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HI
ON THE SOClIAL RELATIONS OF PEASANT PRODUCTION
1. Productive Forces and Relations of Production to be Established
Independently
As long as we direct our attention to people who actually work, and
therefore to those who fulfil the productive tasks, i.e. to the direct producers,
we cannot at the same time get a clear picture of the social relations within
which they work. In Chapter II we studied the production process in which
Ghanaian peasants are engaged, noting the means of production, apart
from land, that they apply in growing specific crops and, accordingly, the
schedule of operations that they follow. We did this, however, without
becoming any the wiser regarding the social relations of production.
It is true that we have examined the ways in which the peasant and
his wife and others divide the work among themselves, and that this is a
social and not a technical aspect of labour. But it should be realized that
concern for the labour process - or for what is sometimes referred to as
the process of material (as contrasted with social) appropriation -leads
to analysis of the level of productive forces. And as we have asserted
elsewhere, 'the level of productive forces should not be equated with the level
oftechnology ... because both the relations of production and the productive
forces aresociaJly constituted' (Vercruijsse 1984: 16-17), more in particular
because the division of labour enters into its definition. For that reason,
any definite statement on the level to which the productive forces have
developed in a particular branch of production, such as peasant farming,
has to take the existing division of labour into account. This is generally
understood in the sense that the division oflabour is seen to have a definite
bearing on the productivity of labour.
From the above considerations it can be concluded that to accord
primacy in historical development to the level of the productive forces, as
Marx has done in his brief 1859 account of historical materialism (Marx
1975: 424-428) and as has eloquently been defined by G.A. Cohen (1978),
in no way amounts to 'technologism'. For this would mean that the level of
the productive forces is identified as the level of technology, which is
precisely the view that we have refuted.
More important, we feel, is the doubt that is thrown on this Primacy
Thesis by a conclusion that seems to invalidate one of the arguments
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