The last two decades of the twentieth century saw many changes in the world. Although we continue to live in a capitalist global economy, its nature and form have undergone many modifications. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War revived the confidence of the advocates of free market economy. Breakthroughs in telecommunication technology and the increasing reach of capital to virtually every nook and corner of the world ushered in a totally different phase in globalisation. These changes also initiated certain new trends in social sciences. The ‘old’ modernist theoretical perspectives gave way to a variety of ‘post-modernist’ ways of looking at the world. Not that everyone in social sciences quickly converted to these ‘new ways of looking at things’; yet their pressure was felt virtually everywhere. Even the language of left-wing politics changed. From class analyses, the focus shifted to questions of culture, from revolution to empowerment, from politics to governance from production to consumption.

The emergence of some new global institutions, the increasing integration of agriculture in the global market and a weakening of the states in the Third World have generated a fresh set of challenges for the agrarian economies of the Third World. However, research interest in agriculture and related issues saw a steep decline during this period. Even when issues of agriculture were raised, rarely did questions relating to the social relations of production come to the fore. Discussions on agriculture were invariably in very general terms, as a sector of the wider economy. There has been some revival of interest in agrarian questions in the recent years in the context of what has come to be known as the ‘agrarian crisis’; the language of discourse has continued to be populist in nature.

This is quite in contrast to the dominant trends in the Indian academy until the 1980s. Apart from a wide variety of empirical studies, various aspects of changes being experienced in the agrarian sector and the specificities of different regions and sub-regions of India were debated quite vigorously among the academia and in political circles. The development of agriculture was also critical for the newly liberated States of the Third World in the post-World War II period. Interestingly, the framework of the political economy was much more popular all through with students of agrarian change than it was with scholars engaged in the study of other aspects of social and economic life in the Third World. This was perhaps partly because although quite different in terms of its theoretical orientation, those working with the political economy perspective were able to engage quite effectively and meaningfully with the issues of development being pursued by the Third World States at that time.

However, notwithstanding these shifts in the political atmosphere and global academy, the framework of political economy continued to be used by a large number of scholars. Apart from continued empirical studies using class as a central category of social analyses, some of them have also challenged the post-modernist theoretical formulations and have pointed to their ‘conservative’ political effects.

In this paper, I will try to critically examine the contributions of Tom Brass, a leading Marxist theoretician on the agrarian question, through two of his books on the subject. Besides attacking the ‘new’ writings and their theses on agrarian processes in the Third World, he also presents his own formulations on the agrarian social structure and change in Latin America and India, the two settings in which he himself has done some fieldwork. Brass’s concern, however, is not confined to confronting post-modernists.

Though the two books appear to be quite different in terms of the general themes, there is a great deal of similarity in the arguments presented by Brass in both the books. His first book Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour: Case Studies and Debates (London: Frank Cass 1999) brings together several of his earlier writings and engagements with other scholars carried out in the pages of the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Economic and Political Weekly over the last decade or so. His main focus in this volume is to critically interrogate the manner in which production relations, specifically those between the labourers (mostly landless) and their employer farmers, have been conceptualised. The empirical context of his arguments is capitalist agriculture, namely, the post-Green Revolution agriculture in India and a few case studies from Latin America.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many scholars working on agriculture in India argued that despite its specificities, the classical trends of capitalist development/modernisation were clearly visible in the Indian agrarian scene. As a consequence, they argued, the social relations of production too loosened-up. The employer farmers no longer enjoyed the kind of control that feudal masters had over their serfs/labourers. The old structures of the jajmani type caste-governed relations were giving way to formalised arrangements. While some of these scholars were working with the Marxist framework of class analysis, some others used theoretical categories of neo-classical economics or the functionalism/modernisation theory.

Brass questions them all. His main theoretical contention is that the development of capitalism in Third World agriculture had not only been not leading to the disappearance of unfree labour but in certain instances had in fact introduced/strengthened such relations. He also questions the classical assumption of the Marxist political economy in which the development of capitalism is supposed to inevitably lead to the emergence of a free labour. In the classical Marxist formulation, the development of capitalism in agriculture frees labour in two ways. It frees them from the ownership of the means of production, which, in most cases, implies peasants’ dispossession of land, and it frees them from the extra-economic coercive power of the employers. This, in the Marxist vocabulary, is known as proletarianisation.

According to Brass, much of the contemporary literature on agrarian change in the Third World has been produced within this framework. It is assumed, rather unproblematically, that capitalist development always transforms peasants into proletarians. Even where unfree production relations, such as debt bondage, have been found to exist, the general tendency among the scholars, as he claims, has been to attribute them to the innate conservativeness of the peasantry, an evidence of the continuation of semi-feudal structures in the agrarian sector.

As against this popular Marxist common sense that characterises all unfree labour as a pre-capitalist relationship, Brass argues that the unfree labour was

“…a crucial aspect of class struggle between capital and labour in specific agrarian contexts, and as such may be introduced (or reintroduced) by employers at any historical conjuncture: either to pre-empt the political consequences of proletarianization in situations where a proletariat is in the process of being formed, or to re-impose capitalist authority over the workplace in cases where a proletariat already exists.” (p.9)

Thus, according to Brass, unfree labour was not only compatible with relatively advanced productive forces but such relations could also be introduced in developed agriculture from above to cheapen and discipline the wage labour. Such a process, which he describes as ‘deproletarianisation’, may, in fact, occur precisely when rural workers begin to demand higher wages and better working conditions. The three interrelated claims that he makes in relation to the process of proletarianisation are:

“…first, the contemporary bonded labour is a modern form of unfreedom; second, that in the contexts under consideration this relation is an important method whereby capitalist farmers and rich peasants increase their control over and simultaneously reduce the cost of their workforce; and third, that this process corresponds to deproletarianization, the ‘other’ of proletarianization.” (p.10)   

In order to fully appreciate his notion of unfree labour, it may be worth our while to understand how he conceptualises free labour. A worker, according to Brass, is free “when he/she possesses an ability personally to commodify and recommodify labour-power at any given moment in agricultural cycle. Where such an ability is constrained, either wholly or in part, because of debts owed to his/her employer, the worker in question cannot be considered to be free.” (pp. 10–11)

Brass, however, is not merely interested in making a theoretical point or in presenting findings of his own fieldwork in India and Latin America. Much of the book consists of his engagements with other scholars who have carried out empirical works on agrarian changes and have given their own formulations on the nature of change being experienced in the Third World agriculture. Brass seems to disagree virtually with everyone who has written anything on the nature of agrarian change in India. Broadly speaking, he identifies two sets of formulations on the question of unfree labour. First, those that recognise the existence of unfree/bonded labour but view it essentially as an evidence of the continued prevalence of pre-capitalist/semi-feudal relations of production in the agrarian sector. An obvious corollary to this is the assumption that as the productive forces advanced, such relations would eventually give way to free wage labour. This, according to Brass, is closer to the position of the neo-classical economists, who also see unfree labour in evolutionist terms, namely, the development of modern economy inevitably leads to the freeing of labour. For them, the presence of unfree labour is essentially an obstacle to market formation and thus to accumulation.

However, he asserts, there are variants of Marxism that did not see unfree labour and capitalism as being incompatible. For example, some Marxists have argued that during the colonial period, unfree labour was commonly used to accumulate surplus. Brass, however, does not see it as being confined merely to the colonial history of the Third World. He argues that unfree labour exists even today, and it needed to be seen in the framework of class struggle between employers and workers and not as remnants or continuation from the past of semi-feudal structures.

The second set of scholars with whom Brass disagrees are the ones who conceptualise the enganche system in Latin America or attached labour in India in positive terms, as something that is good for workers. Such conceptualisations present attached labour in terms of “a materially reciprocal exchange between landholders and worker, a transaction which, it is claimed, from the viewpoint of the latter corresponded to economically empowering and thus a much sought-after form of job insurance or subsistence guarantee.” (p.217) Such a view, according to Brass, is more widely prevalent among the students of agrarian change in India. This list includes not only scholars, such as Wiser, Eipstein and Bardhan, who could be classified in terms of their theoretical orientations as ‘functionalist’ or ‘neo-classical’, but also those who use categories of Marxist political economy such as Rudra, Harriss and Breman.

According to Brass, they all “theorize unfreedom benignly: as a form of ‘patronage’, to the advantage of what others term bonded labour, and thus freely entered into (not to say actively sought out) by its subject.” (p.220) This is not a purely academic point. He questions the political implications of such formulations and at places even the political intentions or motives of these scholars. He goes to the extent of labelling them as the ‘apologists of slavery and serfdom’ (p.216) and proponents of ‘employer/ landlord ideology.’ (p.218)

It is rather interesting that though Brass is essentially making an empirical claim, his criticism of the above-mentioned scholars is primarily political. The manner in which he frames his argument leaves no space for anyone to have a respectable disagreement with him. He structures his argument in oppositional terms. There is no possibility of a third position. Anyone not in agreement with his position is essentially an apologist of the landlord! Even when, for example, some scholars (such as Breman and myself) talk about the growing assertiveness among workers in the fast changing, politico-economic environment and the consequent inability of the employers to enforce their writ as they could earlier (a purely empirical claim), Brass would see conspiracies in such formulations.

The ‘purist’ Marxist class position that Brass claims to advocate could also prove methodologically disabling. What if agricultural labourers are indeed not bonded or that they say that their dependencies on their employers have considerably come down? There is no way that one could observe and report such processes if one is working within the framework suggested by Brass. One wonders how one could possibly describe all the complex processes of change being experienced in countries like India without being labelled an apologist of the landlords, a ‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-labour’! One could perhaps appreciate this point if one was to look at the nature of mobilisations among the poor and labouring classes in India over the last two decades or so, a point I shall return to in the concluding section. While the organised left/working class movement has weakened, various forms of ‘low’ caste or dalit political formations have become much stronger.

The final chapter of the book focuses on the conceptualisations of unfree labour in relation to some of the ‘new’ writings on the agrarian scene in the Third World societies. His main target of attack are the post-modernists of different kinds and the manner in which they have either talked about unfree labour or have referred to the peasantry, an argument developed fully in his second book Peasants, Populism and Postmodernism: The Return of the Agrarian Myth (London: Frank Cass 2000).

Brass claims that central to much of the post-modernist literature was a particular idea of the peasantry/rural society, which was similar to the old ‘agrarian myth’, similar to the way Russian ‘populists’ conceptualised peasantry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The political effects of these writings are also similar, namely, anti-Marxists, nationalist and right wing. It may be useful here to quote Brass at length to understand the way he defines ‘agrarian myth’, which is:

“…a discourse about the desirability/feasibility and ‘naturalness’ of small-scale economic activity (peasant family farming, artisanry) in the countryside. It is also supportive, therefore, of rural cultural forms/institutions based on this economic activity: namely, the family, village, regional and religious identities, which are perceived as being derived from Nature.”  (p.9) 

Populism, for Brass, was the ‘other’ or the opposite of Marxism. Whereas the historical subject of populism was a homogenous peasantry and village community, for Marxism it is the proletariat. Populism talked about tradition, ethnicity and cultural nationalism whereas Marxist politics is centred on class, economic internationalism and revolution. Populism celebrated nature and stasis whereas Marxism propagated large-scale production processes, social conflict and change. For Marxists, “the countryside, the village and the peasantry are all eventually subsumed under capital and accordingly transformed by class formation and class struggle.” (p. 36) 

The return of the populist modes of looking at peasantry was, thus, a relapse from the manner in which the ‘agrarian question’ was being viewed in ‘development studies’ as also in the dominant political discourses in most of the Third World countries during the post-War period. The culturalist/populist revival is interestingly projected as being pro-peasant empowerment. The various new theoretical trends, which include the ‘moral economy’ approach, the ‘middle peasant thesis’, the ‘new social movements’ theory and the ‘subaltern studies’ project, all feed into the re-emergence of a discourse about ‘peasant-ness-as-empowerment’.

Having spelt out the politically conservative nature of populism, Brass goes on to critically examine various political mobilisations in different Third World countries. As in the first book, here also his case studies are mostly from India and to a lesser extent from Latin America. Broadly speaking, he focuses on two sets of mobilisations — those by different sections of the left-wing parties and those that have come to be known as the ‘new social movements’.

The main problem of Brass with left-wing mobilisations, which includes pre- and post-independence political movements of peasantry under the leadership of communist parties in India, such as CPI, CPI-M, or CPI-ML, is that they have tended to support all ‘from-below’ mobilisations rather uncritically, even when some of these mobilisations were clearly based on ‘non-class’ identities. Such movements, according to Brass, strengthened communal politics and served the interests of dominant classes in the Indian countryside.

One of the more recent examples to which he refers critically is the mobilisation of the backward castes against the traditionally dominant caste groups of the north Indian state of Bihar by a faction of the Maoist party, CPI-ML. His main criticism is against their choosing ‘caste’, instead of class, as the idiom of mobilisation. Caste, according to Brass, ‘did not correspond to class.’ (p.121) He treats caste as a communal identity. Such mobilisations, he insists, ultimately feed into right-wing politics.

He similarly finds nothing progressive in the politics of environmentalism, eco-feminism or the ‘new farmers’ movements’. They all invoke a populist notion of village community. The new farmers’ movements, which emerged in the agriculturally developed pockets of India during the 1980s, though ideologically worked with a populist notion of the village community, mobilised only land-owning dominant caste groups. In some regions (such as in Uttar Pradesh), they quite openly used casteist symbols for mobilisations.

Perhaps the more interesting part of his book is his critique of the postmodernists. He very rightly observes that the rise of ‘post-modernism’ and ‘new-populism’ is a direct result of the collapse of socialism and the resurgence of national/ethnic conflicts and the consequent abandonment of, what he calls, ‘Marxist solutions to problems of underdevelopment’. Eco-feminism, subaltern studies, the post-development and post-colonial frameworks are all essentially anti-Marxist and populist in nature. They all claim that, “the ‘voice from below’ in the so-called Third World is determined not by class formations but by ethnic/peasant/tribal/gender identity.” (p.318) Class and development are dismissed as Euro-centric meta-narratives. The recognition of the difference and the diversities has come to be viewed as the fundamental premise in the new literature. He argues, however,

“The difficulty with this endorsement by the postmodern ‘new’ populism of diversity/difference is that, once the premise of plurality is conceded, it then becomes possible to apply it to spheres beyond the ‘cultural’; in short, it can now be argued that the uneven distribution of the means of production, of wealth and power, is nothing more than a recognition of this principle at work.” (p. 150)

He sees a direct link between the resurgence of populism and the current territorial expansion of capitalism. Brass is also critical of the alternatives to an ‘old’ kind of development being suggested by the post-modernist ‘new’ populists. They have been arguing for local-level action and ‘grassroots empowerment’ through ‘non-party’, apolitical initiatives, such as the kind of work being done by the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in many of the Third World countries. Calling their actions essentially reformist in nature, Brass contends that they “create the impression not only that problems are being solved but further that they can be solved locally, thereby diluting antagonism towards the existing class structure and diverting mobilisations away from other, large scale and thus more effective forms of action.” (p.151)

As expected, Brass is very critical of the academic community, particularly those who have taken to post-modernism and make radical postures. Post-modernism and populism, he argues, have become fashionable among the academics because they are rather convenient and ‘safe’ theoretical positions to take. Post-modernism means that “academics no longer have to be oppositional, nor do they have to represent views other than their own” (p.152)

But surely, the rise of ‘new’ social movements, that is, the mobilisations by farmers, women, ethnicities or tribals and Dalits, cannot be attributed just to the shifts taking place in the academia. The Marxist response to these changes certainly needs to go beyond a mere reiteration of the relevance of classical Marxist positions.

Similarly, the question of caste and class is not as simple as Brass makes it out to be. Working with a purist notion of class without any understanding of the given social formation and historical context is not what Marxist political economy teaches us. The question of caste has, in fact, received much lesser attention from the Marxist scholars and the communist parties in India than it deserved. We ought to understand who is talking about caste and why. Labelling social mobilisations simply by looking at the language of political discourse may be misleading. For example, the ‘casteism’ of the historically dominated groups needs to be distinguished from the casteism of the dominant group. The Dalits of India are today using caste as a source of identity in their fight against casteism and not to promote caste-based hierarchies. The rise of a powerful Dalit movement in India during the last two decades has not only transformed the old political equations at the local and national levels but has also had an impact on agrarian social structure, a subject that still needs to be looked at seriously and in detail. While it is true that in the stated political agenda, they have often articulated their politics in caste terms on the ground that the effects of their mobilisations have been quite remarkable.

These movements have given the Dalits, who are invariably landless labourers in villages, a new sense of confidence and have considerably strengthened their position in local politics. Caste violence, which has become so recurrent in recent times in some parts of India, is largely because of this new-found assertiveness among the Dalits. Freedom from bondage is not merely about change in labourers’ relation to the labour market as a free labourer, it is also about dignity and citizenship.

Questions of caste and communities have always been difficult for the Marxists in India and elsewhere. Conventionally, the left-wing parties in India have tended to see caste as a negative phenomenon that divided the working classes and, therefore, have rarely attempted to articulate a political programme that could deal with the specifics of the historical experience of the domination and exploitation of the Dalits. While Brass’s criticism is sharp and theoretically sound, it may not be very helpful in dealing with emerging political realities of the political processes today. It could, in fact, reinforce the ‘old’ Marxist position on caste. The challenges posed by these new realities need to be taken much more seriously than it has been suggested by Brass. Merely calling them conservatives and reactionary and asking for a return to a purist notion of class, without any appreciation for the given historical contexts, is only likely to further marginalize Marxism, both in history as in the academy.

(This paper is a revised version of an earlier review article ‘Unfree Labour and Postmodern Myths: Towards a Critical Examination’, Historical Materialism. 2004. Volume 12 (4). Pp. 463–72.)