Of rice, men, women and machines

Abstract

As Mouzelis has clearly shown, among the social formations of the Third World, the capitalist mode of production has generally taken an enclave form, not succeeding "in expanding (nor) in transferring its dynamism and its high productivity to the technologically backward small commodity production sectors of the economy" (1976, p. 487). It is particularly the case with peasant agriculture, for which the productivity gap with the capitalist-industrial sector is continuously widening. However, the same author underlines that a fundamental condition to the development of industry resides in the expansion of the internal market, a phenomenon that "can partly result from a rise of agricultural incomes" (p. 489). He adds finally that to understand the ways through which agriculture is gradually articulated to industry, it is indispensable to analyse the evolution of class structures specific to the societies under consideration, hence the need for continuously renewed empirical studies.