Colonialism and peripheries VI: new findings in the understanding of the Third World

From the text we made here , it is possible to make the following synthesis of the capitalist forms of the "Third World":

We mentioned four different degrees with the possibility of combinations and gradations among themselves: "1) real subsumption in private or individual state latifundia of modern capitalist type in all the regions discussed, very widespread in some cases (South America) or minor in others (Sub-Saharan Africa); 2) formal subsumption of small property and sale of surpluses in Latin America, where small individual property (Central America) predominates; 3) an intermediate degree or mixture of formal and real subsumption in the sale of surpluses, leases, sharecropping, etc, but with a modification of the productive process where small collective or family property predominates and where a tribal/village chief acts as a customary or de facto landowner in the partial modification of the productive process either through the organization of the division of labor or the modification of the process of work with inputs, raw materials or credit and the subsequent connection between the direct producer and wholesale trade;and 4) a third degree or intermediate mixture of formal and real subsumption where the modification of the productive process is no longer with a communal landowner or traditional village or tribal chief, but with a state or private commercial enterprise, whether local or even multinational " Grade 1) is constant in all regions, with their respective differences in smallholding-latifundio ratios. Grades 3) and 4) can be mixed in the following way: grade 3) implies that the elite of the village or tribe is the connection between peasants and state or private, local or multinational commercial enterprises. That is to say: there is always a subsumption of the agricultural labor process within marketing and capitalist accumulation, insofar as it is not about subsistence, but marketing. Or in other words: grade 3) is in itself mixed with grade 4), with the difference that degree 4) has the particularity of eliminating the mediation of the elite of village or tribe or lineage, and take charge directly of the modification of the labour process through fixed and circulating capital, reaching a form of relativesurplus value. This is so real that even commercial companies are engaged in doing "agricultural industrial" work, despite being supermarkets or commercial businesses: they direct the work process, establish schedules, quotas, use of the means of production, credit, training skilled work, etc. And in some cases they even do it en masse: by contracting agriculture with thousands of small peasant owners at once, which makes them virtual landowners, but without having land ownership (relative surplus value without absolute rent). Sometimes even grade 1) is not based on wage labor or sharecropping, but on leases to small family units, etc.

These gradations correspond to the following gradations that we established here: "The subordination of production to commercial capital in Latin America at least implies the possibility of the direct producer of producing and buying in general, and the commercial capital of buying and selling in general. In Asia and Africa there is a general production and purchase, but the commercial capital specifically buys from the communal village, is in charge of selling specifically that communal production, and of buying and selling raw material/fixed capital specifically for its communal village (not in general). East or South Asia achieved an intermediate level of this relationship: the direct producer and the commercial capital sell and buy in general, but still remain an intermediate link between the raw material/fixed capital and the output of their communal village and trade (especially wholesale)." In fact, only in Latin America does agricultural production approach the model of the central countries, which explains why its small-latifundio ratio is similar to that of Europe. This is the exception in Central America, where grade 2) of the previous paragraph is given. In the rest of the "Third World", it is more exactly divided between a mixture of grade 3) and 4) in East and South Asia, with a lower relative composition of degree 1) (they possess a smallholding-latifundium ratio even lower to North Africa and the Middle East). A mixture of grade 3) and 4) in North Africa and the Middle East, with a higher relative composition of grade 1). Grade 3) and 4) mixtures in settlement regions of Africa (such as South Africa) with relatively greater predominance of grade 1 (unlike the rest of Africa, the regions that had colonial settlements recorded a higher proportion of latifundia) that of small familiar or customary property, etc). And mixtures of degree 3) and 4) with a predominance of grade 3) in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, and that goes from West Africa, Central Africa and East Africa, in degrees of reduction respectively (in that order they have a greater number of small family properties based on the extended family and customary relations, or what is the same, they have a much smaller landholding ratio). Likewise, East and South Asia have better trade integration, North Africa and the Middle East have lower integration, and the rest of Africa have less integration than all of them.

Likewise, we established a relationship between grades 3) and 4) based on the subcontracting schemes: "In a few words, we can say that they are variations of subcontracting schemes or plantation programs (" out-grower schemes "): from the traditional "out-growerscheme” (usually the state or cooperatives making purchases of agricultural surplus, subsidizing, etc), going through the nucleus-plantation scheme (generally between the state and the private sector through a central plantation or central agricultural processing center), satellite agriculture (mixtures of the previous two), and even non-subcontracting in the open market, all these are forms of mediation of commercial capital over production in the mode of “putting-out” or equivalent to it, in the sense of chapter XX of volume III. Grades 3) and 4) can be mixed with all these degrees indistinctly." Note that all these forms are basic in grade 4), but they are not necessarily present in grade 3). If there’s an indifference between those degrees and these types of schemes of relationship of commercial capital with respect to agricultural capital, they are certainly not homogeneous or symmetrical: degree 3) can exist without any form of contract farming, thus hampering vertical integration. This point will be important later.

From that, we can conclude:

That the absence of latifundia in East and South Asia compared to North Africa and the Middle East is compensated by commercial integration; and vice versa: North Africa and the Middle East offset their lack of integration with the predominance of latifundia. The same for societies like South Africa. Likewise, East and South Asia increase the commercial margin and the capitalist accumulation not only by the commercial integration, but by the predominance of subcontracting schemes closer to real subsumption. Grade 3), despite presenting a modification of the work process, appears more like an absolute rent or absolute surplus value of formal subsumption. It is an intermediate mixture of both elements. Grade 4) is a form of vertical integration, although it is also an intermediate mixture of both elements, but only that is completely heterogeneous to the other one. Grade 3) resembles intensive labor exploitation, and grade 4) capital intensive, and represent a functioning capitalism based respectively on greater exploitation of labor, and one based on greater labor productivity. This explains the more advanced divergence of South and East Asia in the direction of industrialization and the creation of emerging powers, in comparison with North Africa and the Middle East, despite having fewer latifundia with salaried labor than the others. That is to say, the regions closest to a tenure and land patterns similar to primitive or primitive accumulation, strangely enough, are those that fall behind regions with highly fragmented tendencies and land patterns in small properties of family units. This contradicts the common notions of Marxism: it is assumed that it is the great property of land with large machinery that surpasses in labor productivity societies with fragmented land (Kautsky). This can only be explained by the influence of commercial capital on agricultural industrial production. For the same reason, it also explains that Latin America also falls behind Eastern and Southern Asia: they have more classical latifundia than all Asian and African regions, but they do not have an important element of degree 4) compared to grade 1) : the increase in productivity, income and peasant consumption compared to peasant salaried labor, indispensable for any process of industrialization.

In the case of Central America, this means that the predominance of small property without vertical integration or extended existence of contract farming is very different from the predominance of small property in East and South Asia, where contract farming is dominant and promotes vertical integration. What Central America gains for the concentration and centralization of commercial capital with the lack of intermediaries compared to East and South Asia, it loses it due to the absence of vertical integration of agriculture and commercial capital despite the intermediaries of East and South Asia. The difference, again, lies in the ability of commercial capital to convert the agrarian industry into a process based on the high exploitation of labor, or on the high productivity of labor, as defined in Volume I of Capital. The industrialized latifundia is more capital intensive than a small property in terms of rent, and therefore, in ordinary Marxist terms, it operates by labor productivity as opposed to the exploitation of the labor of the small property of the land; but the small property of the land subsumed by the commercial capital inverts this relationship from the commercial gain, converting the greater amount of labor per hectare and so on, into an increase in labor productivity, instead of a simple exploitation of labor.

Finally, two things: the state subcontracting scheme also produces an insertion of capitalism in labour processes with which it invests in constant capital, credit, etc. As in the Asian production mode, the state is "general landowner" and receives absolute rent, the passage to the state that simply receives taxes or quotas for agricultural surplus marketing, etc, serves as an intermediary for the insertion of small agricultural properties within capitalist accumulation. This is so true that many state or cooperative program officials are enriched through their state position by establishing public-private commercial contracts with their own commercial or credit businesses. The state, through its public bodies, cedes the right to deliver inputs or purchase agricultural surpluses to private companies, and often the local private merchant is at the same time the public official of the state association, and in many cases it is precisely the leader or elite of village or tribe. This does not mean that the state perceives profit, but it does act as an intermediary in the formal and real subsumption of the agricultural labor process. And the second: grade 3) can be subdivided between a degree 3)a and a degree 3)b, where grade 3)a is dedicated to be an intermediary between raw materials and credit for the farmer, and the marketing of excedents of the small owner, exploiting his work through commercial gain, and where grade 3)b is a customary tribal leader who has a partial property right over communal land, and therefore also modifies the division of agricultural labor as landowner. Both modify the work process as real subsumption and perceive relative surplus value, becoming de facto landlords, but one does it through the exploitation of the commercial profit of agricultural surplus labor , and the other through its right (formal or customary) as a partial owner in the form of possession. The first is more common in Asia, and the second in Africa, and they represent the ethnic differences between the tribes and their organizations on both continents. When grade 4 is given with them as intermediaries (ie, mixed with grade 3) ), then the village or tribal leader or elite becomes a landowner through vertical integration with commercial capital, regardless of this difference that we just made. It is important to point out these details because even if they were exactly the same magnitudes of profits in case 3)a as in 3)b, the first would be a productive process based on the exploitation of labour, and the second on the productivity of labour (which is reflected in the fact that a village or tribe intermediary that sells surpluses, disburses its entire capital by itself, while in the form of contract farming and vertical integration, the commercial enterprise also does so to a certain extent with which he mediates with the direct producer).