The Agrarian Question in Socialist Transitions
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threatening the rest of the private sector, was especially conducive to this solution. None the less, the experience of post-reform agriculture in a number of socialist countries indicates that this is in practice the best way of articulating such disparate forms of production. Third, that the process of capitalist agricultural development does generate a large proletariat, even though it is disguised in the form of impoverished peasantry. This means that the agrarian reform can proceed in socialised production forms in the 'capitalist' sector without direct peasant owner-ship of land. It is true that in the Nicaraguan case, the relatively high land endowment per head reduced this pressure, but it is also important not to overestimate the 'peasant' nature of agriculture in Latin America [Goodman andRedclift, 1981], because this tends to lead to agrarian reform proposals which ignore the inevitable role of agriculture as the base of the national accumulation model in almost all underdeveloped economies in transition. Fourth, that in the case of Nicaragua, this logic has probably been carried too far. In implementing a project to eliminate the exploitative relation-ship between capitalist export agriculture and the peasantry (cheap labour and cheap food) by establishing a stable rural proletariat and secure food supplies, the revolutionary state has effectively undermined the remaining peasant economy without providing a coherent alternative. This has produced a new contradiction in the agrarian development model proposed for the rest of the century, when the revolution not only depends upon the mountain peasantry for defence against external aggression but also for food supplies during the transitional accumulation period. A successful agrarian accumulation model, above all during the tran-sition, must provide for an adequate articulation of distinct forms of pro-duction as part of the process of rural transformation.
subsistence production (where in the colonial period mainly extra-economic factors such as forced cultivation or forced labour caused the integration of the peasantry in the market exchange). Socialist development was there-fore strongly identified with modernising through the rapid expansion of the state sector, that is, nationalisation and mechanisation on an ever-increasing scale. The peasantry would be gradually absorbed within this expanding sector, and hence, at first, the role of the peasantry was seen as essentially passive with its transformation mainly centring on social aspects. As such, the policy of communal villages became virtually a habitational concept (and was in actual fact the responsibility of the national directorate of housing): a question of social infrastructures (water supplies, schools, etc.) within a concept of communal life without concerning production and its transformation. This view conflicted heavily with the objective conditions in the rural areas characterised by a deep involvement of the peasantry in market relationships and their dependence on it either as suppliers of labour power or as cash crop producers. This contradiction became more obvious, when the balance of payments became a real constraint (in 1979) and, hence, the question of financing accumulation cropped up more strongly in practice. The peasantry as suppliers of cash crops, of food and of labour power to the state sectors occupied a crucial position in production and accumulation. However, the crucial question then becomes whether the peasantry only performs the role of supplying part of the accumulation fund or whether the peasantry itself is part and parcel of the process of transformation and hence that accumulation embraces as an integral part the transformation of peasant agriculture into more socialised forms of production. In other words, it poses the question whether the strategy is based on a primitive socialist accumulation on the basis of the peasantry (transferring the agrarian surplus to the develop-ment of the state sector), or whether accumulation includes the transformation of peasant agriculture. Clearly, the way this question is posed in practice will influence heavily the nature of the organisation of the exchange between the state sector and the peasantry. The proposition that the state sector can develop under its own steam (with or without the aid of external borrowing) cannot bypass this crucial question since, on the one hand, a considerable part of foreign exchange earnings and of the food supply to the towns depended on peasant production and, on the other, the very conditions of productivity and profitability in the agrarian state sector depended heavily on the organic link that existed.between labour supply and family agriculture. The monetary disequilibrium originating from the state sector has a severe impact on the organisation of the exchange between the state sector and the peasantry. First, the imbalance between the demand for and the supply of consumer commodities affected rural areas differently from urban areas. The reason was that in urban areas the rationing system guaranteed to each family a minimum quantity of basic consumer necessities at official prices. In the rural areas the principal form of rationing remained the queue! Hence, forced savings were distributed differently over urban and rural areas. Furthermore, the concentration of resources on the state sector also implied that the peasants'
levels which normally oscillated between 80,000 and 100,000 per year, and which in 1975 had soared up to 118,000 workers, were sharply reduced to 40,000 thereafter [First, 1982]. This mainly affected the southern part of Mozambique by creating massive rural unemployment. The towns had no capacity to absorb this surplus labour since employment was drastically re-duced in the towns as well. The latter process was due to the fall in employ-ment in domestic work (servants) and in the tourist sector (restaurants, hotels, bars, etc.). The exodus of Portuguese settlers and the virtual standstill of tourism (which catered for South Africans and Rhodesians) had amplified the problem of structural employment in the towns. The rural unemployed could not merely fall back on family agriculture since this was heavily dependent on cash income from wage work. Oxen and ploughs, farm implements, water reserves, etc. were normally paid for with wages from mine labour or other wage work. Furthermore, due to this cash inflow from wage income, a more interactive type of division of labour developed within the rural areas of southern Mozambique. Hence, peasants without oxen and plough would rent the services of peasants who did, and pay for it out of wage income. Brick-makers, carpenters, house-builders, tailors, mechanics were to be found among the middle peasantry who relied on these activities (usually acquired through mine labour) to supplement their income from farming. In a similar fashion, local transport and petty com-merce were sidelines of middle peasants stabilised by the influx of wage income. The reduction in mine labour employment deeply affected the viability of this internal division of labour within the rural economy. Finally, the impact of the reduction in mine labour was not evenly spread among the peasantry, since only those who held valid work certificates from the recruitment agency could continue to go to the mines. Other peasants were cut off altogether. This introduced a sharp element of differentiation within the rural econonmy. Those who could continued to go to the mines not only had cash income but also a guaranteed access to commodities (including means of production), while within Mozambique shortages were rapidly turning into a goods famine. However, rural unemployment was not merely a phenomena of the south. In central Mozambique, wage work to Rhodesia dropped sharply with the closure of the border between Mozambique and Rhodesia since 1976, and as a result of the war situation which developed thereafter. As stated in above, the concentration of resources on the state sector further weakened the basis of family agriculture at a time when a considerable part of its cash income through wage labour was cut off. While the colonial situ-ation was characterised by persistent labour shortages within the rural economy and continued state intervention to keep labour cheap (through the imposition of forced labour and forced cultivation of crops as well as by fragmentation of labour markets to avoid competition for labour to drive up the wage levels), the post-independence situation became characterised by rural unemployment and an intensified flow of people from the rural areas to the towns in search of wage work. The priority accorded to investments led to the slow expansion in the supply of consumer goods and in 1981 it actually fell by eight per cent: six per cent
decolonisation in Africa since the latter generally implied that a compromise between the colonial power and the nationalist movement(s) is worked out in a constitutional conference which not only shaped the political system of the new post-colonial state, but also worked out the economic and financial obligations and arrangements of the new state vis-a-vis its previous colonial power. Frelimo's position that the Lusaka conference could only discuss the conditions of the transfer of power and not the content of the new power was accepted in the end by the Portuguese delegation. Furthermore, no agreements were made with respect to financial and economic ties as a carry-over from the colonial period. The concrete mechanism of the transfer of power was to take place through the immediate instalment of a transitional government in which Frelimo was the majority partner with Portuguese officials as the only remaining other partner. The immediate response to the agreements was the aborted attempt on the part of section of the settler population to seize power by means of Rhodesia-type unilateral declaration of independence. The period of the transitional government (up to independence in June 1975) and roughly the first two years after independence were characterised by the massive emigration of the settler population accompanied by an intense struggle waged by the colonial bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in an attempt to destabilise the economy as well as to export most of its capital (in whatever form). Hence economic sabotage in its various forms - destruction of equipment, and economic infrastructure; killing of cattle stock; large-scale dismissal of workers from productive enterprises and complete production standstills - were practised on a large scale all over the country. The export of capital also assumed enormous proportions and took various forms: the collapse of the (colonial) state apparatus and the fact that banks were privately owned meant that it was easy to arrange for acquiring foreign exchange to import goods without any imports subsequently materialising, or to export cashew, cotton, etc., without the foreign exchange ever returning to the national bank; furthermore, initially no control was organised over the export of personal belongings of returning settlers which led to massive buying in shops and depletion of stock of commodities; finally, the direct illegal exportation across the borders to South Africa and Rhodesia of trucks, tractors, equipment, cattle, etc., further depleted the available means of production in the country. With this context economic policy was dictated by the necessity to fight against the destabilisation of the economy propelled by the actions of the colonial bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie (as well as of skilled and admin-istrative workers). The legal weapon was a decree of February 1975 which specified that in proven cases of acts of sabotage (which included the massive dismissal of workers and deliberate production stoppages) the government could intervene by transferring the management of the enterprise to an appointed administrative council composed of workers and often members of the old management as well. The social force which concretised this policy were the dynamising groups - popular organisations of militants which were constituted at community level as well as in enterprises, public institutions and government administrations. The outcome of this intense struggle was a sharp production crisis which
enterprises are bound to gravitate towards the big cities and the need for marketed surplus beyond that obtainable from the state farms would re-inforce the already existent pattern of extreme concentration of modern inputs in the few agriculturally developed regions of the country. Fourth, it is unlikely to generate the order of urban employment that is required over the plan period. This failure has various ramifications. For one, un-employment would probably become increasingly worse in the smaller towns or else, the migration into the prime cities from other smaller urban centres would increase without, of course, affecting the overall employment outcome. For another, this would mean an exacerbatian of the social costs of such urbanisation, manifest in the forms of an expanding urban lumpenproletariat, prostitution, and begging. Clearly, none of these phenomena should have an extended life in a socialist system. Furthermore, such unemployment would undermine the utility of the rationing system which would fail to reach this needy class on account of their exchange entitlement failure. To meet the distributional objectives, therefore, it would become necessary to rely increasingly on institutional devices of income sharing as a strategic rather than purely tactical option. Case C: An Alternative This offers an alternative strategic framework for a revised DTYP. The central principle underlying this concerns what is adopted as a trinity of objectives, namely, growth, distributional equity, and grassroots participating institutions. The earlier cases are crucially dependent upon an extended circular flow of investible resources extracted from agriculture and invested in industry and related sectors in the form of large projects. This involves little direct participation on the part of the savers and investments occur largely outside the units or sectors from which resources are extracted. Inevitably, aggregate domestic investments would depend upon the open and hidden contributions of peasant agriculture which would also remain a net contributor or loser in resource terms. It is arguable that this type of investment process is unsuited to an economy like Ethiopia where the level of available investible surplus is low and scattered in small denominations, where the degree of economic fragmentation is extreme, and where even the relatively well-developed centre is unlikely to be able to bear the burden imposed upon it. In addition, this strategy is unmindful of harnessing for productive purposes those investible rural resources which are not extractable and therefore not useable through the centralised and dichotomous investment process mentioned above. The collective framework, that is, Case C, takes the relative emphasis away from major industrial investments and places it on investments within the rural sector. The industrial shift involves the locational, size, product and technology dimensions, making the sector less import-intensive and more labour-intensive. Thus, even if the scale of investment was to be lowered, there might be few net losses (in GDP terms) to output, and perhaps even a net gain in terms of intermediate-level skill creation, as well as in direct and indirect employment generated. This would ease the urban poverty
in mid-1982. Data are scarce in Ethiopia and, even when available, are not always reliable. Caution is necessary, therefore, in interpreting the data. In view of this, this study does not aim to be empirical in the strict sense of the term and uses carefully selected data mainly for illustrative purposes. The article is organised as follows. In the second section, the structural changes that have already occurred since 1974, the transitional forms which have emerged as a result of the changes and the growth experience of this period, are discussed. In the third section, the economic logic of transition to a collective agriculture is examined. In the fourth section, the government's programme of co-operativisation is outlined and its major weaknesses are highlighted. In the fifth section, the problem of integrating a growth strategy with a strategy of institutional transformation is addressed.
The Distributional Dimensions of Revolutionary Transition: Ethiopia
