 0.389 0.32 0.353 0.359 0.44 0.0456 0.375

10-20 0.14 0.13 0.19 0.134 0.143 0.145 0.15 0.187 0.136 0.12 0.120 0.172

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 0.09 0.07 0.07 0.04 0.12 0.10 0.073 0.030 0.083 0.027 0.063 0.040 0.08 0.05 0.093 0.036 0.081 0.066 0.06 0.04 0.063 0.026 0.048 0.066

100-200 0.07 0.03 0.07 0.022 0.016 0.024 0.03 0.025 0.043 0.02 0.008 0.024

200-500 0.05 0.02 0.05 0.015 0.015 0.037 0.037 0.027 0.027

> 500 0.0417 0.0417 0.007 0.003 0.007 0.023 0.023 0.024 0.024

180

Table 25 continued Subareas and sectors E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey.

Total 0.032 0.052 0.016 0.032 0.049 0.020 0.028 0.047 0.011 0.03 0.042 0.020

0-10 0.460 0.475 0.446 0.735 0.822 0.154 0.533 0.533 0.65 0.700 0.125

10-20 0.136 0.139 0.100 0.146 0.179 0.05 0.176 0.196 0.25 0.216 0.216 -

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 0.080 0.044 0.084 0.041 0.101 0.070 0.075 0.040 0.083 0.040 0.071 0.058 0.068 0.023 0.082 0.026 0.018 0.08 0.03 0.070 0.035 0.155 0.032

100-200 0.027 0.028 0.025 0.025 0.021 0.032 0.22 0.028 0.017 0.03 0.024 0.045

200-500 0.014 0.014 0.014 0.016 0.012 0.020 0.010 0.012 0.017 0.01 0.011 0.012

> 500 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.008 0.018 0.007 0.005 0.005 0.005 0.005

181

Table 26 Survey Region – Gross output per area according to size of the UPs in ha. by subareas and sectors (Cr$/ha.) (sizes in ha.) Subareas and sectors Total 0-10 10-20 20-50 50-100 100-200 200-500 A. Cacao Region 377 510 450 371 450 444 301 1. Petty production 152 483 251 136 74 94 76 2. Capitalist production 442 730 869 593 666 496 316 B. Pastoril Itapetinga 184 369 203 131 235 140 215 1. Petty production 163 370 168 87 274 85 2. Capitalist production 189 431 489 265 201 164 215 C. Tabuleiro Valenca 132 271 191 87 133 117 152 1. Petty production 118 256 226 82 58 69 2. Capitalist production 149 655 177 135 233 152 152 D. Planalto Jaguaquara 187 300 188 95 87 49 276 1. Petty production 89 280 118 97 49 15 2. Capitalist production 210 1264 498 110 147 66 276

> 500 324 324 172 2 177 69 69 221 221

182

Table 26 continued Subareas and sectors E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production Source: CEPLAC Survey. (+) no output reported.

Total 74 52 94 104 85 124 40 (*) 35 53 (*) 24 (*) (*) 111

0-10 495 335 1007 666 650 773 141 148 334 348 171

10-20 84 83 200 85 100 - (+) 107 100 218 73 74 -

(*) value of livestock output negative.

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 96 91 67 62 427 224 120 54 112 27 187 154 42 20 48 21 33 47 77 46 40 63 230

100-200 52 34 95 99 85 121 76 59 102 96 (*) (*) 76

200-500 79 22 115 85 89 86 20 4 73 79 10 144

> 500 50 28 53 131 119 132 (*) (*) 34 34

183

Table 27 Survey Region – Capital-labor ratio according to size of the UPs in ha. by subareas and sectors (Cr$/m.y.) (sizes in ha.) Subareas and sectors Total 0-10 10-20 20-50 50-100 100-200 200-500 A. Cacao Region 36,229 8,488 16,032 28,923 31,929 44,384 43,219 1. Petty production 12,543 6,953 11,961 14,533 18,527 21,580 28,078 2. Capitalist production 43,126 13,203 19,822 34,657 34,306 45,116 43,635 B. Pastoril Itapetinga 58,383 + 3,320 (+) 9,730 23,463 37,256 77,174 1. Petty production (+) 2,989 (+) 6,723 22,099 31,976 2. Capitalist production 76,365 5,644 20,360 18,861 24,640 38,043 77,174 C. Tabuleiro Valenca 18,125 5,528 7,850 14,335 24,878 35,941 45,578 1. Petty production 8,713 4,547 6,749 10,745 22,431 30,144 2. Capitalist production 31,641 9,814 17,599 24,588 26,453 37,638 45,578 D. Planalto Jaguaquara 31,481 2,760 6,368 8,802 11,685 19,749 40,182 1. Petty production 5,075 2,560 4,637 7,115 12,367 22,013 2. Capitalist production 48,739 9,498 10,515 15,788 11,215 19,454 40,182

> 500 71,076 71,076 126,817 32,435 127,181 23,550 23,550 64,828 64,828

184

Table 27 continued Subareas and sectors E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Total 13,245 5,360 34,047 15,938 8,717 29,678 6,374 3,704 18,867 11,916 (+) (+) 26,229

0-10 3,587 2,267 11,258 1,330 1,168 8,052 878 855 849 831 690

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (+) there seems to be a mistake in CEPLAC’s data.

10-20 3,580 3,167 35,236 3,656 2,923 4,948 1,745 (++) 1,500 1,121 1,173 1,073 -

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 6,513 10,037 4,622 7,607 12,903 15,072 7,522 12,416 6,489 10,662 11,468 14,947 2,709 5,969 2,299 4,174 40,167 2,338 64,466 + 2,280 (+) 2,543 28,188

100-200 11,210 5,825 24,220 22,880 19,593 25,877 15,693 9,562 28,544 13,115 13,932 10,977

200-500 33,943 12,094 46,539 25,337 29,468 21,995 9,469 9,496 8,998 24,291 6,548 38,993

(++) the two sectors do not add to the subarea’s aggregate capital stock.

> 500 66,505 51,827 68,444 71,244 21,341 80,991 14,028 14,028 105,538 105,038

185

Table 28 Survey Region – Capital-land ratio according to size of the UPs in ha. by subareas and sectors (Cr$/ha.) (sizes in ha.) Subareas and sectors Total 0-10 10-20 20-50 50-100 100-200 200-500 A. Cacao Region 2,627 2,620 2,203 2,681 2,329 2,989 2,296 1. Petty production 1,031 2,378 1,530 970 684 755 693 2. Capitalist production 3,098 4,039 3,671 4,246 3,312 3,316 2,397 B. Pastoril Itapetinga 1,090 (+) 1,588 (+) 716 714 806 1,166 1. Petty production (+) 1,527 (+) 563 594 518 2. Capitalist production 965 2,195 2,951 1,192 978 928 1,166 C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1,269 1,768 1,199 1,198 1,198 1,240 1,682 1. Petty production 1,038 1,603 1,264 995 806 754 2. Capitalist production 1,474 3,527 2,390 2,229 1,755 1,613 1,682

> 500 2,964 2,964 846 98 866 544 544

186

Table 28 continued Subareas and sectors D. Planalto Jaguaquara 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Total 1,192 448 1,364 421 278 546 513 431 597 179 175 216 (+) (+) 527

0-10 1,205 1,167 3,562 1,648 1,076 5,023 978 960 1,239 445 455 552 581 86

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (+) there seems to be a mistake in CEPLAC’s data.

10-20 792 558 1,813 487 440 3,524 517 523 291 307 293 280 238 231 -

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 495 483 450 324 755 737 523 739 389 309 1,298 1,063 565 502 536 427 818 866 185 140 190 110 730 187 (+) 159 (+) 394 913

100-200 367 178 465 297 162 612 565 404 821 346 268 474 363 337 492

200-500 1,093 1,093 460 172 647 399 351 431 99 113 150 278 70 477

> 500 1,587 1,587 359 275 370 549 380 561 71 71 529 529

187

Table 29 Survey Region – Output per Labor according to size of the UPs in ha. by subareas and sectors (Cr$/ha.) (sizes in ha.) Subareas and sectors Total 0-10 10-20 20-50 50-100 100-200 200-500 A. Cacao Region 5,193 1,654 3,227 4,006 6,165 6,596 5,673 1. Petty production 1,851 1,412 1,967 2,035 1,994 2,698 3,078 2. Capitalist production 6,154 2,386 4,695 4,837 6,899 6,745 5,745 B. Pastoril Itapetinga 9,866 771 1,521 1,786 7,712 6,464 14,257 1. Petty production 2,461 725 1,175 1,038 10,200 (+) 5,277 2. Capitalist production 14,936 1,108 3,371 4,201 5,071 6,716 14,527 C. Tabuleiro Valenca 1,891 848 1,253 1,035 2,769 3,378 4,119 1. Petty production 992 725 1,209 883 1,618 2,750 2. Capitalist production 3,203 1,823 1,305 1,485 3,509 3,546 4,119 D. Planalto Jaguaquara 4,941 686 1,514 1,688 2,099 2,625 10,168 1. Petty production 1,008 615 977 1,540 1,875 1,870 2. Capitalist production 7,517 3,370 2,886 2,310 2,235 2,747 10,168

> 500 7,776 7,776 25,803 725 25,946 2,984 2,984 9,025 9,025

188

Table 29 continued Subareas and sectors E. Planalto Conquista 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production F. Interiorana E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production G. Litoranea A.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production H. Litoranea B.E.S. 1. Petty production 2. Capitalist production

Total 2,328 1,002 5,852 3,217 1,721 6,172 1,418 748 4,659 731 (*) (*) 5,506

Source: CEPLAC Survey. (*) negative output (livestock) reported.

0-10 1,076 705 2,258 906 791 5,026 278 277 514 498 1,369

10-20 621 599 2,000 584 557 607 514 873 359 345 -

(sizes in ha.) 20-50 50-100 1,190 2,088 793 1,533 4,244 3,173 1,601 1,335 1,351 672 2,623 2,659 617 839 584 785 1,800 588 2,453 662 1,136 407 7,110

(+) there seems to be a mistake in CEPLAC’s data.

100-200 1,967 1,216 3,773 3,993 4,107 3,801 3,425 2,210 6,124 3,477 (*) (*) 1,688

200-500 5,793 1,531 8,250 5,374 7,451 4,399 1,930 379 4,404 6,878 948 11,791

> 500 9,203 5,217 9,730 16,967 6,692 18,993 (*) (*) 6,844 6,844

189

These results on the decreasing land use intensity according to the size of the UPs are important because they confirm what it seems to be a general pattern in Brazilian agriculture.277 In this connection, a recent survey, drawing a sample covering the entire Brazilian Northeast, conducted by World Bank and the Brazilian government’s regional development agency for the Northeast (SUDENE), leaves no doubt as to the greater intensity of land use in the smaller UPs; Tables 30-33 summarize the results. (Zone F -- Humid Southeast -corresponds to the cacao zone in CEPLAC’s survey. It, is very interesting, therefore, to see confirmed the specificities of this plantation area.) It is outside the problematic of this chapter to analyse this issue; however, this result seems only to be

277

This general pattern of resource use has been established, on the basis of a broad sample data, by Cline, W.R., Economic Consequences of a Land Reform in Brazil (Amsterdam and London: North Holland Pub. Co, 1970); for analyses based on Census data, see hoffman, R., and J.F.G. Silva op.cit., and Jnteramerican Committe for Agricultural Development (CIDA), op.cit., pp. 333-373. This “CIDA report” presents also analyses of case studies on pp. 395-532. For a systematic statistical analysis of the agrarian structure in an advanced agricultural region in Sao Paulo, demonstrating the duality petty production/capitalist production, including the differenti~1 patterns of resource use, see Molina Fliho, J., “Classificacao e Caracterizacao Socio-Economica dos Agricultores,” paper presented at the XII annual meeting of the Brazilian Society of Agricultural Economists (SOBER), Porto Alegre, July 1974.

190

Table 30 Brazilian Northeast – Labor per area according to size of the UPs in ha. by regions (man-years/ha.)

Zones A. Relative Demographic Emptiness B. Middle North C. Semi-Arid Sertao D. Semi-humid Southeast E. Humid east F. Humid Southeast G. Agreste

0 - 9.9 .43 .22 .23 .23 .42 .25 .49

10 - 49.9 .08 .08 .14 .08 .09 .16 .10

Source: World Bank/SUDENE Survey (1973-1974), unpublished.

(sizes in ha.) 50 - 99.9 100 - 199.9 .03 .02 .03 .01 .04 .02 .04 .02 .05 .03 .09 .10 .05 .04

200 - 499.9 .01 .01 .02 .01 .04 .07 .03

500 up .01 .01 .01 .01 .01 .10 .02

191

Table 31 Brazilian Northeast – Output per area according to size of the UPs in ha. by regions (US$/ha.)

Zones A. Relative Demographic Emptiness B. Middle North C. Semi-Arid Sertao D. Semi-humid Southeast E. Humid east F. Humid Southeast G. Agreste

0 - 9.9 $129 86 65 18 352 224 171

10 - 49.9 36 37 41 55 56 250 64

Source: World Bank/SUDENE Survey (1973-1974), unpublished.

(sizes in ha.) 50 - 99.9 100 - 199.9 15 9 14 8 29 19 44 15 46 36 269 310 46 30

200 - 499.9 5 6 16 14 47 243 30

500 up 3 5 13 12 16 227 22

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Table 32 Brazilian Northeast – Equipment per labor according to size of the UPs in ha. by regions (US$/m.y.)

Zones A. Relative Demographic Emptiness B. Middle North C. Semi-Arid Sertao D. Semi-humid Southeast E. Humid east F. Humid Southeast G. Agreste

0 - 9.9 $ 30 13 15 8 170 0 12

10 - 49.9 16 109 46 43 128 11 53

Source: World Bank/SUDENE Survey (1973-1974), unpublished.

(sizes in ha.) 50 - 99.9 100 - 199.9 78 31 326 49 115 116 84 73 97 241 38 38 85 197

200 - 499.9 179 229 103 56 226 56 282

500 up 94 136 307 179 146 2 239

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Table 33 Brazilian Northeast – Output per labor according to size of the UPs in ha. by regions (US$/m.y.)

Zones A. Relative Demographic Emptiness B. Middle North C. Semi-Arid Sertao D. Semi-humid Southeast E. Humid east F. Humid Southeast G. Agreste

0 - 9.9 291 378 376 113 856 1048 545

10 - 49.9 422 510 589 653 737 1684 756

Source: World Bank/SUDENE Survey (1973-1974), unpublished.

(sizes in ha.) 50 - 99.9 100 - 199.9 400 491 426 671 850 1224 943 695 963 1197 3240 3911 879 825

200 - 499.9 489 993 1081 1074 1265 3521 1080

500 up 477 2490 1745 1526 1526 2348 1731

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consistent with an agrarian structure characterized by an overcrowded petty production sector, on the one hand, and a 1and-abundant plantation sector, on the other hand. That this is the case is suggested by the very fact that the social form of labor per se -- i.e., be it “family labor” or wage labor -- is not connected with significant differentiation, for instance, in labor use. In other words, since in both sectors taken separately, there are significant trends, the size variable cannot be said redundant; the “peasant” or “capitalist” character of production, conceived of abstractly, has no relevance for the problem. 278 Petty production in the aggregate shows a greater intensity of land use, therefore, because it is a sector concentrated on the smaller size classes, while the contrary happens in the plantation sector; in this sense, the greater intensity of land use in petty production vis-avis plantation production is merely another expression of the duality we have been discussing; it has to do, in other words, with the distinct relationships to the means of production that define petty producers’ and planters’ insertions in the social process of production. That intensity of land use in petty production sector is organically tied to its subordinated insertion in the agrarian structure -- being rooted, there-fore, in the objective socio-economic conditions of the petty producers, within which alone the particular laws that govern production in the petty sector can be analyzed -- is further illuminated by seeing that not only petty production is relatively concentrated in the smaller sizes; but the reason why it is so (i.e., its insertion in the agrarian structure) is further confirmed by a significant contrast with the capitalist production that has showed up also in the smaller size classes: indeed, the resource endowment per labor and associated productivities differs significantly between these two sectors throughout the survey region and across all size classes (see Tables 26-29). It is seen, consequently, that one cannot, on the other hand, reduce the problem to a question of size alone, since for any given size there is still a sharp differentiation as between sectors. (One should only recall, by the way, the results on multiple property holding shown in Table 7.)

278

Sen first proposed that the greater intensity of land use in the smaller farms in Indian agriculture might be ultimately the expression of a basic differentiation in maximizing behavior in the peasant economy vis -a-vis capitalist production (supposedly prevalent only in the larger size classes). See Sen, A.K., “Peasants and Dualism with or without Surplus Labor,” Journal of Political Economy , vol. 74, n°. 5 (Oct. 1966), pp. 425-450. This hypothesis was mechanically applied to Brazilian agriculture by Cline, W.R., op.cit., in what amounted to as an identification of the plantations to (merely large) capitalist “farms”. Cline himself was confronted with difficulties in the testing of this hypothesis, but could not solve them (see, for instance, op.cit., pp. 114-115, 122-125). The results reported for CEPLAC’s survey region are definitive in the rejection of this hypothesis, since there is no greater intensity of land use between “family farms” and “capitalist farms” in any given size class.

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Section 4 - A summing-up of the results and an analytical perspective

Summing up the results presented in sections I to 3, it is clear that the relatively small fraction of the regions relatively large population of petty producers that, in their buraras, are responsible for the almost insignificant share of petty production in total cacao production, carry out their activity under distinctly inferior technical and economic conditions, vis-a-vis the dominant capitalist production of the same crop. Their production is as much poor, therefore, as their lands: this is the most that is allowed to petty production in cacao. This fact, when added to the previously established evidence that the majority of the petty producers are already completely outside the cacao sector, anyway -- but for the sale of their labor power leads to one more fundamental conclusion, namely, that the general phenomenon of exclusion of petty production from the dominant economic activities of Brazilian agriculture finds in cacao a Particularly illuminating concrete case. The petty producers as a group -- included those that produce cacao -- are expelled to lands that are marginal as far as cacao is concerned. In their capoeira-land they can find an income-earning activity in manioc, that becomes therefore a “democratic”, or “poor man’s crop” -- a denomination that implicitly discloses the petty producer’s relationship to the means of production. The elaboration of this lost point, in the following, represents the crucial proposition of this chapter. Petty production in the survey region differentiates itself from capitalist production not only in terms of the size of the UPs, the technico-economic conditions of production, the particular use-values produced, or the different social forms of labor in either sector. More basically, petty production differentiates itself from capitalist production in the sense that it represents a distinct sector not only in the region1 s agricultural sector, but also in the region's socio-economic structure -- in the region’s agrarian structure, for short --. More precisely, the fact that production in the petty sector is carried out predominantly on the basis of “family 1abor”, in other words, is but an indication of this sector being the concrete sphere and social space -- of the semi proletarian in his struggle to establish independent production, away from wage labor in the plantation sector. The circumstance of being an expression of the specific insertion of the semi proletarian in the social relations of production -- on the basis of a specific relationship to the means of production -- endows petty production with a totality of technical and economic conditions that are organically tied to the totality of the

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socio-economic conditions of the petty producers (the semi proletarians), of which this sector is composed. Their dispossession, their poverty -- vis-a-vis the planters -- becomes the poverty of their sector, its shrunk (and poor) land basis; their lack of property of means of production and related lack of access to credit becomes their under capitalized production; their lack of education and poor health conditions, reinforce (but clearly are not alone, detached from everything else, to be blamed for their poverty, as some analysts constantly try to convince us) the precarious conditions of their production. The consequent inability to fulfill subsistence needs in their petty production makes this sector a “labor reservoir” for the plantations. This structural feature gives to production carried out in the petty sector a specific driving force: the requirement of profitability that is present in the capita list sector, its sole motive and reason d’etre, is replaced, in the petty sector, by the sufficient condition of the satisfaction of the subsistence needs of the producer and his family. Leeds has keenly perceived this when he says: “

The nature of land USC shows that it is a means of maintenance or subsistence comparable to the worker's labor for wages. The similarity of these two subsistence techniques stands out clearly when contrasted with the land use of the fazendeiros to increase capital resources.”279 It is this structural feature of petty production, moreover, that accounts both for its tendency for “dissolution” -- as the plantation expands and absorbs its lands -- as well as for its “conservation” -- as the semi-proletarian seeks subsistence independently from wage labor.280 Leeds has perceived an implication of this contradictory tendency for dissolution/conservation of petty production in the phenomenon of “interchangeability” between the petty producers and the wage laborers: 279

Leeds, A., op.cit., p. 262. This feature of petty production in Brazilian agriculture has been disconnected to its structural determinants and attributed to the deus ex machina “market imperfections”. See Cline, W.R., op.cit., 25ff., and Alves, E.R.A. and G.E. Schuh, “Agricultura de subsistencia: teste de um modelo de equilibrio subjetivo nas condicoes do Brasil”, in J. Pastore (ed.), Agricultura e Desenvolvimento (Rio: APEC - ABCAR, 1973), pp. 150-172. These two works constitute mechanical applications to Brazilian conditions of the main ideas expressed in the bourgeoning literature on the theory of the “peasant economy”, as developed in Chayanov, A.V., The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin,1966); GeorgescuRoegen, N., “Economic Theory and Agrarian Econornics”, Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 12, pp. 1-40; Sen, A.K., op.cit., Nakajima, C., “Subsistence and Commercial Family Farms: Some Theoretical Models of Subjective Equilibrium”, in Wharton Jr., C.T. (ed.), Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development (Chicago: Aldine, 1963), pp. 165-185. 280 These terms (“dissolution” and “conservation”) are used in the same sense, and purporting to capture the same phenomenon, as in Bettelheim’s “Theoretical Comments” to Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange; see also Corten, A., op.cit., passim. Mintz has interpreted petty production in the Caribbean as a form of resistance to the plantation. See “The Caribbean,”in Daedalus, Spring 1974, pp. 61-62. For an analysis of a concrete process of proletarianization in the Malayan rubber production, that, in a general form, may be re1evant for an understanding of a tendency for dissolution of petty cacao production in Bahia, see Lee, G., “Commodity Production and Reproduction amongst the Malayan Peasantry”, Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 3, no. pp. 441-456.

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“As has been suggested, [the petty producers] are (...) interchangeable with the laborers (...). The four groups, burareiros, roceiros, contractors, and 1aborers, are therefore functionally identical when opposed to the fazendeiro industrialist. When the people of the zone speak of o lavrador pequeno or o trabalhador rural (‘the small cultivator’, ‘the rural worker’), they are referring to these groups and recognizing their general equivalency.”281 From another angle, this “interchangeability” means that the petty producer should not be perceived as in a transition process to become a proletarian, for this is not the only force at work. Mintz has expressed this idea when he proposed, as a general feature of plantation systems, that: “The plantation worker who is also a peasant appears to be straddling two kinds of socio-cultural adaptation, and may represent a cultural type which is not necessarily transitional but in a kind of flux equilibrium.”282 To the very extent that a “flux equilibrium” petty production/plantation production (Mintz), or, from another angle, an “interchangeability” within the ranks of the rural semi proletariat, takes place, a mechanism of determination of the real wage rate would seem to follow. In this manner we are able to add some strength to Furtado’s hypothesis, presented in chapter VI (see p.225), according to which the "reserve price” of rural labor is given by the precarious conditions of production in the minifundia and in the moving frontier. It must be seen that the relatively 1arge population of petty producers throughout CEPLAC's “survey region” seems to be a strong empirical evidence in this direction, becoming therefore justified the need for further research along these lines. This “flux equilibrium” and “interchangeability”, on the other hand, has to be organically related to the fact that capitalist production in Brazilian agriculture presents a pattern of unevenness, expressed, for instance, in the virtual absence of wage labor in manioc: the fazendeiros, it seems, do not find such a basic staple food of the semi proletariat sufficiently profitable. Again, we reencounter the 281

Leeds, A., op.cit., p. 253. Mintz, S.W., “The Rural Proletariat and the Problem of Rural Proletarian Consciousness”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, April 1974, p. 321. See also Mintz’ “Petits Cultivateurs et Proletaires Ruraux dans la Region des Caraibes”, in Les Problemes Agraires des Ameriques Labines (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche 282

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issue of the duality export production/subsistence production that has become a constant theme in this thesis.

Scientifique, 1967), pp. 93-100. Another relevant work is work is Frucht, R., “A Caribbean Socia1 Type: Neither ‘Peasant’ nor ‘Proletarian’”, Socia1 and Economic Studies, vol. 16, n° 3, pp. 295-300.

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Appendix Table 1 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe A. Cacao Zone Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 32.8 15.6 28.2 12.8 5.5 3.9 0.7 0.5 100.0

Sample Area (%) 2.3 4.4 17.6 17.3 14.4 20.9 9.1 14.0 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 3.5 14.0 31.0 67.0 130.0 266.0 646.0 1,396.0 50.0

N° (%) 18.7 20.1 32.2 16.3 7.6 3.9 0.9 0.4 100.0

Universe Area (%) 1.4 4.4 15.8 17.6 16.0 18.0 9.4 17.4 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.6 13.6 30.5 66.6 130.9 288.0 640.1 2,771.9 61.8

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Appendix Table 2 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe B. Pastoril de Itapetinga

Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 35.1 10.2 15.0 13.6 9.3 10.2 3.4 3.1 100.0

Sample Area (%) -1.0 3.5 7.0 9.4 24.3 16.8 37.3 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 2.6 13.7 31.5 69.2 134.5 319.8 663.8 1,606.7 134.0

N° (%) 14.9 15.1 25.6 15.8 10.8 10.5 4.6 2.6 100.0

Universe Area (%) 0.5 1.4 5.3 7.3 10.0 21.7 21.3 32.5 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.7 13.6 30.9 69.1 138.5 310.1 688.9 1,854.8 149.3

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Appendix Table 3 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe C.Tabuleiro de Valença

Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 54.1 14.0 15.2 10.2 3.3 2.2 0.8 -100.0

Sample Area (%) 6.3 6.5 15.4 21.3 14.1 22.5 13.9 -100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 3.6 14.2 30.8 64.5 132.1 316.0 521.3 -30.5

N° (%) 47.2 18.7 21.0 8.4 2.9 1.4 0.3 0.1 100.0

Universe Area (%) 6.4 8.4 21.3 19.2 13.2 14.7 5.9 11.0 100.0

Average area (ha.) 3.8 12.6 28.6 64.2 126.5 300.2 629.5 2,513.8 28.1

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Appendix Table 4 Percentage distribution and average area of the Ups according to size, for the sample and universe D. Planalto Jaguaquara

Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 47.6 15.4 17.8 8.7 6.7 2.9 0.5 0.5 100.0

Sample Area (%) 1.8 2.7 7.2 8.1 11.8 11.0 4.1 53.3 100.0

Average area (ha.) 2.9 13.6 31.1 72.5 135.6 294.8 650.0 8,551.0 77.1

N° (%) 42.3 21.1 23.2 7.1 3.0 2.2 0.7 0.5 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970). For the case of this subarea, see text, p. 271.

Universe Area (%) 4.3 6.5 15.9 11.0 8.9 14.6 9.7 29.1 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.4 13.3 29.7 67.1 130.8 290.4 636.7 2,595.7 43.4

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Appendix Table 5 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe E. Planalto Conquista Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 31.0 10.3 25.7 13.4 10.3 7.1 1.2 1.0 100.0

Sample Area (%) 1.3 1.8 10.2 11.3 17.6 27.2 10.6 19.9 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 3.2 12.8 29.2 62.4 125.7 282.4 645.3 1,450.1 74.0

N° (%) 10.3 16.6 34.6 17.2 10.7 7.3 2.2 1.2 100.0

Universe Area (%) 0.5 2.2 10.7 11.7 14.3 22.1 14.7 23.9 100.0

Average area (ha.) 5.0 12.4 29.1 64.1 125.9 284.5 645.5 1,881.1 94.3

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Appendix Table 6 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe F. Interiorana Extremo Sul Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 28.4 4.1 26.8 20.0 10.7 7.3 2.2 0.6 100.0

Sample Area (%) 0.8 0.8 10.5 17.5 17.7 23.5 17.1 12.2 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 2.3 14.8 32.1 71.9 134.6 264.9 630.9 1,580.5 81.7

N° (%) 9.0 7.6 28.7 24.4 16.6 10.3 2.2 1.3 100.0

Universe Area (%) 0.3 0.9 7.9 14.4 19.1 25.9 12.7 18.9 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.4 13.2 31.2 67.2 131.8 286.7 653.3 1,154.3 114.0

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Appendix Table 7 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe G. Litoranea A E.S. Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 28.2 10.6 19.7 18.3 14.1 7.0 1.4 0.7 100.0

Sample Area (%) 1.1 2.1 8.0 16.9 25.7 24.2 12.2 9.7 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 2.8 14.6 29.4 66.9 132.3 248.3 628.0 1,000.1 72.4

N° (%) 3.6 6.4 29.6 27.4 20.3 8.7 2.5 1.6 100.0

Universe Area (%) 0.1 0.7 7.2 13.9 19.5 19.0 12.6 27.0 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.7 14.1 31.7 65.9 124.7 284.4 647.7 2,235.6 129.6

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Appendix Table 8 Percentage distribution and average area of the UPs according to size, for the sample and universe H. Litoranea Baixo Extremo Sul Size classes (ha.) 0 - 10 10 - 20 20 - 50 50 - 100 100 - 200 200 - 500 500 - 1000 1000 up Totals

N° (%) 36.2 7.9 16.2 15.3 15.7 8.3 -0.4 100.0

Sample Area (%) 1.1 1.4 7.3 15.2 28.6 36.1 -10.3 100.0

Source for the Universe: IBGE, Censo Agropecuario da Bahia (1970).

Average area (ha.) 2.0 12.1 30.8 67.3 123.3 294.3 -1,596.0 67.7

N° (%) 14.0 11.9 32.3 21.6 11.5 6.6 1.5 0.7 100.0

Universe Area (%) 0.8 1.9 12.0 17.1 17.9 23.2 11.6 15.6 100.0

Average area (ha.) 4.6 13.7 31.0 66.1 129.5 293.5 646.7 1,888.3 83.5

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CHAPTER VIII VIII. SUMMARY AND CONLUSIONS The basic theme of this thesis has been the analysis of the role played by the social relations of production, and the associated property to the means of production, in the determination of (i) the conditions of labor supply to the dominant sectors of Brazilian agriculture and (ii) the technical conditions of production of necessaries283 . A definite connection between the backwardness of the “subsistence sector” and the conditions of labor supply to the “capitalist sectors” has been proposed; on this basis, it has been shown how an “unlimited supply of labor” has been an outcome of capitalist development in Brazilian conditions: in this, as the historical record – selectively surveyed in Chapter II – shows, Brazil seems to have been just a particular example of a general historical process. A critique of the Neoclassical (Heckscher-Ohlin) theory of international trade is shown to follow necessarily from this reality. The argument has been developed by means of an analysis of particular plantations systems for particular historical periods; the cacao plantations system, in addition, has been analyzed on the basis of a contemporary set of data. The entire conception of the analysis of the cacao regions, however, as well as the particular ways framing the analysis of the data, have been suggested to us by the historical analyses; for instance, it was the experience of the coffee economy that posed the issue of a duality defined not only in terms of a socio-economic structure, but also in economic and technical terms, as expressed in the contradiction coffee/food, analyzed throughout Chapter V. For this reason, particular methodological steps – for instance, the classification of the agricultural establishments according to the social form of labor – have adopted in order to capture a specific reality, whose particular forms of existence were to be investigated. This empirical analysis, therefore, did not have for purpose the “testing” of hypotheses derived from abstract models. Nowhere in the thesis such “modeling” is to be found. As a consequence, the consistency as well as the significance of the statistical results cannot be taken to “support” this or that abstract theory; rather, 283

It has been left as an open question the problem of the technical level of export production itself; Furtado has presented an hypothesis that seeks to locate in the agrarian structure what he conceives as a general technical backwardness of Brazilian agriculture; this seems to be an inappropriate starting point for analysis, since it leaves no room for unevenness of technical progress, what is an actual reality. See

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the reasons why a duality exists, in those particular forms, has to be located in concrete social and economic forces, the character of which may have become more illuminated of the coffee economy, as well as the selected survey of other historical experiences presented in Chapter II and analyzed in Chapter IV, where the argument has been presented that no general, or abstract conception of capitalist development can “generate” those concrete and economic forces.284 To the extent that the very rise and reproduction of this duality have been made analytical issue in this thesis, we have been able to criticize authors that, while taking this duality for granted, have proceeded to analyze partial aspects of it, disconnecting them from the totality of the situation, and trying to “explain” them mechanically – i.e., by postulating, at the abstract or “theoretical” level, this or that behavioral pattern; or else seeking refuge in the deus ex machina “market imperfections.”285 While emphasizing the connection between the rise and reproduction of this duality, in its particular social and technical forms, and insertion of the plantation system in the capitalist accumulation on a world scale, an a attempt has been made to propose that partial aspects of this duality should be seen, in their interconnection, to derive from, and at the same time lead to the constitution of, a totality represented by a “plantation system”. In particular, we have been able to reach the same conclusion proposed by Corten in his analysis of Haiti and Dominican Republic, according to Which the “unequal distribution of landholdings while being a fact that is reproduced, in the present, “in the complex of social relations”, at the same time, “contingent within the overall process of production”: This contingency, that becomes expressed in the variety and in the undefined character of the forms of property, prevents us from taking the relation of property to the land and the associated labor relations as the decisive criterion for the analysis of the predominance of a mode of production”286 . Furtado, “A Estrutura agraria ...”, and a critique of his model in Rezende, G. C., “Estrutura e Nivel Tecnico da Agricultura segundo Furtado”, Peasquisa e Planejamento, vol. nº 1 (June 1975), pp.219-230. 284 There is no reason to believe, therefore, that our empirical analysis has been framed in order to “prove” this or that proposition regarding “family farms” or “capitalist farms”, in general. It is utterly inappropriate to analyze the particular features of the Brazilian plantation system in the light of some general propositions – developed for Europe and the Northern U. S., especially – related to capitalist development, associated, with the names of Lenin and Kautsky, to which, actually, no reference has been made in this thesis, however familiar the present author may be with their work on the matter. 285 Thus both Alves (“Agricultura de Subsistencia ..”), and Cline (Economic Consequences of na Agrarian Reform in Brazil) have taken for granted the duality capitalist-petty production, and yet both of them sought to “explain” it, ultimately, as “market imperfections”! 286 Corten, “Valor de la fuerza de trabajo”, p. 53. This generalization to the Brazilian case of Corten’s remark is of direct relevance for the debate feudalism-capitalism in Brazilian agriculture; see Frank, A. G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, pp. 219-277, and, especially, Palmeira, M.,

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The case of coffee in Sao Paulo, in nineteenth century, is highly suggestive of the “contingent” character of the relations of property to the land “within the overall process of production”: the latifundium arose, appropriating the best lands, only to the extent that a profitable production for exports was to developed – up to that time, Sao Paulo had been luring “undeveloped” for the most part, and no “monopoly of land” had confronted its free population. On the other hand, such a “monopoly of land”, in view of outright slavery, remained redundant, at least until the 1880’s, as far as production of surplus labor is concerned. The case of the cacao regions, on the other hand, is also illuminating in showing how the hegemony of the planters, on the one hand, and the subordination of the semi-proletariat, on the other hand, cannot be reduced to the respective relations of property to the land, since these relations are themselves merely na aspect of a more fundamental duality that has at one pole the capitalist production of cacao and the other pole the rural semi-proletarians and their production of necessaries. The “contingency” of landed property in Brazilian agriculture can be seen another angle, as the prevalence of the “profit motive” and the related operation of “market forces” that are so dear to the “price-responsiveness” literature referred to in Chapter I (Introduction). Such a “price-responsiveness”, to be sure, has been a necessary outcome of the relation to accumulation on a world scale, and yet it has been precisely i order to “respond” to market incentives that some of the most brutal laborrepressive systems – as African slavery – have been instituted. Clearly, a more fundamental problematic is in order, and we hope to have contributed to it with some elements of an empirical and theoretical nature.

“Latifundium et Capitalisme: Lecture Critique d’um Debat”, 3rd Cycle thesis presented to the Faculté de Lattres et Sciencies Humaines, University of Paris, 1969; in this trully remarkable work, Palmeria offers an exhaustive presentation of this debate, as well as a consistent principled methodological critique. As it turned out, an original project to include in this thesis our own remarks on this debate, including Palmeira’s propositions, had to be given up. In this thesis, we restricted ourselves to the export sectors; some authors, however, have attempted to relate the reproduction of forms of property ( and corresponding technical level) of an apparently “feudal” or “semi-feudal” nature, outside the plantation sectors, to specific insertion in the overall process of capitalist accumulation. See Oliveira, F., “A Economia Brasileira: Critica da Razao Dualista”, Estudos CEBRAP nº 2, October 1972, pp. 3-82; and for a work addressed to concrete analyses of this connection, see Sá Jr., F., “ O Desenvolvimento da Agricultura Nordestina e a Função das Atividades de Subsistência”, Estudos CEBRAP no. 3, January 1973, pp. 97-1ary 1973, pp. 97-147.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography is classified under the following headings: I. Articles, II. Books, and III. Unpublished Materials.

I.

Articles:

Adamson, A. H. “The Reconstruction of Plantation Labor after Emancipation: The Case of British Guiana”. Engerman, S. L. and E. D. Genovese, eds., Race and Slaver in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Alves, E. R. A. and G. E. Schuh. “Agricultura de Subsistencia: Teste de um Modelo de Equilibrio Subjetivo nas Condicoes do Brasi1”. Pastore, J., ed., Agricultura e Desenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro: APEC-ABCAR, 1973. Amin,

S. “Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa--Origins and Contemporary Forms”. Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 10, n°. 4 (December 1972).

Arrighi,

G. “Labour Supplies in Historical Perspective: A Study of the Proletarianization of the African Peasantry in Rhodesia”. The Journal of Deve1oment Studies, Vol 6, n°. 3 (April 1970), pp 197-234.

Balan, J. “Migrações e Desenvolvimento Capitalista no Brasil: Ensaio de Interpretação Historico-Comparativa”. Sao Paulo: Estudos CEBRAP, n°. 5. Baumol, W. J. “The Transformation of Values: What Marx ‘Really’ Meant (An Interpretation)." Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 12, n°. 1 (Marah 1974), pp. 51-62. Berg, E. J. “Backward-Sloping Labour Supply Functions in Dual Economics--The African Case”. Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol 75, n°. 3. Reprinted in Wallerstein, I., ed., Social Change: The Colonial Situation. New York: Wiley, 1966. ________. “The Economics of the Migrant Labor System”. Kuper, H., ed., Urbanization and Migration in West Africa. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965. Bernstein, H. and M. Pitt. “Plantations and Modes of Exploitation”. Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 1, n°. 4 (July 1974). Bettelheim, C. “Theoretical Comments”. Emmanuel, A., Unequa1 Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Appendix I, pp. 271-322. Bradby, B. “The Destruction of Natural Economy”. Economy and Society, vol. 4, no. 2 (May 1975), pp. 127-161.

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Bundy, C. “The Emergence and Decline of a South African Peasantry”. African Affairs, vol. 71, n°. 285 (October 1972), pp. 369-388. Canabrava, A. P. “A Reparticao da Terra na Capitania de Sao Paulo, 1818”. Estudos Economicos, vol. 2, n°. 6. Castro, A. B. “Agricultura e Desenvolvimento”. Sete Ensaios sobre a Economia Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Forense, 1969. Cline, H. F. “The Sugar Episode in Yucatan, 1825-50.” Interamerican Economic Affairs, vol. 1, n°. 4 (March 1948), pp. 79-100. Coatsworth, J. “Railroads, Landholding, and Agrarian Protest in the Early Porfiriato”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 5, n°. 1 (February 1974), pp. 4871. Coman, K. “The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands”. American Economic Association, Publications, 3rd ser., vol. 4, n°. 3 (August 1903). Corten, A. “Valor de la Fuerza de Trabajo y Formas de Proletarizacion”. Revista Latinoamericana de Sociologia, Nueva Epoca, n°. 1 (1974). Cumper, G. E. “Labour Demand and Supply in the Jamaican Sugar Industry 18301950”. Social and Economic Studies, vol. 2, n°. 4 (March 1954), pp. 37-86. ________. “Population Movements in Jamaica 1830-1950”. Social and Economic Studies, vol. 5, n°. 3 (September 1956), pp. 261-80. Dean, W. “Latifundia and Land Policy in Nineteenth Century Brazil”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 51, n°. 4 (November 1971), pp. 606-625. Delfim Netto, A. “O Problema do Cafe no Brasil”. Ensaios sobre Cafe e Desenvolvimento Economico. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro do Cafe, 1973. Domar, E. D. “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis”. Journal of Economic History, vol. 30, n°. 1 (March 1970), pp. 18-32. Eisenberg, P. L. “Abolishing Slavery: The Process on Pernanbuco’s Sugar Plantations. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 52, n°. 4 (November 1972), pp. 580-597. Elias, M. J. “Os Debates sobre o Trabalho dos Chins e o Problema da Mao de Obra no Brasil Durante o Seculo XIX”. Anais do VI Simposio Nacional dos Professores Universitarios de Historia. Sao Paulo, 1973. Engerman, S. L. “Some Considerations Related to Property Rights in Man”. The Journal of Economic History, vol. 33, n°. 1 (March 1973), pp. 43-65.

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Evans, Jr., R. “Some Notes on Coerced Labor”. The Journal of Economic History, vol 30, n°. 4 (December 1970), pp. 861-866. Farley, R. “The Rise of the Peasantry in British Guiana”. Social and Economic Studies, vol. 2, n° 4 (1954). _________ “The Rise of Village Settlements in British Guiana”. Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 10, n° 1 (March 1964). Fogel, R. W. “Three Phases of Cliometric Research on Slavery and its Aftermath”. American Economic Review, vol. 65, n° 2 (May 1975). Frucht, R. “A Caribbean Social Type: Neither ‘Peasant’ nor ‘Proletarian’”. Social and Economic Studies, vol. 16, n° 3 (1967), pp. 295-300. Furedi, F. “The Social Composition of the Mau Mau Movement in the white Highlands”. The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 1, n° 4 (July 1974), pp. 486505. Furtado, C. “A Estrutura Agraria no Subdesenvolvimento Brasileiro. ‘Modelo’ Brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Civilizacao, 1972.

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Analise do

Galloway, J. H. “The Sugar Industry of Pernanibuco During the Nineteenth Century”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol 58, n° 2 (June 1968), pp. 285-303. __________ “The Last Years of Slavery on the Sugar Plantations of Northeastern Brazil”. Hipanic American Historical Review, vol. 51, n° 4 (December 1971), pp. 586-605. Garcia, L. F. “O Sertao de Itapecerica”. Les Problemes Agraires des Amerigues Latines. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1967, pp. 288292. Georgescu-Roegen, N. “Economic Theory and Agrarian Eco nomics”. Oxford Economic Papers, vol. 12 (1960), pp. 1-40. __________ “Process Analysis and the Neoclassical Theory of Production. '5 American Journal of A ricultural Economics, Vol 54, n° 2 (May 1972), pp 279~293 Graham, D. H. “Migracao Estrangeira e a Questao de Oferta de Mao de Obra no Crescimento Economico Brasileiro--1880-1930”. Estudos Economicos, vol. 3, n° 1 (April 1973), pp. 7-64. Handler, J. S. “Small-Scale Sugar Cane Farming in Barbados”. Ethnology, vol. 5, n° 3 (1966), pp 264~283. Harris, M. “Labour Emigration Among the Mozambique Thonga: Cultural and Political Factors”. Wallerstein, I., ed., Social change: The Colonial Situation. New

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York: Wiley, 1966. Hilferding, R. “Bohm-Bawerk's Criticism of Marx”. Sweezy, P. M., ed., Karl Marx and the Close of His System. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949. Hollanda, S. B. “Prefacio do Tradutor”. Davatz, T., Memorias de um Colono no Brazil (1850). Sao Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1972. Holloway, T. H. "Condicoes do Mercado de Trabalho e Organizacao do Trabalho nas Plantacoes da Economia Cafeeira de Sao Paulo, 1885-1915”. Estudos Economicos, vol. 2, n° 6 (1972), pp 145-l80. Hu-Dehart, E. “Development and Rural Rebellion: Pacification of the Yaquis in the Late Porfiriato”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 5, n° 1 (February 1974), pp 72-93. Katz, F. “Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 5, n° 1 (February 1974), pp. 1-47. Kay, C. “Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System”. The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 2, n°. 1 (October 1974), pp. 69-98. Klein, H. “The Internal Slave Trade in Nineteenth Century Brazil”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 51, n°. 4 (November 1971), pp. 567-585. Landes, D. “Some Thoughts on the Nature of Economic Imperialism”. The Journal of Economic History, vol. 21, n°. 4 (1961), pp. 496-512. Lee, G. “Commodity Production and Reproduction Amongst the Malayan Peasantry”. Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 3, n°. 4 (1973), pp. 441-456. Lef f, N. H. “Economic Retardation in Nineteenth Century Brazil”. The Economic History Review, vol. 25, n°. 3 (August 1972), pp. 489-507. __________ “Tropical Trade and Development in the Nineteenth Century: The Brazilian Experience”. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 81, n°. 3 (May/June 1973), pp. 678-696. _________ “Long-Term Viability of Slavery in a Backward Closed Economy”. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 5, n°. 1 (Summer 1974). Legassick, M. “South Africa: Capital Accumulation and Violence”. Economy and Society, vol. 3, n°. 3 (August 1974), pp. 253-291. Magubane, M. and J. O'Brien. “The Political Economy of Migrant Labor: A Critique of Conventional Wisdom”. Critical Anthropology, Spring 1972. Medio,

A. “Profits and Surplus-Value: Appearance and Reality in Capitalist Production”.Hunt, E. K. and J.G. Schwartz, eds., A Critique of Economic

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Theory. Penguin Books, 1972. Meillassoux, C. “From Reproduction to Production: A Marxist Approach to Economic Anthropology”. Economy and Society, vol 1, n°. 1 (February 1972), pp. 93 105. Miller, S. “Hacienda to Plantation in Northern Peru: The Processes of Proletarianization of a Tenant Farmer Society. Steward, J. H., ed., Contemporary change in Traditional Societies. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Mintz, S. W. “The Role of Forced Labour in Nineteenth Century Puerto Rico”. Historical Review, n°. 2 (1951), pp. 134-141. __________ “The Culture History of a Puerto Rican Sugar Plantation: 1876-1949”. Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 33, n°. 2 (May 1953), pp. 224-251. __________ “Labour and Sugar in Puerto Rico and in Jamaica, 1800-1850”. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 1, n°. 3 (1959), pp. 273281. __________ “Petits Cultivateurs et Proletaires Ruraux dans la Region des Caraibes”. Les Problemes Agraires des Ameriques Latines. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1967, pp. 93-100. __________ “The Caribbean Region”. Daedalus, Spring 1974. __________ “The Rural Proletariat and the Problem of Rural Proletarian Consciousness”. The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 1, n°. 3 (April 1974), pp. 291-325. Morishima, M. “The Fundamental Marxian Theorem: A Reply to Samuelson”. Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 12, n°. 1 (March 1974), pp. 71-74. ________ “Marx in the Light of Modern Economic Theory”. Econometrica, vol. 42, n°. 4 (July 1974), pp. 611-632. _________ and G. Catephones. “ Is here an ‘Historical Transformation Problem’?”. The Economic Journal, vol. 85, n°. 338 (June 1975), pp. 309-328. Myint, H. “The Gains from International Trade and the Backward Countries”. Review of Economic Studies, vol. 22 (1954-55), pp. 129-142. Nakajima, C. “Subsistence and Commercial Family Farms: Some Theoretical Models of Subjective Equilibrium”. Wharton, Jr., C. T., ed., Subsistence Agriculture and Economic Development. Chicago: Aldine, 1963, pp. 165-185. O'Brien, J. “Portugal and Africa, A Dying Imperialism”. Monthly Review (New York), May 1974.

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O'Connor, J. “Theory of Surplus Value”. The Corporations and the State. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Oliveira, F. “A Economia Brasileira: Critica da Razao Dualista”. Estudos CEBRAP, n°. 2 (October 1972), pp. 3-82. __________ “Para Entender a Revolucao Peruana: do Modo de Producao Asiatico a Crise de 1968”. Estudos CEBRAP (Sao Paulo), n°. 10 (October/December 1974). Paget, H. “The Free Village System in Jamaica”. Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 10, n°. 1 (March 1964). Pappe, H. 0. “Wakefield and Marx”. Economic History Review, vol. 4, n°. 1 (1951), pp. 88-97. Pastore, A. C. “A Oferta de Produtos Agricolas no Brasil”. Pastore, J., ed., Agricultura a Desenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro: APEC, 1973. Petrone, M. T. S. “Imigracao Assalariada”. Hollanda, S. B. ed., Historia Geral da Civilizacao Brasileira, vol. II, tomo 3, pp. 274-296. Sao Paulo: Difusao Europeia do Livro, 1967. Prado, Jr., C. “Distribuicao da Propriedade Fundiaria Rural no Estado de Sao Paulo”. Geografia (Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo), ano I, n°. 1 (1935). Reprinted in Boletim Geografico, n°. 29 (August 1945), pp. 692-700. __________ “Contribuicao para a Analise da Questao Agraria no Brasil”. Revista Brasiliense, n°. 28 (March/ April 1960), pp. 165-238. __________ “Nova Contribuicao para a Analise da Questao Agraria no Brasil”. Revista Brasiliense, n°. 43 (September/October 1962). Rezende, G. C. “Estrutura e Nivel Tecnico da Agricultura segundo Furtado”. Pesquisa e Planejamento, vol. 5, n°. 1 (June 1975), pp. 219-230. Roberts, G. W. and M. A. Johnson. “Factors Involved in Immigration and Movements in the Working Force of British Guiana in the 19th Century”. Social and Economic Studies, vol. 23, n°. 1 (March 1974). Rothstein, M. “The Antebellum South as a Dual Economy: A Tentative Hypothesis”. Genovese, E. D., ed., The Slave Economies. Vol. II: Slavery in the International Economy. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973. Rottenberg, S. “Income and Leisure in an Underdeveloped Economy”. The Journal of Political Economy, vol. 60, n°. 2 (April 1952), pp. 95-101. Rowthorn, R. “Neoclassical Economics and its Critics: A Marxist View”. Pakistan Economic and Social Review, vol. 11, n°. 3 (Autumn 1973).

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Sa Jr., F. “O Desenvolvimento da Agricultura Nordestina e a Funcao das Atividades de Subsistencia”. Estudos CEBRAP, n°. 3 (January 1973), pp. 87-147. Samuelson, P. A. “Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation: A Summary of the So-Called Transformation problem Between Marxian Values and Competitive Prices”. The Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 9 (1971), pp. 399-431. _________ "Insight and Detour in the Theory of Exploitation: A Reply to Baumol”. The Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 12, n°. 1 (March 1974), pp. 62-70. Schejtman, A. Z. “Elementos para una Teoria de la Economia Campesina: Pequenos Propietarios y Campesinos de Hacienda”. El Trimestre Economico, vol. 42, n°. 166, pp. 487-508. Schwartz, S. B. “Free Labor in a Slave Economy: The Lavradores de Cana of Colonial Brazil”. Alden, D., ed., Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Sen, A. K. “Peasants and Dualism With or Without Surplus Labor”. The Journal of Political Economy , vol. 74, n°. 5 (October 1966), pp. 425-450. Steedman, I. “Positive Profits with Negative Surplus Value”. The Economic Journal, vol. 85, n°. 337 (March 1975), pp. 114-123. Taylor, K. S. “Brazil's Northeast: Sugar and Surplus Value”. Monthly Review (New York), March 1969. Thomas, R. P. and R. N. Bean. “The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade”. The Journal of Economic History, vol. 34, n°. 4 (December 1974), pp. B85~914. Thompson, E. T. "The Natural History of Agricultural Labor in the South”. Jackson, D. D., ed., American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd. Durham: Duke University Press, 1940. Wolfstetter, E. "Surplus Labour, synchronized Labour Costs and Marx's Labour Theory of Value”. The Economic Journal, vol. 83, n°. 331 (September 1973), pp. 787-809. Wolpe, H. “Capitalism and Cheap Labour-Power in South Africa: From Segregation to Apartheid”. Economy and Society, vol. 1, n°. 4 (November 1972), pp. 425-456.

II.

Books:

Adamson, A. H. Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Amin, S. L’Echange Inequal et la Lol de la Valeur: La Fin d'un Debat. Paris: Editions

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Anthropos-Idep, 1973. Andrade, M. C. A Terra e o Homem no Nordeste. Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1964. Beckford, G. L. Persistent Poverty, Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Bethell, L. The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Blaug, M. Economic Theory in Retrospect. London: Heine-man, 1968. Brazil. IBGE. Censo Agropecuario da Bahia, 1970. Rio de Janeiro, 1975. __________ Ministerio do Planejamento. Three-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development. (1963~65). Brasilia, 1963. Brody, A. Proportions, Prices and Planning, A Mathematical Restatement of the Labor Theory of Value. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970. Candido, A. Os Parceiros do Rio Bonito. Sao Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1971. Carneiro, J. F. Imigracao e Colonizacao no Brasil. Brasil, 1950.

Rio de Janeiro: Universidade do

Chayanov, A. V. The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, 1966. CIDA

(Interamerican Committee for Agricultural Development). Land Tenure Conditions and Socio-Economic Development of the Agricultural Sector-Brazi1. Washington: Pan American Union, 1966.

Clayton, A. and D. C. Savage. Government and Labour in Kenya, 1895-1963, London: Frank Cass, 1974. Cline, W. R. Economic Conse uences of a Land Reform in Brazil. Amsterdam: NorthHolland, 1970. Colletti, L. From Rousseau to Lenin, Studies in Ideology and Society. London: New Left Books, 1972. Conrad, R. The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Costa, E. V. Da Senzala a Colonia. Sao Paulo: Difusao Europela do Livro, 1966. Curtin, P. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Davatz, T. Memorias de um Colono no Brasil (1850). Sao Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1972.

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Delfim Netto, A. et alil. Agricultura e Desenvolvimento no Brash. Sao Paulo: Estudos ANPES, no. 5, 1965. Diegues Jr., M. Populacao e Acucar no Nordeste do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Comissao Nacional de Alimentacao, 1954. Dobb, M. H. Political Economy and Capitalism. Westpoint, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972. _________ Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressD 1973. Eisenberg, P. L. The Sugar Industry in Pernanbuco, 1840-1910. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Emmanuel, A. Unequal Exchange, A Study of the Imperialism of Trade. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972. Fogel, R. W. and S. L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slave. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Franco, M. S. C. 1974.

Homens Livres na Ordem Escravocrata. Sao Paulo: Editora Atica,

Frank, A. G. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969. Friedman, M. Price Theory. Chicago: Aldine, 1971. Furtado, C. A Economia Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora A Noite, 1954. _________ Formacao Economica do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura Economica, 1961. _________ Diagnosis of the Brazilian Crisis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965. Greaves, I. C. Modern Production Among Backward Peoples. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1935. Hayami, Y. and V. W. Ruttan. Agricultural Development: An International Perspective. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971. Kloosterboer, w. Involuntary Labour Since the Abolition of Slavery. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1960. Levin, J. V. The Export Economies. Cambridge., Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960.

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Luxemburg, R. Accumulation of Capital. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951. Mandle, J. The Plantation Economy, Population and Economic Change in Guyana, 1838-1960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973. Marx, K. Capital. New York: International Publishers, 1967. _________ Wages, Price and Profit. Marx, K. and F. Engels, Selected Works. New York: International Publishers, 1968. _________ A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: International Publishers, 1970. Meek, R. L. Studies in the Labour Theor of Value. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1973. Mello, M. C. I. O “Boia Fria”: Acumulacao e Miseria. Petropolis: Editora Vozes, 1975. Mercadante, P. Os Sertoes do Leste Estudo de Uma Regiao: A Mata Mineira. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1973. Mintz, S. W. Caribbean Transformations. Chicago: Aldine, 1974. Moore, W. E. Industrialization and Labor: Social Aspects of Economic Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1951. Morishima, M. Marx’s Economics, A Dual Theory of Value and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Muller, N. L. Sitios e Sitiantes no Estado de Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, 1951. Myint, H. The Economics of Developing Countries. New York: Praeger, 1971. Nieboer, H. J. Slavery as an Industrial System. The HagueD 1910. New York: Burt Franklin, 1971. Petrone, M. T. S. A Lavoura Canavieira em Sao Paulo: Expansao e Declínio (17651851). Sao Paulo: Difusao Europeia do Livro, 1968. Prado Jr., C. Evolucao Politica do Brash Brasiliense, 1957.

e Outros Ensaios. Sao Paulo:

Editora

_________ Historia Economica do Brasil. Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1963. ________ The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. Ramos, A. O Cafe no Brasil e no Estrangeiro. Rio de Janeiro, 1923.

220

Rubin, I. I. Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value. Detroit: Black and Red, 1972. Stein, S. Vassouras, A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957. Tinker, H. A New System of Slavery, The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 18301920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Williams, E. Capitalism and Slavery. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961. Wolff, R. D. The Economics of Colonialism, Britain and Kenya, 1870-1930. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. III.

Unpublished Materials:

Alencar, M. H. “Aspectos da Concentracao da Producao de Cacau e da Estrutura Fundiaria na Regiao Cacaueira do Estado da Bahia”. Itabuna: CEPIAC, 1970. Bassanezi, M. S. C. B. “Fazenda de Santa Gertrudes, Uma Abordagem Quantitativa das Relacoes de Trabalho em uma Propriedade Rural Paulista 1895-1930”. Doctoral thesis, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Rio Claro, Sao Paulo, 1973. Bastos, M. I. and E. N. Gonzales. “Migracao Rural e o Trabalho Volante na Agricultura Brasileira”. Brasilia: Universidade de Brasilia, Departamento de Sociologia, 1974. Caldeira, C. “Origens e Evolucao da Propriedade de Terra no Brasil”. mimeo., n.d. CEPLAC. “Diagnostico Socio-Economico da Regiao Cacaueira do Estado da Bahia." Presented to the X annual meeting of Brazilian Society of Agricultural Economists. Brasilia, July 1972. Costa, E. V. “The Brazilian Land Law of 1850 and the Homestead Act of 1862: A Comparative Study”. Presented to the LASA meetings, Madison, Wisconsin, 1973. Dean, W. “Rio Claro, A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820-1920”. Stanford: Stanford University Press, forth-coming (1976). Eisenberg, P. L. and M. M. Hall. “Labor Supply and Immigration in Brazil: A Comparison of Pernainbuco and Sao Paulo”. Presented to the LASA meetings, Madison, Wisconsin, 1973. Findlay, R. “Slavery, Incentives and Manumission: A Theoretical Model”. Columbia University, May 1974 (mimeo.). Graham, D. H. and S. B. Hollanda Fliho. “Migration, Regional and Urban Growth and Development in Brazil: Selective Analysis of the Historical Record, 1872-

221

1970”. Vol. I. Sao Paulo: Universidade de Sao Paulo, Instituto de Pesquisas Economicas (IPE), 1971 (mimeo.). Hall, M. M. “The Origins of Mass Immigration in Brazil, 1871-1914”. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1969. Hoffman, R. and J. F. G. Silva. “A Estrutura Agraria Brasileira”. Piracicaba: Escola Superior de Agrigcultura “Luiz de Queiroz” (ESALQ), 1975. Holloway, T. H. “Migration and Mobility: Immigrants as Laborers and Landowners in the Coffee Zone of Sao Paulo, Brazil, l886-1934”. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974. Hunt, S. “The Economics of Haciendas and Plantations in Latin America”. Discussion Paper n°. 29, Research Program in Economic Development. Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, October 1972. Landim, A. D. “Cooperativa Agricola Mista de Uma Responsabilidade Ltda”. Itabuna: CEPLAC, April 1975 (mimeo.). Leeds, A. “Economic Cycles in Brazil: The Persistence of a Total Culture Pattern, Cacao and Other Cases”. Ph.D. dissertation, Colunibia University, 1957. Lopes, J. R. B. “Tipos de Areas Rurais no Brasil”. Sao Paulo: CEBRAP, 1974 (mimeo.). Marglin, S. A. “What do Bosses do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production”. Discussion Paper Series n°. 222. Harvard Institute of Economic Research, November 1971. Mello, P. C. “The Economics of Labor in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1850-1880”. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1975. Molina Fliho, J. “Classificacao e Caracterizacao Socio-Economica dos Agricultores”. Piracicaba: Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz” (ESALQ). Paper presented to the XII annual meeting of the Brazilian Society of Agricultural Economists (SOBER) Porto Alegre, July 1974. Palmeira, M. “Latifundium et Capitalisme: Lecture Critique d'un Debat”. Third Cycle thesis, Faculte de Lettres et Sciences Humaines, University of Paris, 1969. Pang, Eul-Soo. “Bahia's Planter Elites and Their Attempt to Modernize Agriculture, 1842-1889”. Vanderbilt University, November 1974 (mimeo.). Plaza-Jibaja, O. E. “The Historical Development of Sugar Cane Haciendas in Peru: Historical Data and Sociological Analyses”. M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1973. Reis, J. “The Realm of the Hoe: Plantation Agriculture in Pernambuco Before and After the Abolition of Slavery”. mimeo., n.d.

222

Scott, C. D. “Issues in the Analysis of the Labour Market for Sugar Cane Cutters in Northern Peru, 1940-1969”. School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia. March 1975 (mimeo.). Velho, O. G. C. A. “Modes of Capitalist Development, Peasantry and the Moving Frontier”.Doctoral Thesis, University of Manchester, 1973. Werneck, R. L. F. “Unsuccessful Export-Led Development: The Brazilian Coffee Economy (1820-1913)”. Harvard University, Spring 1974 (mimeo.).

223

TITLE OF THESIS

Plantation Systems, Land Tenure and Labor Supply:

An Historical Analysis of the Brazilian Case with a Contemporary Study of the Cacao Regions of Bahia, Brazil Major Professor

John D. Strasma

Major Department

Economics

Minor(s)

Option B -- Ag Econ and Rural Soc

Full Name

Gervasio Castro de Rezende

Place and Date of Birth

Mirai, Minas Gerais, Brazi1,Apri125,1943

Colleges and Universities: Years attended and degrees Universidade do Estado da Guanabara, 1963-66, B.A. (Economics) EPGE--Fundacao Getullo Vargas, 1967-68 University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1971-73, M.A. (Economics) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1971-76, Ph.D. (Economics) Membership in Learned or Honorary Societies American Economic Association

Publications

“Estrutura e Nivel Tecnico da Agricultura segundo

Furtado”, Pesquisa e Planejamento (Rio de Janeiro), Vol. 5, n°. 1 (June 1975), pp. 219-230.

Date

February 9, 1976

1