Capital & Class. - 1981. - Issue 15
description
Transcript of Capital & Class. - 1981. - Issue 15
-
Behind
the
News
EL SALVADOR
Jenny Pearce
In January 1981 the Farabundo Marti Forces of National
Liberation (FMLN) launched a major offensive . The five main
guerrilla organisations which make up the FMLN mounted opera-
tions throughout two-thirds of El Salvador and carried out
assaults on the barracks in most towns and villages. But the
offensive failed to bring the Junta to its knees and create the
`irreversible situation' which would have forced newly installed
President Reagan to accept negotiations . In reaction to the
offensive, the new US administration announced that El Salvador
was to become a test case of the new tough line policies aimed at
countering `Soviet and Cuban aggression' in the Third World. El
Salvador, only slightly larger than Wales, became major news at
this point and has regularly caught the headlines since .
The despatch of arms and advisors was followed by a diplo-
matic offensive designed to swing the NATO allies behind US
policy. But the campaign merely succeeded in highlighting divis-
ions among the allies as most West European governments refused
to back a regime whose bloody terror tactics were now television
news. During September there was a major new development as
France and Mexico recognised the FMLN as a `representative
political force' . Within El Salvador the military struggle continues
-there is no prospect of immediate victory . The possibility of
direct US intervention remains and the need for sustaining an
effective solidarity campaign has never been clearer.
The Structure The root of the class struggle within El Salvador lies with the
of Exploitation structure of land-ownership, which was consolidated at the end of
the nineteenth century . In the early 1880s a Liberal government
representing the interests of the coffee planters abolished com-
munal forms of land ownership and established private property
as the only legally recognised form of land tenure . The objective
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6 CAPITAL AND CLASS
was to pave the way for full introduction of commercial agri-
culture and expanding production of coffee for export . In subse-
quent years, and especially in the fertile central highlands, the
communal lands of El Salvador's Indian and ladino (mixed Indian
and white) population were sold off at rock bottom prices . The
buyers were moneylenders and urban upper-class families who had
the capital to sit out the five years before the coffee tree gives
its first harvest. The decrees abolishing communal land-holding
were followed by vagrancy laws and other legislation designed to
create a disciplined labour force out of the dispossessed peasants .
Through this process, landownership in El Salvador became
highly concentrated in the hands of a narrow social group which
at one time was estimated to consist of just 14 families . Today
the figure is nearer 200, but an estimated 2 per cent of the popu-
lation still own 60 per cent of the land . The power of the coffee
planters grew as coffee became the country's main income earner
and they established their own banks. By 1931 coffee accounted
for 95 .5 per cent of all exports . [ 1 ] Initially pre-capitalist rela-
tions of production predominated in the rural sector . Evicted
peasants were frequently given a small subsistence plot in return
for their labour on the estate or finca . But many of these
peasants, known as colonos, began to lose their plots as planters
took them over to make way for further coffee production . This
led to the growth of a class of landless seasonal wage labourers on
the estates . This was particularly pronounced in the Western
growing areas which, in turn, became the centre of the peasant
uprising of 1932 .
The trade union movement in El Salvador had begun to grow
in the 1920s and in 1930 leaders of many local unions came
together to form the Salvadorean Communist Party (PCS) .
Among them was Agustin Farabundo Marti who had just returned
from Nicaragua where he had been fighting the US marines along-
side Sandino . The 1929 world crisis had hit El Salvador's vulner-
able dependent economy hard as coffee prices fell . Wage cuts and
increased unemployment contributed to growing unrest and 1930
saw 80,000 peasants and workers on the march in San Salvador .
Then, in January 1932, President Hernandez Martinez refused to
recognise the victories of the PCS in municipal and legislative
elections. The PCS called for an insurrection . But just before it
was due to take place, Marti and the other leaders were arrested .
The uprising met with brutal repression, an estimated 30,000
peasants were killed in the matanza.[2] The oligarchy never for-
got this challenge to their power . They forged a close alliance
with the military who since 1931 have occupied the presidency
and key political posts in the government. After the uprising rural
trade unions and agrarian leagues were made illegal and since then
an elaborate apparatus of repression has been maintained. Today,
apart from the army itself, it embraces three paramilitary organis-
ations: the National Guard, the Treasury Police and the National
Police .
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BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
7
In the 1940s fractions emerged within the oligarchy which
saw the need to diversify the economy . In 1950, Colonel Oscar
Osario became President and introduced a programme aimed at
modernisation . Under this the state was expected to play a much
greater role in economic life than before, channelling the surplus
created by the post-war coffee boom into industry, on the under-
standing that the system of landownership, the basis of the olig-
archy's wealth, was not to be touched . A government office was
set up to develop commerce, industry and mining ; new taxes on
coffee exports were introduced ; and modern infrastructure was
built, including a new Pacific Coast Highway designed to open up
land suitable for cotton production . Industrialisation really took
off in the 1960s with the formation of the Central American
Common Market (CACM) in 1961 . The CACM had been pro-
moted by the United States who saw new opportunities for
investment as well as a way of encouraging economic growth in
Central America without changes in socio-economic structures, ie .
by forging a market out of the consumer elites of the region
rather than creating internal markets within individual countries
through a redistribution of wealth . [ 3 ] The growth of manu-
facturing industry in El Salvador was accompanied by increased
US investment in the most dynamic sectors . e g. food processing,
textiles, pharmaceuticals, petroleum and paper products . [4]
Much of this investment took the form of joint ventures with the
local bourgeoisie .
A study in 1969 suggested that three groups had begun to
emerge within the oligarchy by this time [51 : the planters who
continued to base their wealth primarily on commercial agricult-
ure, diversifying their interests into cotton and sugar cane in the
1950s and 1960s, and maintaining strong interests in the banking
sector [6] ; a mixed group kept interests in the land but in the
1960s had begun to invest in manufacturing industry, frequently
in joint ventures with American capital (among this group is the
De Sola family, the country's largest coffee exporters) ; a third
group, the merchants, were mostly involved in manufacturing and
retailing . The latter two groups were those most willing to accept
`economic modernisation' including an expansion of the internal
market through a limited agrarian reform and some degree of
political liberalisation . Evidence suggests however that they
lacked the power to push through such reform. In 1976, the
government of General Molina, strongly backed by the United
States, tried to introduce an agrarian reform which would have
affected only 4 per cent of the country's land and have amply
compensated the landowners concerned . The reform was violent-
ly opposed by the most reactionary sectors of the oligarchy who
successfully mobilised their association, ANEP (National Asso-
ciation of Private Enterprise) and a newly-formed body, FARO
(Eastern Region Farmers' Front) as well as their allies in the
armed forces against the reform . The reform was shelved and the
right wing of the oligarchy secured their candidate, General
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8The
Resurgence of
Popular
Opposition
CAPITAL AND CLASS
Carlos Humberto Romero, for the presidency in 1977 .
A number of changes had occurred in the rural sector by this
time. In the 1950s and 1960s the growth of cotton production in
particular had led to the displacement of more peasants from the
land. The cotton plantations are highly mechanised and require
only a small resident labour force and temporary seasonal labour .
The number of colono plots dropped dramatically from 55,000 in
1961 to 17,000 in 1971,[7] and as a result of population growth
and evictions the number of landless peasants increased sharply .
In 1961 11 .8 per cent of the rural population were landless ; by
1975 the figure was 40 .9 per cent and by 1980 an estimated 65
per cent of the rural population were in this position .[8] The oli-
garchy can thus draw on an abundant supply of cheap labour
during the key months of November, December and January . At
other times of the year unemployment ranges between 50 per
cent and 80 per cent . Paralleling the long run decline of the
colono plots there has been an increase in the number of rented
farms. But 98 per cent of renting involves holdings of less than
five hectares and eroded and infertile land . These farms are in-
capable of producing even the bare minimum required for subsist-
ence. This process of proletarianisation of the Salvadorean
peasantry would give a major impetus to the growth of the mass
popular organisations in the 1970s . Until 1969 the pressures on
the land were partially relieved by migration to neighbouring
Honduras. But following a war between the two countries, that
was no longer possible . Many peasants migrated to the cities, but
industrialisation did not provide sufficient jobs to absorb the flow
of migrants. Although the ILO estimated in 1978 that a not in-
considerable 14 .2 per cent of the economically active population
of 1.3 million were employed in manufacturing industry, most of
those in the urban areas survive by finding casual work in the
swollen service sector .
The first significant political challenge to the power of the oli-
garchy since 1932 came in the 1960s as a result of the growth of
an industrial working class and a middle class of professionals . In
1960 the Christian Democrat Party (PDC) was formed putting
forward a programme of `national development' and reform . In
1964 its leader, Jose Napoleon Duarte, became mayor of San
Salvador and by 1968 the party had won 19 seats in the national
assembly . The social democrat, National Revolutionary Move-
ment (MNR) officially came into existence in 1968 . It was a small
party of intellectuals and professionals . It was followed by the
formation of the National Democratic Union (UDN) which re-
presented the politics of the banned Communist Party . These
parties centred their activities on the electoral process, reaching
their peak in 1972 when they formed an alliance, the National
Opposition Union (UNO) which would have won the elections
but for blatant electoral fraud .
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BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
9
The Catholic church and the PDC had begun to encourage
rural workers' associations in the late 1960s and the Federation
of Christian Peasants (FECCAS) was formed at this time . A re-
surgence in peasant organisation and militancy was particularly
feared by the oligarchy and their response was to establish the
rural vigilante organisation ORDEN, with United States help in
1968.[9] Linked to the Ministry of Defence and controlled by
the Army, its function was to terrorise those suspected of sup-
porting the radical peasant organisations. It was made up mostly
of peasants who were granted certain privileges such as credit
facilities, school places e tc . i n return for their services in identi-
fying and eliminating `subversives' . By the early 1970s there was a
network of such informers in most villages ; an estimated 10,000
people belonged to its militia and there were up to 100,000
collaborators .
Nevertheless, the workers, peasant and student movement be-
came increasingly militant in the 1970s. As the parliamentary
road of the reformist parties became increasingly irrelevant, dis-
illusioned members of these parties began to form guerrilla organ-
isations . In April 1970, Cayetano Carpio, secretary-general of the
Salvadorean Communist Party (PCS), left the party `when it be-
came evident that it wasn't possible to get the Party to under-
stand the need for a political-military strategy and this had to be
demonstrated to our people in practice .'[10] Carpio founded the
Farabundo Marti People's Liberation Forces (FPL) which rejected
the foco theory of guerrilla warfare of the 1960s and instead ad-
vocated prolonged popular war and the need `for a political van-
guard organised as a Party' and `led by the working class in
alliance with the peasants' .[ 111 The Popular Revolutionary Army
(ERP) was formed in 1971 by former members of the PDC . The
ERP is considered the most militaristic of the guerrilla organis-
ations and in the beginning at least, the most focista . Today it is
arguably the most efficient fighting force but in 1975 its
emphasis on the military struggle led to bitter internal conflict
during which a new organisation, the Armed Forces of National
Resistance (FARN) split from the ERP putting forward the need
for military and political struggle with the aim of preparing for a
mass insurrection .
In addition to the guerrilla organisations, a new type of mass
political movement developed in El Salvador in the mid-1970s,
the broad fronts of popular organisations . The United Popular
Action Front (FAPU) was formed in September 1974. It drew its
support mainly from urban workers and students and gained con-
trol of the country's largest left-wing union confederation,
FENESTRAS (Federacion Nacional y Sindical de Trabajadores)
which included one of the most powerful unions in El Salvador,
the electrical workers union, STCEL . [ 12 ] The Popular Revolu-
tionary Bloc (BPR) was formed on 30 June 1975 following a
series of massacres of peasants and students . It grew into the
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10
GUATEMALA
CAPITAL AND CLASS
largest of the mass organisations and includes amongst its affil-
iates the most important peasant unions, FECCAS and the Farm
workers' union, UTC. Its main base is amongst the peasantry and
in the student sector but it has also won support amongst new
unions in the textile, light manufacturing and public sector,
particularly the teachers.
Both the BPR and FAPU claim to be Marxist-Leninist. FAPU
emphasises the anti-fascist nature of the struggle and has called
for an alliance with all democratic and popular forces. Its willing-
ness to enter into alliances with anti-fascist sectors of the bour-
geoisie has led to accusations from the BPR that it is ready to
capitulate to `the positions of right-wing revisionism and to pre-
vent the masses forming a clear revolutionary alternative'.[ 131 In
contrast the BPR has called for a revolutionary socialist govern-
ment under the hegemony of the working class in alliance with
the peasantry, an alliance which would draw round it the other
advanced members of the petite-bourgeoisie. Both the BRP and
FAPU based their activities on mass mobilisation, factory occu-
pations, strikes, marches and land seizures. They also linked up
with the military organisations: the BPR with the FPL and FAPU
with FARN. In this way they were able to combine open mass
work with military action. The former was extremely vulnerable
to repression, but through it the mass organisations were able to
develop a firm base within the working class and peasantry which
75
Pacific Ocean
The FMLN's zones of control shaded in gray.
MILE$
HONDURAS
Sonlo Ana
a
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BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR 11
represented a real challenge to the reformist strategies pursued by
the political parties . Within a remarkably short period of time
they proved capable of mobilising many thousands of people . In
February 1978, the ERP also recognised the necessity of linking
up with the mass movement and set up the Popular Leagues, 28
February (LP-28) .
The ruthlessness of the oligarchy intensified as the popular
movement grew. In the mid-1970s death squads were formed
such as the Armed Forces of Liberation-War of Elimination
(FALANGE) and the White Warriors Union (UGB) . These
organisations began to terrorise the population, kidnapping,
torturing and murdering anyone suspected of sympathy for the
popular movement . Under the repressive government of General
Romero, who was linked to the most hardline sectors of the
army, the country edged nearer to civil war . The United States,
shaken by the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in July 1979,
hastily and unsuccessfully tried to persuade Romero to agree to
relax the repression and introduce minimum reforms . Then in
October 1979 a group of young army officers overthrew Romero
announcing a programme of reform .
The October
The coup suited the United States very well . It both removed the
Junta and its
obstinate Romero and at least initially, confused and divided the
Successors left. It is now clear that although younger, more progressive
officers were responsible for carrying out the coup, the right wing
in the army never lost control . The officers behind the coup had
formed the Permanent Council of the Armed Forces (COPEFA)
and chose Colonel Adolfo Majano as their representative on the
Junta. Their second choice was Colonel Guerra y Guerra .
Although accepting Majano the United States opposed the latter
choice and instead insisted on two other names : Colonel Jose
Garcia (who became Minister of Defence) and Colonel Jaime
Gutierrez (who joined the Junta), both hardliners with close links
to the United States. Over 90 per cent of the officers who head
the Salvadorean army attend El Salvador's military academy and
within this each one comes from a graduating school or tanda .
Loyalty to the tanda is generally much greater than to the institu-
tion of the armed forces itself . Both Garcia and Gutierrez were in
the same tanda and codes of seniority and loyalty helped them
consolidate their power over the younger officers who carried out
the coup. COPEFA was rapidly reorganised once they were in
power to favour the supporters of Garcia .
But although the right wing of the army soon gained control
of the situation, the initial promises of reform in the younger
officers' proclamation had encouraged the reformist politicians of
the MNR, a sector of the PDC and the UDN to join the Junta . It
rapidly became apparent however, that the reformist members of
the Junta had neither the power to push through the reforms or
halt the escalation of repression which followed the coup . The
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12 CAPITAL AND CLASS
civilian death toll in the first two weeks of the Junta exceeded
the number in the first nine-and-a-half months of the Romero
government. After some initial confusion over how to characterise
the Junta, the popular organisations began to unite in opposition
to it. They occupied churches, government buildings and factories
and organised mass demonstrations .
In December 1980 the reformist members of the Junta issued
an ultimatum to the armed forces, requesting that they submit
themselves to the authority of the Junta and accept a dialogue
with the popular organisations. The failure to secure the request
forced the reformists in the Junta to resignen masse in the first
three days of January 1980 .
The United States and El Salvador
Although the United States was not directly responsible for the
October coup, it had had a decisive influence on its outcome and
US involvement in the country began to escalate from that date .
The United States does not have strong economic interests in El
Salvador. The banana companies did not penetrate the Salva-
dorean economy at the beginning of the twentieth century as
elsewhere in Central America, and present-day US investment in
El Salvador is relatively small . The importance of El Salvador to
the United States lies more in its geopolitical position in a region
which the United States has traditionally considered its exclusive
sphere of influence .
The United States has a history of intervention throughout
the Caribbean basin, both direct and indirect, and has gone to in-
ordinate lengths to preserve its hegemony there. While strategic
concerns due to the region's proximity to the United States may
come first, there is also the importance of oil production in
Mexico, Venezuela, Trinidad and more recently, Guatemala . The
Caribbean is an important oil refining and transshipment area ;
vital sea lanes carry essential raw materials from Latin America
and Africa to the United States ; and the region itself supplies the
United States with many important minerals and is a focus for US
overseas investment . Mexico in particular is of vital importance to
the United States.
The United States has developed a variety of strategies for
maintaining its domination in Central America. Since the Cuban
revolution, many of its efforts have concentrated on building up
the region's armed forces to deal with `internal subversion'. This
has involved military assistance programmes and training in
counter-insurgency in US army schools, particularly the School of
the Americas in Panama . Between 1950 and 1976 a total of
17,578 Central American military personnel received US training .
In 1964 the United States sponsored the establishment of the
Central American Defence Council (CONDECA), to coordinate
action against social unrest . It involved the armies of Nicaragua,
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Although the overthrow
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BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
13
of Somoza and the destruction of his National Guard, previously
the backbone of the alliance, signalled its virtual collapse,
CONDECA has left a lasting tradition of cooperation between the
right wing armies of the region .
Apart from strengthening the local apparatus of repression,
the United States has intermittently pursued strategies of
`modernisation' and reform intended to forestall revolutionary
change in the region. This was the essence of the Alliance for Pro-
gress which was initiated in 1961 to promote `reform from above'
to prevent `revolution from below' in Latin America. A new
version of this strategy was introduced by the Carter Adminis-
tration under the influence of the 'accommodationist' strategies
of the Trilateral Commission, the powerful think tank set up by
David Rockefeller in 1973 . Under Carter the United States
initially attempted to promote human rights and gradual change
in Latin America to preserve stability in the region . But follow-
ing the Nicaraguan and Grenadan revolutions in 1979 this strate-
gy was considerably modified as the right began to accuse the
Administration of ignoring America's vital national security
interests . In his last year of office Carter was to pursue a strategy
which would combine `reform from above' with increasing levels
of repression against those who demanded real change and social
justice in the region . This was the favoured recipe in El Salvador :
on the one hand, support for reforms designed to modernise the
economy and encourage the economic and political participation
of the `middle sectors'-on the other, repression to crush the
popular movement .
The United States at first tried to persuade the oligarchy to
accept such a programme for stemming the tide of revolution, but
soon found that El Salvador's ruling families were only interested
in part two of the plan : extermination of the opposition . As
ORDEN was reorganised and the activities of the right-wing death
squads increased, the United States was forced to come to terms
with the fact that it would have to rely on the military if even
minimal reforms were to be put into practice . Attracted by un-
precedented opportunities for wealth and power, significant
sections of the armed forces now abandoned their traditional sub-
servience to the oligarchy, held off attempts by the extreme right
to organise a coup and agreed to carry out the reforms drawn up
by the United States. It is from this period that the United
States' propaganda claims to be supporting the `moderate centre'
in El Salvador date. It needs to be constantly remembered, how-
ever, that from the first Washington was aware of and remained
silent about the savagery of the armed forces and that, in addition,
the strategy advanced was always a mix of minimum reform and
maximum repression of the popular opposition . Thus even under
the Carter administration the United States was sending signals to
the oligarchy and the armed forces emphasising its concern for
restoration of `law and order', while turning a mask of moder-
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14
CAPITAL AND CLASS
ation towards the wider international arena .
The Myth of Agrarian Reform
In March 1980 a new Junta was formed by the right-wing rump
of the Christian Democrat Party, led by Jose Napoleon Duarte,
and the armed forces. Agrarian reform, nationalisation of the
banks and state control of foreign trade was announced . At the
same time a state of seige was declared . The announcement of
these reforms was accompanied by a dramatic escalation of the
repression. New levels of brutality were reached and mutilated
corpses were now discovered daily . The death toll for March ex-
ceeded that of the previous two months combined and included
the assasination of Archbishop Romero, an outspoken and highly
respected critic of the government .
Many of the deaths accompanied the implementation of the
agrarian reform . The only stage of this reform to be carried out is
the first phase which affected the largest estates over 500
hectares, representing only 15 per cent of the country's arable
land. This did not include the main export crops and the back-
bone of the oligarchy's power ; the coffee fincas for instance are
mostly on smaller size holdings. The reform was directed at the
most unintensively farmed estates where the landlords were
mostly absentee . Subsequently, cooperatives have been formed
out of the estates, but mostly run by the former managers of the
estate rather than the poor colonos who worked them. The
second stage of the reform which would have hit the oligarchy's
power base has never been implemented, and the final stage,
decree 207, designed to give titles to tenant farmers and `breed
capitalists like rabbits' as one US official put it, has led to the dis-
tribution of less than 1,000 titles. The 65 per cent of the rural
population who are landless were never included in the agrarian
reform programme.
Throughout 1980 Colonels Garcia and Gutierrez were con-
solidating their power within the armed forces and the govern-
ment. In May, Garcia announced that Gutierrez would in future
command the armed forces alone. This demotion of Majano
marked the demise of the most progressive military influence in
the armed forces. Many of his supporters within the army were
sent abroad and in December 1980 he was finally ousted from the
Junta .
The Frente 1980 saw the eclipse of the progressive current in the military and
Democratico the ascendance of the hardliners . But it also brought growing
Revolutionario unity amongst the opposition forces . In January the Revolution-
Programme
ary Coordinating Council of the Masses (CRM) was formed by all
the popular organisations and the PCS which also now took up
the armed struggle. In April, the Democratic Revolutionary Front
(FDR) came into existence, consisting of the CRM, the MNR, the
Popular Social Christian Movement (those members of the
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BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
15
Christian Democrat Party who had split from it in March 1980)
and the Democratic Front (FD) of trade unions, professional
organisations and small business groups .
The platform of the FDR is anti-imperialist, anti-oligarchic
and anti-monopolistic, aiming to `transfer to the people, through
nationalisations and the creation of collective and socialised
enterprises : the fundamental means of production and distrib-
ution that are now hoarded by the oligarchy and the US mono-
polies, the land held in the power of the big landlords, the enter-
prises that produce and distribute electricity and other mono-
polised services, foreign trade, banking and large transportation
enterprises. None of this will affect small or medium-sized private
business which will be given every kind of stimulus and support
in the various branches of the national economy .'[14]
The programme abandons the objective of a `revolutionary
socialist government under the hegemony of the workers in
alliance with the peasantry' which was previously the platform of
the largest of the popular organisations . Instead it states that
`the decisive task of the revolution on which completion of all its
objectives depends is the conquest of power and the installation
of a democratic revolutionary movement . . .made up of repres-
entatives of the revolutionary and people's movement, as well
as of the democratic parties, of organisations, sectors and individ-
uals who are willing to participate in the carrying out of this
programmatic platform' . This programme, not unlike that of the
Sandinista government in Nicaragua, is one that enables the FDR
to attract important external support from the European social
democrat movement and the Mexican government . Both recog-
nise that the only possibility for long term stability in the region
lies with the destruction of the oligarchies and dictators which
dominate it, and are also concerned to strengthen the `moderate',
pro-'mixed economy' sectors of the FDR . The importance of this
external support to the FMLN gives the reformist parties consid-
erably more prominence in the FDR alliance than their social
base would in fact merit .
It is difficult to assess the present political objectives of the
revolutionary organisations as the differences between them, and
within their alliance with the petit-bourgeois reformist organis-
ations, have been suppressed as the military aspects of the
struggle have taken priority . But contradictions clearly exist
between the reformist sectors of the alliance who seek to estab-
lish a radical, nationalist petit-bourgeois government and those
tendencies within the revolutionary organisations who demand a
genuine socialist transformation . The potential for such trans-
formation is greater in El Salvador than in neighbouring Nicar-
agua, where sectors of the bourgeoisie joined the struggle to over-
throw the dictator Somoza, and class struggle only came to the
forefront after the Sandinista victory . But it still depends on a
number of contingent factors, such as the strength of the Marxist
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16
CAPITAL AND CLASS
tendencies within the revolutionary organisations, the growth of
independent worker and peasant organisation, the achievement of
a military victory rather than a negotiated settlement, the devel-
opment of the struggle throughout Central America as a whole,
and - of course - the role of US imperialism . As well as the
creation of the political alliance during 1980, similar moves were
made on the military front . Increased cooperation between the
five guerrilla organisations eventually led to the formation of the
FMLN in October. Throughout 1980 the guerrilla organisations
were able to strengthen their positions, build up support, train
new recruits and carry out mostly scattered military actions .
The FDR organised civil disobedience and strikes in the towns .
But not only did the FMLN have to train and organise its recruits
in a very short space of time, the growth of the opposition was
met by an escalation of repression which the Legal Aid Office of
the Archbishopric of San Salvador described at the end of the
year as `systematic genocide' . 13,000 people were killed during
1980. Despite this campaign of terror, by the end of the year the
FMLN had built up an army of some 4,000 people and an
estimated 5,000 collaborators ; by January 1981 it felt ready to
launch a major offensive .
The internal
The offensive revealed both the strengths and the weaknesses of
struggle sincethe FMLN
. The guerrillas proved that they were a military force to
the January
be reckoned with and that they enjoyed considerable popular
Offensive support enabling them to move through the countryside with a
freedom of manoeuvre which the much feared armed forces could
never aspire to. The FMLN's major problem turned out to be in
the cities. The general strike which was called to coincide with
the offensive was inadequately prepared. Many workers' leaders
had been arrested during 1980, in particular after the August
general strike when the entire leadership of the electrical workers'
union had been arrested. This contributed to the inadequate
attention given to workers' defence in the cities, so that unarmed
workers who joined the strike were easy victims of the govern-
ment's terror tactics .
Increased US military aid has been sent into El Salvador as
the Salvadorean armed forces have stepped up their `search and
destroy' operations in the countryside. The armed forces make no
distinction between the guerrilla forces and the peasantry who are
seen as potential guerrillas ; torture and murder are indiscriminate
and the methods used increasingly brutal . Refugees fleeing across
the Honduran border have been massacred in operations involving
both the Honduran and the Salvadorean armed forces . 7,700
people were killed in the first four months of 1981.
Yet despite these tactics, the armed forces have been unable
to dislodge the guerrillas. Since the January offensive the guer-
rillas have developed new tactics, using their experience in guerrilla
warfare to harass and provoke the army and preparing for a pro-
-
BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
17
longed war rather than an insurrection. They have carried out acts
of economic sabotage, burning fields, blowing up electricity
pylons etc., but they have also gradually extended their control
in the rural areas. By June 1981, the guerrillas claimed that they
controlled over one third of the country (see map). In that
month, as the rainy season began, they were able to consolidate
these `zones of control' as it became impossible for the armed
forces to penetrate them . Journalists who have visited the areas
have recounted attempts to establish new forms of popular
power, to carry out literacy programmes, medical training and to
introduce collective farms .
In August the guerrillas launched a renewed offensive,
briefly taking over the town of Perquin in Morazan and destroy-
ing over 100 electricity pylons including those which link the two
biggest hydroelectric dams with the national grid.
The guerrillas have not been able to extend their control to
the urban areas although they have carried out actions there .
But they have proved they will not be easily defeated . In October
the London Times reported that the army was suffering losses at
a rate of over 10 per cent killed or wounded annually, which
amounts to half the manpower added to their ranks over the past
year. It also stated that the rebel forces now total 6,000 operating
in groups of about 100 each compared to the five to ten-person
banks of a year ago .
The Junta on the other hand has shown increasing weakness,
not only in the face of the popular opposition, but also oppos-
ition from the right wing of the oligarchy. There have been fre-
quent rumours of coups amidst growing complaints from the
oligarchy at government economic policies. Production in El
Salvador has declined by more than 15 per cent in two years,
investment has fallen by a third since the beginning of 1980 and
an estimated US S1.5 billion has left the country . Low world
coffee, sugar and cotton prices have affected export earnings, but
the oligarchy also points to high taxes and lack of credit as con-
tributing to the fall in production. The Salvadorean Junta has
requested US S300 million from the United States to rescue the
economy .
The
The FMLN has not enjoyed the degree of international support
International
given to the FSLN in Nicaragua . It particular it has lacked logist-
Front ical support from neighbouring countries, such as Costa Rica.
Venezuela backs the Junta and Panama, although sympathetic to
the FMLN, has been erratic in its support . In addition, the Guate-
mala and Honduran armies have been only too willing to come to
the aid of the Salvadorean armed forces; Honduras in particular
has become the United States' favoured `bulwark against
Communism' since the loss of Nicaragua. After the Franco-
Mexican recognition of the FMLN in September, Venezuela,
Guatemala, Honduras and the Dominican Republic joined other
c&c,5 - 6
-
18
CAPITAL AND CLASS
`democratic' regimes like Chile and Argentina in condemning
(through a US organised declaration) the move as `an attempt to
change the democratic destiny of the Salvadorean people' .
The United States was already heavily committed to military
and economic support to the Salvadorean Junta by the time
Reagan came to power ; indeed without that support the Christian
Democrat-military government would have collapsed long ago .
Carter had stepped up military assistance to El Salvador following
the January offensive, but Reagan, backed by a powerful right
wing Republican lobby with close links to the right in Central
America, was determined to escalate this military involvement
still further. [ 15 ]
The official US position on the Salvadorean crisis has not
changed since a major statement by Thomas Enders, Assistant
Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, in July 1981 . He
stressed Washington's commitment to a `political solution' but
insisted that a government military victory with US help was
essential : `A political solution can only be achieved if the guerr-
rillas realise that they cannot win by force of arms'. The United
States and the Junta have refused to negotiate with the FMLN/
FDR unless the guerrillas lay down their arms. Instead they are
proposing elections for March 1982 as the centrepiece of their
political strategy for the country . Nevertheless pressures for
negotiations have built up since the September declaration by
France and Mexico . The Dutch have now joined these two and
Brazil refused to sign the US inspired counter declaration. In
October the Panamanian President backed the initiative, offering
to organise negotiations between the FMLN/FDR and the Junta.
Almost all the international actors in the conflict, except the
US, now favour some form of negotiated settlement . The Europ-
ean social democratic movement and the Mexican government
have been most active in trying to promote negotiations . Within
the United States as well there have been pressures on the admin-
istration to accept a peaceful settlement . Opposition to US
support for the Junta has grown considerably . In May 1981 an
estimated 100,000 people marched in Washington against US
policy and the churches have been particularly active in organ-
ising against aid for the Junta. Congress has also become increas-
ingly nervous about the possibility of a 'Vietnam-type' situation
developing in Central America. In September they made approval
of military appropriations for fiscal year 1982 conditional on
receipt of regular reports showing that the Junta was ensuring
respect for human rights and was willing to negotiate a settlement .
The Period
In El Salvador today real power is divided between the US-backed
Ahead armed forces and the guerrillas . The guerrillas are strong enough
to prevent any government lacking their support from exercis-
ing effective control throughout the country, but as yet are
unable to overthrow the Junta and seize power themselves .
-
BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
19
Meanwhile the armed forces are relentlessly opposed to the
formation of a government including even the reformist parties
which are now in effective alliance with the guerrilla movement .
One possible scenario for the future is that the United States will
be forced to seek a settlement which will attempt to split the
reformist elements of the FDR from the guerrilla movement,
but given the military impasse such a strategy would clearly be
fraught with problems .
In October FDR/FLMN proposals for talks with the Junta
were, in fact, put forward by the Nicaraguan representative at the
UN. The FMLN refused to lay down its arms before talks began,
demanded direct negotiations witnessed by representatives from
other governments and insisted that any talks must cover the
fundamental aspects of the conflict . So far the US and the Sal-
vadorean military have refused these terms, but some sections of
the FDR/FLMN do believe that a negotiated settlement is the
only way out of the present impasse . Other sections see support
for such initiatives as being of tactical rather than ultimate value .
Pressure from international supporters combined with the contin-
uing threat of US intervention underpin such a stance .
Clearly the United States would only intervene directly it-
self as a last resort . Surrogate armies would be used first and to
this end the Honduran army is receiving vast amounts of aid and
training and there have been reports that the Argentinian armed
forces are prepared to send troops to the region . Nevertheless, the
threat of US invasion of the region remains a real one, for soon
the guerrillas in Guatemala will be strong enough to launch an
offensive. Guatemala is more suited to guerrilla warfare, recently
the guerrillas have been attracting large numbers of recruits
among the Indian population, and the army is weak and demoral-
ised ; the country is also more important to the United States
economically and strategically, bordering as it does on Mexico .
If the United States wishes to prevent a guerrilla victory, it may
be forced to intervene directly and then both the FMLN in El
Salvador and the Sandinista government in Nicaragua would be
in deep trouble . So from the FMLN's point of view international
support is vital both to stave off the possibility of US inter-
vention and to meet the challenge if it comes . Willingness to neg-
otiate, proven by past initiatives, may be important in retaining
such support .
Direct US intervention would have serious international
implications. The right of the United States to intervene in its
`backyard' could be taken as a green light for the Soviet Union to
re-establish its hegemony in Poland (and vice versa) . The implic-
ations are enormous and whether the United States will dare risk
them is a matter of debate . But whether it intervenes directly or
not, it is clear that the United States plans to prevent socialist
governments in El Salvador and elsewhere in the region from
coming to power. It is by no means inevitable that the US strat-
-
20
CAPITAL AND CLASS
egy will succeed and international solidarity can play an import-
ant role in defeating it. Particularly important are the possibil-
ities of driving in the wedge between Europe's stance on the
region and that of the United States government. The European
social democrat movement's support for the FDR/FMLN is a
vital step in this direction. Pressure should be put on the British
government, which under Thatcher has become Reagan's staunch-
est ally in Europe, to join the rest of Europe with respect to El
Salvador. In short, the threat of US intervention in Central
America should be met with the same mobilisation and solidarity
as took place during the Vietnam war in the 1960s . At the same
time the work of the solidarity movement needs to be informed
by the realisation that only a victory which brings with it the
destruction of the state apparatus and dismantling of the existing
armed forces and security units could possibly pave the way for
socialism in El Salvador .
Jenny Pearce is the author of Under the Eagle - US Intervention
in Central America and the Caribbean, Latin American Bureau,
December 1981, available from LAB, 1 Amwell Street, London
EC1 R 1 UL, price 2.50 plus 75p p&p .
The El Salvador Solidarity Committee can be contacted at29
Islington Park Street, London N1, and the El Salvador Human
Rights Committee at 20/21 Compton Street, London N1 .
Notes
1 D. Browning,
El Salvador -Landscape and Society, Claren-
don Press, Oxford, 1971 .
2 See Thomas P. Anderson,Matanza, El Salvador's Communist
Revolt of 1932, Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska
Press, 1971 .
3 See E . Lizano's article in Centroamerica Hoy, Siglo XXI,
Mexico 1976 and the articles in La Inversion Extranjera en
Centroamerica EDUCA, Costa Rica 1974, for an assessment
of the CACM .
4 US investment in El Salvador is not very significant. In 1959
it was US S43 .9 million and by 1975 had risen to US 5106
million . In the mid 1970s US companies began to direct their
investment in the country towards light assembly plants for
export in tax free zones taking advantage of the cheap
labour ; the San Bartolo free zone in El Salvador was set up in
1976 . See Donald Castillo Rivas,Acumulacion de Capital y
Empresas Trasnacionales en Centroamerica, Siglo XXI,
Mexico, 1980 .
5 R. T. Aubrey, Entrepreneurial Formation in El Salvador,
Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd Series, Vol .
6. No. 3 (Spring/Summer, 1969).
6 A study by Daniel and Ester Slutzsky inEstudios Centro-
americanos, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1972 has shown the enormous
profits made by the coffee planters in the period 1950-70 .
They estimate an average of 20 per cent on sales in this
period, rising to 40 per cent in certain years, such as 1950-
-
BEHIND THE NEWS: EL SALVADOR
21
57, 1969-70 .
7Eduardo Colindres, La Tenencia de Ia Tierra en El Salvador,
Estudios Centroamericanos 335-336, September-October
1976.
8 L. J. Simon and J . C. Stephens, El Salvador Land Reform
1980-81 Impact Audit, Oxfam America, 1981 ; and Melvin
Burke, El Sistema de Plantacion y la Proletarianizacion del
Trabajo Agricola en El Salvador, Estudios Centroamericanos,
335-336, September-October 1976 .
9In the late 1960s the United States began to apply tech-
niques of counter-insurgency developed in Vietnam to
Central America ; these included the development of death
squads to eliminate those suspected of sympathy for guerrilla
movements in the region, a strategy known as counter-
terror.
10 Quoted in Will Reissner, `Granma reports how Salvadorean
Groups View Struggle', Revolt in El Salvador,Pathfinder
Press, New York, October 1980, p. 24 .
11 Thefoco theory of guerrilla warfare is most clearly articul-
ated in the work of Regis Debray and involves the establish-
ment of an insurrectionary centre in rural areas by a few well
trained guerrillas who will act as the `small motor' which will
set the `large motor' of the masses into revolutionary action .
12 For an account of the trade union movement in El Salvador
see section on that country in Latin America Bureau, Unity
is Strength : Trade Unions in Latin America - A Case for
Solidarity,1980 .
13 FPL, '9 Years of a Prolonged People's War', El Salvador :
The Development of the People's Struggle, Tricontinental
Society, London, 1980 .
14 The programme of the FDR has been published in NACLA,
A Revolution Brews, July-August 1980 .
15 The links between the right in Central America and the right
in the US Republican party date back to the CIA sponsored
overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 .
Subsequently much of the US capital invested in Guatemala
and elsewhere in the region came from the sunbelt states of
the US where the right of the Republican party has one of
its strongest bases . Richard Nixon himself toured Guatemala
following the 1954 coup. These links were revived during
Reagan's election campaign when many right wing Repub-
licans including aides of Jesse Helms and Daniel Graham of
the American Security Council visited Guatemala. Major
D'Abuisson has often boasted of his close connections with
right wing Republican senators .
-
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-
Barriers to the further
development of
Capitalism in Tanzania :
The case of Tobacco
Susanne Mueller
Since independence in 1961, Tanzania has pursued a policy of
institutionalising a middle peasantry [1] while stymieing the
development of capitalism's principal classes. The policy has
taken an extreme form following a 1973 decision to forcibly re-
organise the majority of Tanzania's peasants on individual block
farms within `nucleated' villages and to bring the sphere of pro-
duction more directly under the control of the state and inter-
national finance capital . This attempt to subordinate peasant
labour to capital by perpetuating middle peasant households in-
creasingly confines capital to its most primitive state . The pursuit
of this policy in an export oriented agricultural economy has par-
ticular contradictions and limitations . As long as labour and
capital are not separated, they cannot be combined in their
technically most advanced form .[2] Hence the contradiction of
the state's attempts to extract greater and greater surplus value
while simultaneously acting to expand and preserve middle
peasant households. The paper explores the implications of such a
course of action within the framework of Marxist writings on the
agrarian question. Using tobacco production as an example, it
discusses the ways in which middle peasant households are being
squeezed and pauperised by this backward capitalist system . It
argues that the system inhibits the formal and real subordination
of labour to capital and tends to perpetuate the extraction of
absolute as opposed to relative surplus value .[3] Household pro-
duction fetters the concentration of capital, prevents the sociali-
isation of labour, while perpetuating the hoe as the main instru-
ment of production .
-
24CAPITAL AND CLASS
The
From 1973-1976, Tanzania's ruling class adopted a policy of
Development of villagisation in which the majority of the country's peasants were
Capitalism in
forcibly removed from their scattered dwellings and resettled in
Tanzania [4] `nucleated' villages with individual holdings . Production con-
tinued to be based on the household ; however, under close super-
vision by the state . Whereas formerly the state had generally kept
its distance from the sphere of production, and peasant co-
operatives controlled the sphere of circulation, all of this changed .
Freedom of movement was restricted and minimum acreage re-
quirements from the 1930s were reintroduced . Government was
decentralised to the village level and peasants were required to
produce specified amounts of food and cash crops . Village
Managers, responsible to the Prime Minister's Office, were sent to
villages and put in charge of production as cooperatives were
abolished and replaced by state crop buying authorities, which
were designed to act in conjunction with the state's agricultural
credit bank (TRDB) to advance credit directly through villages
and to recoup agricultural commodities and loans by using village
officials . Not only did the state directly enter the sphere of pro-
duction during this period, but there was also a massive injection
of international aid, and in particular international finance (World
Bank), capital to support the expansion of cash crop production
following villagisation . In spite of these changes, smallholder
cultivation has set limits on the state's ability to control the
sphere of production, to reorganise the labour process, or to raise
the productivity of labour without calling forth other contra-
dictions, including pauperisation . [5]
Before villagisation-between 1967 and 1973-Tanzania
attempted to promote a policy of voluntary communal pro-
duction known as 'ujamaa' . This policy of self-styled `socialism'
and `self-reliance' never succeeded in attracting more than 15-20%
of the population and generally did not deliver on its promises to
increase social services and rural participation . Proletarianisation
was discouraged in the countryside, working class rights began to
be restricted, and corvee labour practices reasserted themselves
within 'ujamaa' villages .
A number of other policies were adopted including rational-
isations and a leadership code, both of which were designed to
suppress the development of a class of rich capitalists . The ruling
class itself was by all accounts a non-productive bureaucratic
class. During the period of 'ujamaa' this class managed to garner
popular support by attacking the predictable evils of foreign
capital, Asian merchants and rural kulaks, while simultaneously
inflating the bureaucracy and using the state as its principal
vehicle of accumulation .[6] Whether it was and is now also acting
to transform itself into a fully-fledged capitalist class is as yet an
important, but unanswered question . Whatever its tendencies, the
ideology propounded by_ this ruling class during the period of
`ujamaa' was distinctly Narodnik .[7] Effectively it amounted to
-
CAPITALISM IN TANZANIA
25
anti-industrial autarchy at both the level of the individual and the
nation, with appeals to cement the middle against the extremes of
bourgeoisie and proletariat. The consequence of attempting to
implement an agrarian policy based on these components was the
worsening condition of the middle peasantry,[8] predicted by
Lenin in his many critiques of utopian socialism. The role of the
state during this period was analagous to that of archaic merchant
capital as it essentially operated in the sphere of exchange to
plunder and rob middle and poor peasants through unequal ex-
change, but left the sphere of production largely untouched.
Extraction tended towards the extraction of absolute surplus
value. Producer prices for agricultural commodities declined, pro-
duction stagnated, and by 1974, drought tipped the scale on an
already marginalised and pauperised middle peasantry necessita-
ting massive food imports. Villagisation was then ushered in, in
the wake of financial ruin at the level of both individual and the
state. [ 9 ]
The question of why the post-independence ruling class
chose to retard rather than to accelerate capitalism following in-
dependence is not well understood.[ 10 1 Partly, it had to do with
the limited options which faced it as a class and the fact that,
materially, it was divorced from production. Furthermore, the
objective realities which confronted it at independence also con-
strained it. During the colonial period, in contrast to the more
favoured nation of Kenya, infrastructure was poorly built up,
manufacturing and industrial development were almost non-
existent and outside of a few areas rural capitalism was poorly
developed, as the colonial state had discouraged the expropriation
of the peasantry and encouraged the continuation of simple com-
modity production . Its inability to attract foreign capital im-
mediately after independence, plus a need to legitimate itself to
the mass of the population following an attempted coup in 1964,
introduced additional problems . In short, it would have been a
momentous task for this class to transform itself into a proper
bourgeoisie . Instead, it chose to block the development of com-
petitive or disruptive classes. Although the ideology of this ruling
class was utopian socialism, in practice it simply reinforced
petit-bourgeoisie [11] in the rural areas, who used their control
over cooperative societies to rob middle and poor peasantsas well
as the state's credit bank which was then faced with high arrears.
Subsequently, the period of villagisation sought to eliminate these
middle men in the sphere of exchange and to bring household
producers more directly under the control of the state .
Tanzania and
Tanzania's policy appeals to `radical' populists who believe that
Marxist Theory `small is beautiful'.[12] They mistakenly associate household
production and its Inherent smallness with `the "superiority" of
people's production' (Lenin, II, p. 400) and are unwilling to
admit its petit-bourgeois content. However, the Tanzanian
-
26 CAPITAL AND CLASS
reality supports Lenin's attacks on the Narodniks and others who
refuse to `call a spade a spade' (Lenin, II, p . 400). Here, Lenin's
predictions have come true : the middle peasant's tie to the land
has resulted in overwork and underconsumption . The production
of cash crops and the necessity to use a large number of inputs in-
tensifies the demands on household labour time, a situation
which is further exacerbated by the state's policy of discouraging
the hiring in of wage labour within villages .[ 131 Smallholding in-
hibits any significant transformation of the productive forces, of
the value of labour power itself, or of the further development of
commodity relations in general, as household producers both pro-
duce for exchange value and to reproduce the means of subsist-
ence. In Tanzania as elsewhere, as Lenin originally insisted, the
`power of the soil' (Lenin, II, p. 393) in perpetuating the middle
peasantry and retarding capitalism has been `a tremendous factor
. . . in preserving methods of production that are primitive and
entail bondage, in retarding the use of machinery and lowering
the worker's standard of living' (Lenin, II, p . 400) .
In discussing the middle peasantry, Lenin noted its inherent
instability in the face of a developing capitalist economy :
`Every crop failure flings masses of the middle peasants into
the ranks of the proletariat. In its social relations this group
fluctuates between the top group, towards which it gravi-
tates and the bottom group into which it is pushed by the
whole course of social evolution .' (Lenin, 1974 : p . 184)
Lenin vociferously rejected arguments which suggested that
socialism could be based on what he regarded as a mythically de-
picted pre-capitalist Russian peasantry. Furthermore, he insisted
that all efforts to preserve the middle against the extremes as a
means of recapturing this mythical past and saving the peasantry
from the horrors of industrial capitalism would only serve to
retard `the process of 'depeasantising', to `institutionalise capital-
ism in its least developed form, and actually to worsen the con-
dition of the smallholder .
Almost one hundred years after Lenin's attacks on the
Narodniks, one finds that arguments to buttress household pro-
duction and prop up the middle against the extremes have once
again found favour, both with international development agencies
and indigenous ruling classes, who are frightened by the political
and economic prospects of large numbers of unemployed peasants
in the, cities, are too weak to transform themselves into a proper
bourgeoisie, and need the surpluses generated by a landed middle
peasantry both to reproduce the society and to generate foreign
exchange . A case in point is Tanzania. However, this attempt by
the state to preserve the middle peasantry and retard the develop-
ment of bourgeoisie and proletariat has not taken its classic form .
The distinctive form is villagisation in a period of monopoly
capitalism, thereby raising a number of pertinent theoretical
-
CAPITALISM IN TANZANIA
27
issues concerning the relationship between labour and capital in a
situation in which primitive accumulation has not occurred, but
household producers have been partially dispossessed.
Labour
Middle peasants within villages can no longer be seen as simple
commodity producers who operate essentially according to their
own laws of motion and only articulate with capital at the level
of exchange .[14] Here, one must distinguish between content
and form, mindful of Lenin's criticism of the Narodniks and their
crude equation: `If the workers have no land there is capitalism-
if they have land there is no capitalism' (Lenin, I, p . 209) . Lenin
spent volumes polemicising against such a position, arguing that:
`Our literature frequently contains too stereotyped an under-
standing of the theoretical proposition that capitalism
requires the free, landless worker. This proposition is quite
correct as indicating the main trend, but capitalism pene-
trates into agriculture particularly slowly and in extremely
varied forms.' (Lenin, 1974, p. 181)
With villagisation, the introduction of minimum acreage re-
quirements, and the quality and quantity controls which govern
the production of cash crop commodities, the independence of
smallholders in Tanzania can only be regarded as a formality vis a
vis capital. Household producers are not part of a separate mode
of production operating independently according to their own
laws of motion. The state is organised to extract surplus value
from peasant labour. Middle peasants are required to produce a
specified amount of both food and cash crops. To produce sale-
able commodities, they must purchase inputs on credit from the
state, through the village and its authorities which act as onlend-
ers to individual producers, and recoup credit from them in con-
junction with the other state agents at the point of sale. The use
of these inputs often takes place under the direction of agricult-
ural extension officers and other agents of the state in the sphere
of production (Mueller, 1979 (b) ; Raikes, 1980) . Using these in-
puts in turn necessitates certain changes and adjustments in the
labour process itself, often placing excessive demands on house-
hold labour time . Juridically speaking, smallholders appear to be
free; however, behind this formality of independence, `the rela-
tions of production which tie the enterprise of small commodity
prducers to capital are already capitalist relations of production'
(Banaji, 1977, p. 34) . As Lenin and Kautsky argued :
`[At]this stage of development [the peasant] can only
formally be regardedas
a simple commodity producer. De
facto he usually has to deal with the capitalist, the creditor,
the merchant, the industrial entrepreneur . . .' (Lenin, IV,
p. 125)
In Banaji's words, the household at this stage is dominated
-
28 CAPITAL AND CLASS
by `the aims of capitalist production, namely by the compulsion
to produce surplus value' (Banaji, 1977, p .33). Consequently the :
`simple commodity producer [is] no longer an independent
unit of production imposing its own laws of motion on the
process of production but a quasi-enterprise with the specific
function of wage labour . . .The price which the producer
receives for his commodities is no longer a pure category of
exchange, but a category, that is a relation of production, a
concealed wage. Behind the superficial "surface" sale of pro-
ducts, peasants under this form of domination sell their
labour power . . .The monopsonistic determination of
"prices" under this system, or the fact that the contracts
which fix this price may often also stipulate the volume of
output required and its specific quality, are necessary ex-
pressions of the capitalist's "command over labour power" .'
(Banaji, 1977, p. 43)
The forcible villagisation of smallholders in Tanzania would
appear to create fewer illusions concerning autonomous modes of
production. Notwithstanding this observation, capital's 'com-
mand over labour power' within villages is still only partial.[ 151
Labour power is after all household labour confined to small-
holdings, which still `retains the determinate organisation of
labour specific to the "pre-capitalist" enterprise' (Banaji, 1977,
p. 33). Labour cannot be combined, techniques are determined
by the limitations of the household form, production to repro-
duce the means of subsistence continues, and capital's control
over the labour process is inhibited by the organisation of pro-
duction itself. As Banaji suggests :
`Capital's struggle to dominate the enterprise of simple com-
modity producers-to determine the type, quality, quantity
and volume of its commercial output-posits as its basis the
limitations imposed on its elasticity by a labour process not
determined by itself in which the enterprise of small pro-
ducers retains its independence, if only as a formal indepen-
dence . . . Domination over the labour process becomes im-
possible on this basis within these limits of quasi-indepen-
dence without these mechanisms which uproot the patriarchal
sufficiency of the small enterprise . The compulsory enforced
destruction of the small producer's self-sufficiency figures
here as the necessary foundations for the dominance of
capital .' (Banaji, 1977, p . 33)
Until this happens, Banaji maintains, `the capitalist's control over
the labour process [necessarily] retains a partial and sporadic
character' (Banaji, 1977, p . 34) .
In Tanzania, this `partial and sporadic character' is reflected
in a variety of areas. In spite of all past and continuing efforts, by
the state to force the peasantry to produce and to control the
-
CAPITALISM IN TANZANIA
29
appropriation of surplus, labour continues to `wrestle' (Marx,
Capital, I, p . 490) with capital, successfully showing signs of in-
discipline and insubordination . These signs include subverting
production when it appears too marginal to produce positive re-
turns, diverting inputs to food crops when the returns to labour
are higher than cash crops, becoming `sick' (Fortman, 1978 (c),
p.81), frying cotton seeds, planting cassava cuttings upside down
(Raikes, 1975, pp. 41-2), destroying the roots of tobacco plants
and refusing to harvest tea when profits would be slim to non-
existent, following deductions for inputs, feigning stupidity to
avoid certain quality and quantity controls in the production
process, etc . Agricultural inputs received on credit from the state
are sometimes sold and peasants often attempt to circumvent
both state credit and marketing authorities at the point of sale .
In theory, the state's agents in the villages should be pre-
venting all of this from happening . However, in spite of villagis-
ation, there is still a real difference in capital's ability to subord-
inate household as opposed to wage labour . To go beyond exert-
ing indirect quality and quantity controls one must know who in
a village is producing what, and how his crop is faring . Without
this knowledge, it becomes difficult to deal with the 'undisci-
plined" peasant labourer who may claim that his crop has failed
and that he can't pay for inputs he has received on credit, when
in fact he has simply sold his produce outside the official market-
ing authorities . In villages where plots are not 'bega kwa bega'
(shoulder to shoulder), or the village is more of a legal euphem-
ism, the state and its agents-whether village government officials
from the Tanzania Rural Development Bank, or employees of the
crop authorities-may find it difficult to supervise peasant pro-
ducers. This difficulty is compounded where distances are vast,
manpower shortages are great, and transport is poor .
It is further accentuated by the fact that many of the state's
own officials-including extension officers-find villages extremely
unattractive places to be, and go there as infrequently as possible .
The same goes for a number of village officials, including village
bookkeepers, many of whom use their training to find other
positions and escape the drudgery of village life . The creation of
Village Managers (responsible to the Prime Minister's Office
rather than to the villages) was the state's answer to on the spot
supervision. To date, however, many Village Managers have found
ways of either evading or leaving their posts . In addition, when
the state's agents do arrive, they cannot necessarily be counted on
to accumulate on the state's behalf rather than on their own
behalf. Hence, there are peasants who pay off village officials to
close their eyes to certain practices, members of crop authorities
who misappropriate inputs received from the Tanzanian Rural
Development Bank for their own farms, village officials who
shortweigh peasants' produce and syphon off the rest for them-
selves, etc .
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30 CAPITAL AND CLASS
The Tanzanian situation simply confirms Lenin's observations
that where the social relations of production `are still poorly
developed' and `the accumulation of capital, concomitant with
the ruination of the producers, is negligible' :
`This only leads to cruder, serf forms of exploitation, to a
situation where capital, not yet able to subjugate the worker
directly, by the mere purchase of his labour-power at its
value, enmeshes him in a veritable net of usurious extortion,
binds him to itself by kulak methods, and as a result robs
him not only of the surplus-value, but of an enormous part
of his wages, too, and what is more, grinds him down by pre-
venting him from changing his "master", and humiliates him
by compelling him to regard as a boon the fact that capital
"gives [sic] work."' (Lenin, I, p. 216)
Where capitalism is least developed, the way is then open for
`small hucksters' and the `mass of small rural exploiters', whom
Lenin called 'blood-suckers' (Lenin, I, pp . 235-6) .
It is clear then that there is an enormous gap between the
theory and the reality of labour's subordination to capital in
Tanzania, irrespective of villagisation. However, it is not sufficient
simply to describe the insubordination of labour to capital in
Tanzania . Much of what appears from the standpoint of the state
to be nothing more than sheer indiscipline on the part of peasant
labour is the response of the middle peasantry to its increasing in-
ability to reproduce itself. Villagisation (at least as it exists today)
effectively attempts to institutionalise the contradictions of
small, poorly developed capitalism, and thereby restricts the real
subordination of labour to capital . It attempts to inhibit the de-
velopment of conditions which would permit a further transform-
ation of the productive forces and to restrict the further socialis-
ation of labour through full proletarianisation . In some cases, this
situation increases the extraction of absolute surplus value (sur-
plus value produced by the prolongation of the working day) and
pushes the intensification of labour to its natural limit . When this
point is reached, crops are sometimes abandoned as there is
neither sufficient labour nor transport to complete the cultivation
or harvesting of the crop . At this point, `levels of nutrition and
levels of health' (Fortmann, 1976, p. 26) tend to decline and the
returns to labour are increasingly negative . The more inputs that
are necessary for the production of a particular crop and the
smaller the holding, the more it is likely that peasants will ex-
perience pauperisation. In Tanzania, small scale production
within villages has set clear limits on the introduction of machin-
ery and other economies of scale . It has sanctified the hoe and
the principle that small is beautiful, while simultaneously forcing
peasants to produce for exchange value and for use value, which
necessitates using inputs that theoretically increase the productiv-
ity of labour, but nevertheless demand more labour time than is
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CAPITALISM IN TANZANIA
31
available within the household .
Given the Tanzanian state's attempt to institutionalise the
middle peasantry and to prohibit rural proletarianisation-a
policy which has received the support of international capital
(OECD, p. 109)-the tendency towards pauperisation within
villages calls forth other results also predicted by Lenin. More
backward and more exploitative relations of production reassert
themselves. These include: a) labour intensive public works
schemes in which labour is paid below its value by the state, the
justification being that it is a supplementary income, and b) the
emergence of feudal relations of production within villages in
which poor peasants work as quasi wage labour for richer
peasants, or those who have land close to their dwellings sublet it
to those whose land is far away. These `remnants of feudalism in
agriculture' (Lenin, IV, p. 99), this informal wage labour is more
exploitative than real wage labour as it both strips labour of all
protection and results overall in the decreasing socialisation of
labour. As Lenin and Kautsky both noted
:
`It is precisely the peasant's property that is the main cause
of his impoverishment and his degradation. The protection of
the peasantry is not protection from poverty, but the pro-
tection that chains the peasant to his property.' (Lenin, IV,
pp. 98-9)
Villagisation in Tanzania makes a mockery of the independ-
ence of the smallholder and from a certain perspective renders his
alleged independence a mere formality vis a vis capital. The use of
inputs and the increase in quality and quantity controls
demanded by both the state and international capital set the
terms under which commodities can be sold and produced.
Furthermore, however badly and unevenly it is done, labour
power within villages is supervised, controlled and directed by the
state. Nevertheless, the words `mockery' and `formality' are to
some extent misleading. The formality of smallholding, however
formal it may be, represents a genuine impediment to the further
development of capitalism in agriculture and hence to the realis-
ation of relative surplus value as opposed to absolute surplus
value. The institutionalisation of the middle peasantry represents
an obstacle to the further development of capitalism in agricult-
ure as it inhibits full proletarianisation and hence, not only the
further development of labour, but of capital and commodity
relations as well. The state and its ruling class have effectively
institutionalised backward capitalism: a capitalism which re-
duces peasants to labour power without any of the benefits of
fully socialised wage labour; a capitalism which necessitates the
continued integration of production for consumption and pro-
duction for exchange at the level of the household; a capitalism
which precludes technical transformation beyond a certain point
and insures the perpetuation of absolute surplus value; a capital-
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32
CAPITAL AND CLASS
ismwhich confines labour and capital to their most primitive
states resulting in overwork and underconsumption at the level
of the household; and a capitalism where overall increases in
surplus value depend on expanding the number of middle peasant
commodity producing households rather than transforming the
value of labour power itself.
CapitalNevertheless in spite of its backwardness, the capital which is
acting upon middle peasant households cannot be viewed as the
archaic form of merchant capital .[ 16] Merchant capital is charac-
terised by the fact that it operates solely in the sphere of ex-
change between two spheres of production; that it exploits
through robbery and unequal exchange ; that it does not create
value; and that it is therefore capable of destroying, but incapable
of transforming the mode of production itself (Marx, Capital ,III,
chapters 18, 20; Kay, 1975, pp. 96-124). It cannot transform the
productivity of labour or the value of labour power itself, because
merchant capital does not create value . In contrast to the period
of merchant capital, capital in Tanzania has entered the sphere of
production. Furthermore, in Tanzania, the expansion of middle
peasant households producing cash crops has been set in motion
by the re-entry of international capital .
In contrast to merchant capital, international finance (in
particular, World Bank) capital has entered the sphere of pro-
duction through the state as the agent of industrial capital, with
tendencies to extract relative surplus value, through the use of
improved inputs . These increase the productivity of labour, by
extending commodity relations, and by acting to raise producer
prices.[171 However these are only tendencies, which are in-
hibited by a number of factors. First, there are real limitations in
attempting to transform the value of labour power within the
confines of smallholding and where labour power is not a free
commodity. From one perspective, the use of inputs in agriculture
appears to be an aspect of the real subordination of labour to
capital and hence of the extraction of relative as opposed to
absolute surplus value. It signals a partial `transformation of pro-
duction by the conscious use of mechanics, chemistry, etc'
(Marx, Capital, I, p . 1036). As such, it changes the labour process
itself and acts to introduce a transformation in the value of
labour power as well. However, the use of improved inputs, the
introduction of quality and quantity controls, and the increased
`directing superintending and adjusting' (Marx, Capital, I, p . 449)
of household labour by state officials without other transform-
ations in the social relations of production, the scale of production
or the productive forces themselves tends to result in the intens-
ification of labour, in overwork and underconsumption, and the
extraction of absolute surplus value. More importantly, as Marx
noted :
`An increase in the productivity of labour in those branches
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CAPITALISM IN TANZANIA
33
of industry which supply neither the necessary means of sub-
sistence nor the means by which they are produced leaves the
value of labour power undisturbed . . .' (Marx, Capital, I,
p. 432)
In addition :
`To make the value of labour-power go down, the rise in the
productivity of labour must seize upon those branches of
industry whose products determine the value of labour-
power, and consequently either belong to the category of
normal means of subsistence, or are capable of replacing
them.' (Marx, Capital, I, p . 432)
Such a situation would be most likely to occur if commodity
relations were well-developed and households' producers pur-
chased rather than produced their means of subsistence. Neither
is the case in Tanzania. Furthermore, if increases in productivity
and consequent reductions in necessary labour time to produce
subsistence commodities are not passed on to household pro-
ducers, the result is pauperisation (Cowen, 1980, p . 6). One mani-
festation of this in Tanzania is the relative increase in the margin
between international and producer prices and the worsening con-
dition of the smallholder (MDB, 1977) .
At a certain point the theoretical interests of international
finance capital and the class character of the state appear to con-
flict . The former is primarily interested in lowering the value of
labour power as a means of insuring the continuous production of
exchange value by the peasantry . However, international capital is
not omnipotent . It is confined by an existing organisation of pro-
duction that predated its re-entry (i .e ., the attempt by the state
to expand the middle peasantry at the expense of bourgeoisie and
proletariat) and is inhibited by its own interest in forestalling the
politically destabilising effects of an unemployed rural labour
force, where `the modern sector of the economy is not creating
enough employment opportunities to absorb a growing labour
force' (OECD, p . 109) . In short, as O'Laughlin notes, it is
important:
,
not to assume that all which exists represents the optimal
functional interests of capital as a class . . .Only if we assume
that a social system is ordered by a single non-contradictory
principle (e .g., the requirements of capital) can this task be
reduced to explaining why things are not what they are not.
In the case of capitalism this would be a singularly inappro-
priate assumption, for it is a system racked by conflict
between capital and labour and by competitions between
capitals and national units of capital.' (O'Laughlin, 1977,
p . 30)
In contrast to international capital, the so-called 'bureau-
C&C 15 - C
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34
Formal
Subordination
and Primitive
Accumulation
CAPITAL AND CLASS
cratic bourgeoisie' on the other hand, is under pressure to pay
back its loans, improve its foreign exchange earnings, while simul-
taneously reproducing and transforming itself as a class . Given its
class character and the fact that peasant surplus is almost its sole
vehicle of accumulation, it appears at times to plu