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Primitive accumulation and the ‘transition to capitalism’ in neoliberal India
... This study extends these critical perspectives on microcredit by suggesting an additional dimension of the impacts of microcredit programs. While some have recognized the role of microcredit in accumulation by dispossession, much of the critical literature on 2 Harvey's concept of accumulation by dispossession has brought renewed attention to Marx's theory of primitive accumulation (specifically its dynamics under neoliberal capitalism), and has been the source of considerable debate (Adnan, 2015;Ashman and Callinicos, 2006;Brenner, 2006;De Angelis, 2007;Fine, 2006;Glassman, 2006;Hall, 2012;Levien, 2011Levien, , 2013Webber, 2008;Wood, 2006). It is not the goal of this essay to mediate these debates, but to highlight social dispossession as one aspect of what Adnan refers to as the ''diverse repertoire" of primitive accumulation (Adnan, 2015). ...
... While some have recognized the role of microcredit in accumulation by dispossession, much of the critical literature on 2 Harvey's concept of accumulation by dispossession has brought renewed attention to Marx's theory of primitive accumulation (specifically its dynamics under neoliberal capitalism), and has been the source of considerable debate (Adnan, 2015;Ashman and Callinicos, 2006;Brenner, 2006;De Angelis, 2007;Fine, 2006;Glassman, 2006;Hall, 2012;Levien, 2011Levien, , 2013Webber, 2008;Wood, 2006). It is not the goal of this essay to mediate these debates, but to highlight social dispossession as one aspect of what Adnan refers to as the ''diverse repertoire" of primitive accumulation (Adnan, 2015). 3 On disparities between idealized notions of poverty and rural life held by development agencies and MFIs versus experiences of recipients themselves, see also (Cons and Paprocki, 2010). ...
... The growing role of capitalism's disruption of social reproduction is of increasing importance to scholars concerned with the political economy of agrarian change (Adnan, 2015;Hall, 2012;Levien, 2011;McMichael, 2005McMichael, , 2008McMichael, , 2009Roberts, 2008;Taylor, 2011). Attempts to come to terms with this process have been forced to confront long-standing debates and foundational concepts in political economy, and their often messy fit with the dynamics of contemporary capitalism, particularly in the context of the Global South. ...
In this paper, I articulate a notion of ‘social dispossession,’ an optic that extends current theorizing on agrarian dispossession into the realm of social reproduction, by examining the testimonies of microcredit borrowers in rural Bangladesh. In recent years, research on microcredit has highlighted new forms of subject-making employed by microcredit and other NGO entrepreneurship development programs. These developments have received insufficient attention in scholarship on agrarian change, both globally and in specific places. I correct this by arguing that microcredit drives social dispossession through three specific mechanisms: the confiscation of assets necessary to social reproduction (as well as to production); the construction of debt relations within a community which reshape what reproduction can look like; and the re-configuration of women’s social status and subjectivities in relation to their communities.
... As part of its broader framework of agrarian restructuring, which 'seeks to liberalise international trade in food and agricultural products, deregulate the operation of domestic agricultural markets, privatise rural parastatals, and formalise the ownership and control of property that had been held in public, in common or, in some cases, privately but monopolistically' (Akram-Lodhi 2007, p. 1438, neoliberal enclosures through marketbased land policies result in the deepening of capitalist property relations in the South (Akram-Lodhi 2007). 4 The on-going nature of dispossession has revived scholarly interest in the question of primitive accumulation in the writings of Marx (Adnan 2015;Byres 2005). Primitive accumulation, originally theorised as a precursor to the development of capitalism, had three distinct aspects to it: (a) the expulsion of independent producers from the ownership of means of production; (b) the appropriation of the resources for capitalist accumulation; and (c) the creation of free labour as a class whose survival depends on the sale of labour power (Chatterjee 2017). ...
... Harvey (2003, pp. 137-182) has drawn attention to the relevance of such dispossessions to global capitalism, through the notion of accumulation by dispossession (ABD), which has generated a great deal of attention to the diverse forms of dispossessions across the world (Adnan 2015;Glassman 2006;Hall 2013;Levien 2013b). Sanyal (2014) and Chatterjee (2008), among others, argue that primitive accumulation does not constitute the pre-history of capitalism, but is one of the conditions of its existence. ...
... As part of its broader framework of agrarian restructuring, which 'seeks to liberalise international trade in food and agricultural products, deregulate the operation of domestic agricultural markets, privatise rural parastatals, and formalise the ownership and control of property that had been held in public, in common or, in some cases, privately but monopolistically' (Akram-Lodhi 2007, p. 1438, neoliberal enclosures through marketbased land policies result in the deepening of capitalist property relations in the South (Akram-Lodhi 2007). 4 The on-going nature of dispossession has revived scholarly interest in the question of primitive accumulation in the writings of Marx (Adnan 2015;Byres 2005). Primitive accumulation, originally theorised as a precursor to the development of capitalism, had three distinct aspects to it: (a) the expulsion of independent producers from the ownership of means of production; (b) the appropriation of the resources for capitalist accumulation; and (c) the creation of free labour as a class whose survival depends on the sale of labour power (Chatterjee 2017). ...
... Harvey (2003, pp. 137-182) has drawn attention to the relevance of such dispossessions to global capitalism, through the notion of accumulation by dispossession (ABD), which has generated a great deal of attention to the diverse forms of dispossessions across the world (Adnan 2015;Glassman 2006;Hall 2013;Levien 2013b). Sanyal (2014) and Chatterjee (2008), among others, argue that primitive accumulation does not constitute the pre-history of capitalism, but is one of the conditions of its existence. ...
This chapter seeks to examine two contradictory developments on the political economy of land and development in India, one, a conscious policy decision to secure land title regime and the pressure on the Indian state to revisit land reforms regime. By analysing the changes in land policy under the neoliberal regime, it argues that a land titling regime, under which the state aims to provide secure land rights to the landowners, has eclipsed the concerns over redistributive land reforms. The launch of land records digitisation drive is the driving force behind the “reform by stealth” approach to land titling. On the other hand, land-based interventions for the poor and marginalised sections continue to be relevant on the grounds of their livelihood and sustainability.
... As part of its broader framework of agrarian restructuring, which 'seeks to liberalise international trade in food and agricultural products, deregulate the operation of domestic agricultural markets, privatise rural parastatals, and formalise the ownership and control of property that had been held in public, in common or, in some cases, privately but monopolistically' (Akram-Lodhi 2007, p. 1438, neoliberal enclosures through marketbased land policies result in the deepening of capitalist property relations in the South (Akram-Lodhi 2007). 4 The on-going nature of dispossession has revived scholarly interest in the question of primitive accumulation in the writings of Marx (Adnan 2015;Byres 2005). Primitive accumulation, originally theorised as a precursor to the development of capitalism, had three distinct aspects to it: (a) the expulsion of independent producers from the ownership of means of production; (b) the appropriation of the resources for capitalist accumulation; and (c) the creation of free labour as a class whose survival depends on the sale of labour power (Chatterjee 2017). ...
... Harvey (2003, pp. 137-182) has drawn attention to the relevance of such dispossessions to global capitalism, through the notion of accumulation by dispossession (ABD), which has generated a great deal of attention to the diverse forms of dispossessions across the world (Adnan 2015;Glassman 2006;Hall 2013;Levien 2013b). Sanyal (2014) and Chatterjee (2008), among others, argue that primitive accumulation does not constitute the pre-history of capitalism, but is one of the conditions of its existence. ...
This chapter presents an overview of the significant issues concerning land, labour and the state in contemporary India. The major theoretical and empirical debates concerning the land questions under neoliberalism have been reviewed selectively from the perspective of a developing country like India. The debates around the land-livelihoods linkages have been discussed from the vantage point of the political economy of agrarian change and rural transformation under contemporary capitalism. The changing nature of state intervention, in the form of land acquisition, land reforms and land-use changes, has also been outlined to provide a backdrop to the diverse issues raised by the contributions to the volume and points to the interconnections among the issues raised by the authors in different chapters.
... Arguably, this wave of seizures is neither straightforwardly primary/primitive accumulation (PA) nor straightforwardly accumulation by dispossession (ABD). It is not PA because, although nature is enclosed as private property, PA is a dual process, constantly renewing capital and creating wage-labour (Adnan, 2015). While, in creating demand for (imported) wage-labour, the process in South-eastern Arunachal may reduce access to formerly collectively owned resources and thus threaten resilience, it does not create the landlessness/assetlessness that forces APSTs to supply themselves as wage-workers-at least not yet in the short run in these villages. ...
While the mountainous frontier regions of Arunachal have generated a literature celebrating their exceptional social diversity, less is known about Arunachal's rural political economy. Following village fieldwork in 2007 in northern districts, research in 2015 in East and South‐east Arunachal enables two aspects of agrarian transformation to be explored. First a comparison of the institutional transformation of land‐based resources between regions and over time. Second the identification of co‐existing accumulation trajectories: the forms taken by rural accumulation when the engines of capital accumulation are non‐agrarian transfers of state capital into the state and commercial capital originating outside the state, which exports profits. Since non‐Arunachali people are not allowed to own property in Arunachal, local accumulation is dominated by a socially‐segmented, multi‐tribal, rentier class, interlaced with Indian and global capital through extractions from state resources and extractive commodity exchange. The state's three roles: security, developmental and welfare, support these ethnicised accumulation trajectories.
... The scale of dispossession of farmers and other kinds of independent producers, and the use of the coercive power of the state and large corporations in these land deals, however, has revived interests in the Marxian idea of primitive accumulation as an on-going feature of capitalism (Adnan, 2015) in order to understand dispossession of different types of natural resources, including land. Partha Chatterjee, in his prelude to The Land Question in India, provides the reasons behind the contemporary relevance of the concept of primitive accumulation. ...
Review of
D’Costa, Anthony P and Achin Chakraborty, Editors, The Land Question in India: State, Dispossession and Capitalist Transition, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017
&
Kapoor, Dip, Editor, Against Colonization and Rural Dispossession: Local Resistance in South and East Asia, the Pacific and Africa, Zed Books: London
... Much has been written about the political economy of development and "land grabbing" that critics justifi ably see as the root cause of India's new land wars (Adnan 2015;Banerjee-Guha 2013;Levien 2012Levien , 2015, but in contrast to how a growing body of ethnographic work on everyday Indian politics has carefully documented the crucial role of localized life worlds and sociopolitical relations in the constitution of the political (e.g. Forbes and Michelutti 2013;Michelutti 2008;Piliavsky 2013;Shah 2013), the everyday politics of India's new land wars has to a lesser degree been subject to close ethnographic scrutiny (Levien 2012: 935). ...
The large-scale transfer of land from rural communities to private corporations has become a defining feature of India’s development trajectory. These land transfers have given rise to a multitude of new “land wars” as dispossessed groups have struggled to retain their land. Yet while much has been written about the political economy of development that underpins this new form of dispossession, the ways in which those threatened with dispossession have sought to mobilize have to a lesser extent been subject to close ethnographic scrutiny. This article argues that an “everyday politics” perspective can enhance our understanding of India’s new land wars, using a case from Singur as the starting point. The agenda is twofold. I show how everyday life domains and sociopolitical relations pertaining to caste, class, gender, and party political loyalty were crucial to the making of the Singur movement and its politics. Second, by analyzing the movement in processual terms, I show how struggles over land can be home to a multitude of political meanings and aspirations as participants seek to use new political forums to resculpt everyday sociopolitical relations.
This chapter compares and contrasts Brazilian and Indian trajectories of development in the neoliberal era. The chapter outlines the broad changes that each economy has undergone since the 1980s.
All human society produces waste matter which has no value: in the circuits of capital in production, distribution, consumption, the production of labour and the reproduction of society. Some waste matter remains without value indefinitely, and other regains value in reuse, recycling and reprocessing. India’s waste sector is one of the fastest growing in the world. This chapter analyses the livelihoods and life worlds generated by liquid and solid wastes in the circuits of capital of a small town in South India. It combines the analysis of 84 such livelihoods with four workers’ own descriptions, chosen to represent the livelihoods and life worlds of the public sector salariat, informal wage work, self-employment and petty capital. The workforce is disproportionately Dalit and Adivasi. Conditions are dangerous, and the work is extremely hard. Formal contracts prove incomplete and informal labour depends on patronage, discretion and bonding. This chapter concludes with reflections on incomes and social stigma in this sector.
Here the recent history of development of the paddy-rice sector in the rural locality, the local town, and—of late—the national and international markets is unpacked on the basis of surveys and repeated field visits from the period 1973 to 2010—with the dual aims of evaluating the social character and competence of ‘local capitalism’ and explaining how rice markets and processing come to be spatially clustered. The first objective elicits an account of the evolution of the sector’s scale and asset structures, organizational capacities, finance, technological change, social structuring, labour exploitation, branding, regulative practices and political power. The second requires exploring the paradox of dynamic change coexisting with low levels of technology.
The town (Arni) at the centre of this book reflects non-metropolitan and non-corporate ‘Middle India’ widely regarded as marginalized from twenty-first century growth processes and drivers. But re-assessments of Indian censuses (for example by the ‘Indiapolis’ project) reveals this view as misguided. Middle India is constituted through small towns in a process of ‘subaltern urbanization’ where vibrant economic growth coexists with infrastructural neglect. The informal economy of such towns is now known to drive both growth and livelihoods. Termed ‘unorganized’, economic order is achieved through a balance between selective state regulation and the play of many forms of social authority revealed in this book. Liberalization and globalization has not dissolved this regulative complex, it has increased the tension between dissolving forces and those reworking and sometimes intensifying social regulation. The dynamism of this economy is explored through a range of theoretical prisms, through field research and case studies of the business economy, labour relations, clustered development (rice, silk and gold), income, investments and material spatial flows. But dynamic forces also involve ambivalence (infrastructure, forms of regulation and livelihoods are discussed here) and destruction (commodities and changes to the family firm are taken as examples). Links between urban dynamism and rural distress are followed (through crises of water, livelihoods and consumption). An introduction to the economic and political history of the town and its countryside is also provided.
Unlike conventional economic theory, the paradigm of capitalist development contrasts peasant and capitalist production in terms of (i) the market-mediation of production and (ii) the relations of production and forms of exploitation. The structure of causation underlying the capitalist transformation of peasant production has been the object of much discussion and debate; however, there remain problems which are not entirely resolved or taken up. These have to do with the part-market economy of peasant agriculture, the complex and varying relationships between production and the market and the relative significance of market growth and class forces in propelling the process of capitalist development. The thesis aims at reconstructing some of these problems from first principles, drawing upon, in particular, the classical texts. It is argued that in peasant agriculture, production and distribution are interlinked by market and non-market sectors with specifiable properties. Such properties are compatible with different relations of production, so that the latter cannot be deduced from the former. Capitalist development, therefore, is not simply a matter of the growth of the market, nor can such change in the relations of production be adequately explained at the level of circulation processes. In fact, there are complex variations in the relationship between production and the market, manifested in distinct patterns of market participation by peasant classes. Analysis of the conditions of reproduction as a whole endows such patterns with a certain coherence and helps to identify the variable range of 'production problems' which differentiate classes of peasant producers. It is argued that capitalist production may not be undertaken either because it is not feasible, or because it is not systematically necessitated. Furthermore, the reproduction of non-capitalist producers cannot be fully explained without taking account of the relations of production, and corresponding forms of exploitation, to which they are subject. In particular, relations of production which systematically retard the generation of wage labour can constrain capitalist development because of the peculiar properties of land as a means of production. The problem, therefore, has to be posed in terms of the transformation of the pre-existing relations of production rather than choices made by individual agents/enterprises to maximize surplus or to switch to avenues with higher rates of profit. These illustrated arguments are with evidence developed in terms of a model which from Bangladesh, supplemented by that is from India. It is, however, not intended to be an empirical study of peasant production and capitalist development in Bangladesh.