The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 51)

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The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 51)

المحتوى

35
yearly workdays in 1931, 1935, 1939, respectively).” This “shows that the income
of urban labor was definitely higher than the value added per worker in Arab
agriculture.”°? There are several problems here.
First, Metzer’s assumption of 250 workdays is completely unrealistic. It is a
well-known fact that most of the available wage employment was casual,
temporary, and seasonal with the exception of that associated with war efforts
starting in mid-1940. However, Metzer’s assumption of 250 days worked fits
neatly with the “pull” effects of his dual-economy model. Even assuming that 250
working days were available, and given the relatively small difference in earnings
between agriculture and urban wage labor, especially for 1935 and 1939 (about 10
percent), it is hard to believe that a peasant would leave his land and family to go
work in urban areas. The exception to this would be if there was sufficient family
labor to compensate for his labor. Otherwise, peasants did work on a casual basis
to supplement their incomes. Peasants who hired out on a regular basis, when and
if available, were mostly those who either completely lost their land or could not
eke out a living from what land they owned (i.e., those who “earned” much less
than Metzer’s average “agricultural product per worker”).
In addition to the “typical” factors acting in a dual economy, a major one
specific to Palestine that explains the wage differentials was the implementation of
the “Jewish labor-only” policy in the Jewish economy that sought to prevent Arab
labor from competing with Jewish wage labor. This policy was adhered to
“Ibid.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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