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colonial administration. In this way the reproduction of their exploitation
of the peasants has become a moment in the reproduction of another modeotproduction,-i.e.~capitalism.--~~-~
~. ---
The colonial administration sometimes intervened directly in peasant
production. In the earlier period of colonialism at least, colonial
administrations confronted the peasants in much the same way as the chiefs
had done (cf. Rodney 1972: 179-89). Other than the tributary state class,
however, the exploitive activities of the colonial administrators were not
prompted by the immediate consumption interests of themselves and their
retainers. 13 On the contrary, the administrators carried out a number of
functions on behalf of the metropolitan capitalist classes, such as:
- the protection of national interests against competition from
foreign capitalists;
- the arbitration of conflicts among their own capitalists; and
the creation of optimum conditions, including infrastructural
provisions, under which private companies could exploit
Africans (cf. Rodney 1972: 179).
Exploitation of the peasants in the colonial period, therefore, was
not so much by the metropolitan capitalist class as on their behalf: i.e. by
private trading companies that provided the link between the capitalist
world economy and the pre-( or non-)capitalist mode of production in a
colony such as the Gold Coast. This raises the question of which mode of
production came to replace the tributary mode which was superseded when
colonial power was substituted for chiefly power. In other words: how can
we characterize the mode of production within which the peasant now
carried on his productive activities?
In view of the fact that agricultural producers continued to have
guaranteed access to land, maintained their autonomy in other ways and,
at a low level of technology, produced (and still produce!) small quantities.
for exchange in the market to satisfy their needs and those oftheir families,
it seems justifiable to call this mode of production the 'petty commodity
mode of production'.
If this is correct, exploitation no longer operates within the mode
of production (by definition the petty commodity mode does not and
cannot give rise to classes and class antagonism) but between the petty
commodity 'peasant' mode a,nd the capitalist mode of production. In
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