Agrarian Marxism

Abstract

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx's 200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and industrial capitalism have been a vital part of debates over and within Marxism for more than a century and have been central to the social scientific and historical understandings of the modern world system. At the same time, since the seminal debates associated with the 'classical agrarian question,' agrarian studies is marked by durable tensions and polarities in theoretical approach. While Marxists have long criticized 'populists' for ignoring capitalism and class, populists have charged Marxists with historical determinism. It is the premise of this special issue that much of this debate has reached something of an impasse. This is in part because new empirical work addressing the complex contemporary patterns and conjunctures of global agrarian capitalism, and because new and generative theoretical reconstructions of Marxism itself, offer exciting new horizons. Contributions to this special issue help point the way beyond this impasse, and illustrate that agrarian Marxism remains a dynamic theoretical program that offers powerful insights into agrarian change and politics in the twentyfirst century.

Agrarian social movements: The absurdly difficult but not impossible agenda of defeating right‐wing populism and exploring a socialist future

“…I conclude this essay by going back to Henry Bernstein's appeal for Marxist political economists to take agrarian politics and agrarian populism seriously, dovetailing this appeal with a recent observation by Michael Levien, Michael Watts and Yan Hairong (, p. 853): “While Marxists have long criticized ‘populists' for ignoring capitalism and class, populists have charged Marxists with an obsessive concern with accumulation and class, an insensitivity to the contingencies of history and various blindspots regarding gender and identity.” They conclude,

On the one hand, more ‘populist' scholarship — whether focused on land grabs, food sovereignty or land reform — has far more explicitly incorporated Marxian insights about class and the dynamics of capitalism than ever before. On the other hand, much explicitly Marxian scholarship has moved away from its dismissal of peasant political agency; the hyper‐structuralism of modes of production debates; and linear or Eurocentric conceptions of history embedded in the transition problematic and ‘doomed peasant dogma'.

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“…19 Sanders and Trump are ideological opposites for some of their core groups-"alt-right" for Trump, socialists for Sanders-but they have common supporters and sympathizers, and the basis of the latter, at least in the beginning, is not their ideological stances, but the immediate, concrete issues addressed, such as factory closures amid corporate migration outside 17 For example, Baud and Rutten (2004); Baviskar (1999); Clapp and Isakson (2018); Edelman (1999); Fairbairn (2014); Hall (2011); Holt-Giménez (2017); Isakson (2014); Li (2007Li ( , 2014; Martinez-Alier (2014); McMichael (2008); Moore (1967); Newell and Wheeler (2006); Patel (2009); Peluso (1992); Peluso and Lund (2011); Ribot and Peluso (2003); Scoones (2015); Scott (1976Scott ( , 1985; Shanin (1972); Tsikata and Yaro (2014); Weis (2007); Wolford (2010). 18 And as some more recent studies point out, such as Bernstein (2018), Bernstein et al (2018); Cousins, Dubb, Hornby, and Mtero (2018); Lerche and Shah (2018); Levien et al (2018); White (2018). 19 For elaboration and insiders' accounts, see Sanders (2016) and Bond and Exley (2016).…”

“…1899]), to Russian revolutionary ideas and practices from Leninism and the Chayanovian socioeconomic logic of the peasant economy (Lenin, [orig. 1905]; Chayanov, , [orig 1925]), and even to contemporary Marxism (see Akram‐Lodhi & Kay, ,b; Levien, Watts, & Yan, )—all of which are relevant in the current, early 21st century conjuncture. Narodnism , decimated after 1881, was reincarnated “in the form of a ‘Social Revolutionary' party in the early 1900s,” and it would “become the major rural party of the left” (Hobsbawm, , p. 295).…”

Assessment of the growth in social groups for sustainable agriculture and land management

“…These include transnational farmer movements, such as La Vía Campesina with 200 million families represented worldwide (Martínez-Torres & Rosset, 2014), national land rights and anti-land-grab movements, such as Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sen Terra and the resettlement of 0.37 million families on 7.5 Mha over 10 years (Veltmeyer, 2019), national rural unions (Welch & Sauer, 2015) and agroecology and social movements (Veltmeyer, 2019). In some cases, these have led to active conflict and ‘peasant wars’ (Giraldo & Rosset, 2018; Levien et al , 2018). At the same time, organization around food has advanced in the form of food sovereignty and justice movements (Edelman et al , 2014; McMichael, 2013) and alternative food networks (AFNs) and alternative food movements (AFMs), particularly from urban food production landscapes, and with many involving consumers as well as growers/farmers (Desmarais & Wittman, 2014; Forssell & Lankowski, 2015; Hoey & Sponseller, 2018; Plieninger et al , 2018; Saulters et al , 2018; Si et al , 2015).…”

“…It will be important to be mindful of the past failures of state organizations that have undermined, ignored or suffocated local resource-based institutions (Levien et al , 2018; Jodha, 1990; Palmer, 1976) or have created paper or empty institutions (Ho, 2016). Many members and activists in social and agroecological movements would also argue that it is the structures of the world economy (and its capitalism) that prevent effective transformations towards sustainability and equity (Giraldo & Rosset, 2018; Moore, 2018).…”