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- whether or not they have control over the production process;
and more in particular, whether they, as direct producers, or .
others set to work the means (instruments) of labour;
- whether the direct producers have the unencumbered disposal
over the product of their labour or whether part of it - a surplus
- is appropriated by a group of non-producers. If so, by whom
and in what form?2
Consequently, the analysis of the social relations of production will help
us to discover whether or not the direct producers are disappropriated of
a part of their product. Whenever this is found to be the case, relations of
production are revealed as being relations of exploitation and, therefore,
as giving rise to the existence of classes and class antagonism.
At this point we shall once more take up the question of what type
of cultivators 'peasant farmers' really are, a question of delineation which,
in an early stage of the argument at the close of Chapter I, we had decided
t(> leave aside. If now, in following Ken Post, we define 'peasants' as
'cultivators... who in some way control the use of land ... and who are
incorporated into a larger society through exploitative relationships' (Post
1978: 33), we find that they are in fact designated as cultivators who are
engaged in production relations of a particular kind. This concerns the
ownership, or in this case, the possession, in one way or another, of the
principle means of production, i.e. land; it also concerns the fact that, in
the case of peasantry, a surplus is indeed appropriated by a group of nonproducers.
Not covered ts the second aspect, that regarding control over the
production process. But given Post's explicit statement that 'Crucially, their
[i.e. the peasants'] exploitation is not through the wage/surplus labour
mechanism, but by ... direct expropriation' (Ibidem: 33) a statement upon
which we also agree - it necessarily follows that in their productive pursuits
peasants are not controlled by others, but are left to their own devices.
In characterizing the social relations of peasant production,
however, these conceptual delineations can only help us to reach a first
approximation. As can be seen from the more detailed commentary that
accompanies Post's definition of 'peasants', their production relations
allow for a considerable amount of variation. In stating that they have
(some) control over the use onand, we may well have described a distinctive
feature of 'peasants', but we have left undecided whether their control over
land is through:
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