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other words, exploitation is now inherent in the unequal exchange relations
that obtain between peasant producers (who have to accept any terms of
trade) and capitalist trading companies (who dictate the terms oftrade) and,
within the colonial and neo-colonial social formations, articulate the two
modes of production. Class antagonism therefore finds its structural base
not within a mode of prodution but in the articulation between two modes.
At the same time the conditions for the reproduction of this class
relationship are the conditions for the reproduction of capitalism.
7. The Role of Chieftaincy
The first structural complication with which we have to deal is the one
arising from the fact that although the incorporation of the African
peasantry within the pre-colonial tributary mode of production was
replaced by their incorporation as petty commodity producers within
capitalist exchange relations, their exploitation by the chiefly class did not
come to an end. It is difficult to know what to make ofthe fact that in many
places chieftaincy continues to be maintained as an institution. Some
scholars treat it as a cultural survival, as a remnant of the past, i.e. as a
feature that is still there although it has lost its (real) function. When asked
why chieftaincy still survives they reply that the 'people' do not want to give
it up. Apart from the fact that this is really 'having it both ways', a serious
social scientist cannot have recourse to a 'genuine will' or 'popular desire'
in order to explain the existence or non-existence of a particular institution
or structure. Moreover, in many areas the chieftaincy is far from being an
element of 'folklore', an ornament. It is true that the basis of chiefly power,
i.e. the obligation to perform military service on which the subject's claim
to a piece of the chief's land was based, has fallen away and that its locus
is now to be found in the power ofthe national neo-colonial governments,
but even on this 'borrowed' power the chiefs continue to claim and to receive
contributions from their subjects. They are known to earn considerable
incomes by alienating or letting parts ofthe state/village territory; they also
claim yearly payments from lower chiefs and in some places continue to
require labour services. Some Dagomba chiefs are successful farmers,
cultivating sizable farms with the help of weekly labour services provided
by all able men.
But if chieftaincy is not a dead or even dying institution, has the
tributary mode of production entirely vanished? Has the exploitation
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