The persistence of historical past in the present (and the asiatic mode)

We’ll do a small comparative analysis that allows us to establish both the persistence or the remains of the pre-capitalist and colonial historical past of the “Third World” on the current and contemporary situation of their societies, and the great inequality of specifically agrarian production in the world market between core and peripheral countries. For this we’re going to use some very simple variables, like price spreads between producer prices and market prices, and spatial price spreads.

We have the data from Europe, which present a ratio of difference between producer prices and market/consumer prices:

As we can see, the ratio is approximately of 1%, 2% or 3% tops, and in exceptional cases like Austria and the UK, it can reach 7 or 9 percentile points in some of their products. Now, we can see the difference between that margin or ratio and the difference between producer prices and market prices for Africa and Asia (through a selection of distinct economies from those regions):

We see that the difference between producer price and market price jumps to 15% or 25%, which means the direct producer gets a much smaller portion of the final price compared to Europe, and an increase in commercial margins which implies a bigger portion for merchant or commercial intermediaries (wholesale or retail) between the peasant agrarian producer and his/her output’s commercialization. This also implies, a smaller commercial integration, and a bigger fragmentation of land. Finally, we have the data for Latin America:

The average or mean of price spreads in Costa Rica is (approximately) 87,75%, in Nicaragua is around 75%, and Brasil is 92,93% (as we see, Brasil compares itself to the producer price and the respective commercial margin of Europe itself!, just like we will see below on the latin american and european small plot-latifundia ratio). This means that for Latin America we have an average or mean of 85,22%. Latin America has a relatively higher average than Asia (81,6%), and much higher than Africa (50,62%), in terms of the difference between producer price and market price. This explains the great latin american agrarian productivity compared to the rest of the “Third World”, keeping in mind that a bigger percentage of producer price implies a higher standard of living for peasants and a higher productivity of agrarian labor.

And if we go to the spatial spreads (keeping in mind that we’re comparing regional spreads in terms of prices with spatial spreads in terms of yield*), the average for the three continental regions of the “Third World” is 40,43% for Latin America, 73,05% for Asia, and 37,26% for Africa. With that said, Asia has a lower commercial or market integration comparatively than Latin America, even though they have a bigger commercial margin than Latin America.

What this data tells us is that there’s a gradation (and specially here) which follows the colonization pattern of the three regions of Latin America, Asia and Africa in that particular and progressive order, and that those colonization patterns reflect the pre-capitalist modes of production on which that colonization was built: from Latin America, to Asia, and finally to Africa, there’s a progression in the agrarian commercial margin due to the progressive gradations of direct and indirect colonization: in Latin America the institutions of its pre-capitalist mode of production were almost completely destroyed (with the exception of the encomienda), in Asia the autochthonous institutions were relatively left untouched along with their agrarian relationships proper of their regions (along with the lives of their indigenous peoples), and in Africa there was a bigger indirect colonization, leaving untouched customary consuetudinary and demographic/ethnic customs. Is this gradation the one which allows us to understand the construction of cabildos and virreinatos in Latin America, substituting pre-columbian institutions; the fact that Asian structure of commercial/merchant and taxation intermediaries were left untouched relatively, but with a certain level of construction of new economic institutions which promoted market integration in an intermediate degree; and that in Africa agrarian relationships were left almost completely untouched comparatively to the point of leaving consuetudinary relationships intact, and capitalism penetrated their economies with a smaller agrarian market integration. This gradation which goes from one region to the other, is also chronological: is the transition from early colonization in Latin America, to the subsequent colonization of Asia, and lastly, the fight for the territories and economies of Africa getting into the very same XX century. They reflect changes in colonization outlooks: from the maximum use of economic resources for colonization, to the saving up and drainage of resources of the british and european empires in their worldly conquests (colonization turned progressively into a very expensive enterprise), to the point of stopping direct colonization, substituting it with a form of colonization which would leave intact autochtonous structures, blocking the creation of market integration (and ending up with “Third World”’s decolonization, having in front of their faces the impossibility of sustaining it economically).

Lastly, the divergence between Asia and Latin America regarding spatial diffusion and price diffusion indicates that Asia has a better integration, even though with a higher fragmentation of land in relative terms (specially compared to South America), as we can see up next on this text. Also, although Latin America has bigger agrarian productivity, it doesn’t have bigger per cápita productivity compared to the Middle East and North Africa, which is also explained by the charts we’ll see right next, where Latin America has a small plot-latifundia ratio smaller than Europe (specially because of the bigger south american economies of Brasil or Argentina, etc), and at the same time, bigger than the Middle East and North Africa:

That means asian integration is superior to latin american integration, even though they have bigger comercial or market margins than Latin America. There are more merchant/commercial intermediaries in Asia than in Latin America, due to the colonization factors already mentioned, but a better market integration of merchant capitals. This is explained not by a bigger or smaller fragmentation of land (in a kautskyan reading), but by the traces of the Asiatic mode of production, which has as a trait or characteristic precisely the fragmentation of concentration and centralization of merchant capitals due to the multiplication of merchant/commercial intermediaries. Let’s remember that in the Asiatic mode, tax farming is not exactly just a “tribute” (as the “tributary” mode wants us to believe), but an extraction of ground-rent. This means landlords and merchants are multiplied, due to their dispersion all along the economy or society, extracting rent and commercial profit. It’s impossible to understand this without the multiplication of intermediaries of the Asiatic mode, and neither the “tributary” mode nor even less the semi-feudal or feudalism proposal help in explaining this reality.