The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 300)
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- عنوان
- The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 300)
- المحتوى
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284
the countryside was undergoing by blurring the ongoing process of differentiation.
If what was meant by socioeconomic change was the predominance of
Capitalist production relations in the rural areas as Carmi and Rosenfeld seem to
say, there is no doubt that this was not the case. However, what definitely evolved
was socioeconomic differentiation but only with limited capitalist development.
Thus, to answer the question I started with as to where the wage labor came
from, it was from the peasantry whose land was expropriated whether completely
or to an extent that substantially reduced their ability to secure a livelihood from it.
However, what evolved in the rural areas were the beginnings of capitalist
relations though still not predominant. This leads to the question of why the
process of differentiation was not complete in the sense of leading to the complete
separation of peasants from their means of production and the predominance of
capitalist production relations in the rural areas.
I already alluded to the observable fact that differentiation may take
different forms and be a slow process. There are many counteracting factors that
may account for the slow pace or retardation of the process of differentiation in the
sense of the development of agrarian capitalism. I will discuss, in brief, the main
intertwined factors that operated in Palestine.
First, there were the colonial government’s policies, especially its trade and
fiscal policies. The “open-door” trade approach proved disastrous. The allowing of
duty-free agricultural imports even when prices were collapsing was ruinous for the
small peasants, and at the same time provided disincentives for the surplus
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. - هو جزء من
- The Dispossession of the Peasantry
- تاريخ
- ٢٠٠٦
- المنشئ
- Riyad Mousa
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