The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 168)

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عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 168)

المحتوى

152
a primarily agricultural economy with limited cash crops, and limited development
of employment opportunities in urban areas, could not possibly have supported
29.4 percent of the rural families or anything close to that number as agricultural
or urban wage laborers.
Stein’s choice of words: “very lengthy process of small-landowner
alienation and accompanying \arge-landowner accumulation” obfuscates what
actually happened [emphasis mine]. Words such as “very lengthy” and
“accompanying” imply extensive differentiation in rural areas. However, to the
extent there was “small-landowner alienation” accompanied by large-landowner
accumulation, it was a very slow process given the nature of the economy and the
whole Ottoman social formation it was part of.
On the other hand, with the start of the Mandate, the country abruptly
found itself controlled by a colonial power that was one of the most developed
capitalist countries. In addition, there was the facilitation and rapid growth of a
European settler community that, along with the colonial power, would deepen and
widen the country’s integration in the world capitalist market. The massive and
cumulative impact of the intertwined processes of increased debt, price drop, bad
harvests, and heavy taxation, now demanded in cash, forced many peasants to sell
their land. This became possible, of course, with the increased commoditization of
land primarily because of European settler demand. So, while Stein accuses Hope-
Simpson of wrongly holding Jewish European acquisition of land and settlement
the “responsibility for the creation of a landless rural Arab class,” he tries to
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

تاريخ

٢٠٠٦

المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

مجموعات العناصر

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