In this extensive interview, socialist activist and writer Issa Shivji discusses the peasantry, capitalist development and socialism. In a discussion with Freedom Mazwi he argues that those who predicted the end of history, have been proven woefully wrong. Capitalism and the planet are in deep crisis. For the first time in decades people in both the South and the North are openly using the ideas and slogans of socialism – even if they have divergent ideas. Shivji argues, we must let a hundred socialist flowers bloom.
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Freedom Mazwi: The theme of our conversation today is the ‘Peasantry, Neoliberalism and Alternatives.’ As we might be aware, the peasantry is under massive attack not only in Africa but the Global South broadly. This is why we considered this to be an important conversation. We will discuss the peasantry and its challenges, with extended consideration of what the alternatives may be. Let me start by asking you to define the peasantry. We know that it is a debated concept. There are various views on the peasantry, its characteristics and why is it important.
Issa Shivji: Thank you Freedom. I think you have raised a very important issue. I would like to briefly start with the traditional Marxist take on the peasantry. Karl Marx himself, based on the European experience, thought that with the development of capitalism, the peasant – basically meaning the smallholder who survives on land, produces on land – will disappear, and a large mass of people will become the industrial proletariat. It was in this regard that when it came to politics, we have Marx on record calling peasants a ‘sack of potatoes’ because he did not see a lot of potential in the peasantry for revolutionary change. Although that was based on the European experience, Marx did talk about countries of the South, particularly those in Africa. He however talked about them in relation to primitive accumulation of capital. But that was, for him, the original condition in developing his model of capitalism. Since then, we have had some theoretical and political developments. In this regard we must mention Rosa Luxemburg who disagreed with Marx. She argued that capitalist accumulation is not simply self-contained. Her position was that for capitalism to continue reproducing itself, it always needs non-capitalist sectors on which to feed for accumulation. She saw many of our countries as feeding capitalism through primitive accumulation.
That was the initial argument during those debates. The second point that I think Rosa Luxemburg made, which is also very important for us, was that Marx’s formulae saw primitive accumulation as the original condition and once capitalism has developed, we get what is called capitalist accumulation. It is based on labour and capital. The former is exploited to produce the surplus value and part of that surplus value is accumulated for the second cycle of expanded reproduction. Rosa Luxembourg’s argument was that primitive accumulation does not actually come to an end with capitalist development, but rather continues because exploitation of the non-capitalist sector based on primitive accumulation is essential for capitalist reproduction.
Subsequently we had other developments starting with Lenin, going on to Mao and so on. And contrary to the predictions of the earlier Marxists, the socialist revolution happened not in the centre but in the semi-periphery, i.e. Russia.
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