DISCUSSION AND DEBATE 64 3

proper strategy for the revolutionary move- ment in China.

References Cited

Dalton, George 1972 Peasants in Anthropology and

H i s t o r y . C u r r e n t Anthropology

1974 How Exactly Are Peasants Ex- ploited? American Anthropologist

13:385-415.

76:553-561. Danilova, L. V.

1971 Controversial Problems of the Theory of Precapitalist Societies. Soviet Anthropology and Archeology

1 9 7 3 Krestianstvo (Peasantry). In Bolshaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia.

Publishing House of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

9(4):269-328.

Vol. 14 , CO~S. 1215-1223. MOSCOW:

Dunn, Stephen P. 1972 The Fall and Rise of the Asiatic

Mode of Production. Paper presented at the Western Slavic Association Con- ference, Portland.

Freeman, Susan T. 1970 Neighbors: The Social Contract in

a Castilian Hamlet. Chicago : Univer- sity of Chicago Press.

Mandel, William M. 1969 Soviet Marxism and Social Sci-

ence. In Social Thought in the Soviet Union. A. Simirenko, ed. Pp. 21-76. Chicago : Quadrangle Books.

Martin, William 1966 Histoire de la Suisse: Essai sur la

formation dune confederation detats. Sixth ed. Lausanne: Payot.

PeEir ka, J. 1967 Von der asiatischen Produktion-

sweise zur marxistischen Analyse der friihen Klassengesellschaften. Eirene 6 :141-175.

Selsam, Howard, and Harry Martel, eds. 1963 A Reader in Marxist Philosophy.

New York: International. Suret-Canale, J., e t al.

1965 An Exchange of Views on the Asian Mode of Production. Soviet Anthro- pology and Archeology 4(2):37-51.

1957 Oriental Despotism. New Haven: Wittfogel, Karl

Yale University Press. Wolf, Eric

1 9 6 6 Peasants . Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Submitted 6 February 1975 Accepted 5 October 1975

Exploitation of Peasants: A Reply to Dunn

GEORGE DALTON North western University

I want t o spell out the implications of

From a Marxist point of view, people, including peasants, can be said to be potentially or actually exploited if and when: (a) they d o not control the means of producing and marketing goods, and are therefore obliged to rent land, sell commodities (including their own labor), and buy needed supplies a t prices set by others, whether these prices are payable in money, in goods, or in labor; and/or ( b ) they are not self-governing, and hence must pay taxes and other charges to the state without regard to the value of what they receive from it, and/or without having a voice proportionate to their numbers in the levying and final disposi- tion of these charges. Under this definition, there was only one

set of actual societies of time and place whose people were not exploited: aboriginal economies in stateless societies, that is, precolonial subsistence producers such as those in Highland New Guinea, and such other tribal segments without central govern- ment as Indians of North America and tribes without rulers in Africa (Strathern 1971; Rosman and Rubel 1971; Middleton and Tait 1958). Among the Trobrianders and the Kwakiutl, corporate descent groups con- trolled the means of production (land, fish- ing sites), markets were either absent or petty, and so the precolonial Kwakiutl and Nuer were not obliged to rent land, sell commodities, or sell their own labor to acquire livelihood. The corporate descent groups of lineage, lineage cluster, and clan were also self-governing, they were not parts of political states (and therefore paid no taxes to states in precolonial times).

According to Dunns definition, where there exists communist economic institu- tions of central planning, and communist political institutions of dictatorship, as in the Soviet Union today, triple exploitation exists: the Soviet farmers and factory workers d o not control the means of produc- ing and marketing goods (the states civil servants, the central planners, decide what is to be produced); the Soviet collective farmers and factory workers have t o buy needed consumption supplies at ruble prices set by others (again, the states central planners); farmers and workers are not self-

Dunns definition of exploitation:

644 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 78,19761

governing, but rather live in a state, and so must pay taxes (e.g., turnover taxes) and pay other charges to the state without regard to the value of what they receive from it (military protection, educational and health services). In the Soviet dictatorship, more- over, the farmers and factory workers do not have a voice proportionate to their numbers in the levying and final disposition (spend- ing) of the taxes they pay.

So, too, where there is dictatorship and capitalist market economy, as in Spain, and also where there is market economy without dictatorship, as in Sweden and the US . All the industrial developed economies are either welfare state capitalist or communist. Where there is capitalism there is depen- dence on market sale of ones labor or produce for livelihood at prices set by others, and so, according to Dunns defini- tion, exploitation exists. Where there is either capitalist or communist dictatorship, ordinary people do not have a voice propor- tionate to their numbers in the levying and final disposition of the taxes and other charges they pay, and so again, according to Dunns definition, exploitation exists.

For Dunn, then, exploitation exists wherever there is market dependence for livelihood or a state without democracy. Therefore, people living in all capitalist democracies are exploited because of capital- ism, and people living in all communist dictatorships are exploited because of dic- tatorship and because the central govern- ments planners and not the rank-and-file farmers and factory workers control the means of production-that is, the bureau- crats and not the people have the power to decide how much of what kinds of goods are to be produced.

Finally, according to Dunns definition, people who lived in precolonial tribal king- doms in Africa, such as Barotse (Gluckman 1943, 1961) and Buganda (Roscoe 1911) were exploited because they had no voice proportionate to their numbers in their divine kings levying and disposition of the taxes they paid; that is, the Lozi and Baganda lived in centralized political sys- tems, but in states lacking democratic in- stitutions.

I do not know why Dunn thinks his preferred definition is a good definition of exploitation, or one that other Marxists will agree with, since it leads to the conclusion that in communist dictatorships such as the U.S.S.R. and China triple exploitation exists (for my assessment of communist eco- nomies, see Dalton 1974, Ch. 4, 6) .

I think it is remarkable for Dunn to say, . . . exploitation . . . is built into the fabric of a great many societies-essentially all

those above the level of shifting swidden agriculture or the simplest kind of nomadic pastoralism. If exploitation is a bad thing, what are the policy implications of Dunns views, surely not that present-day Americans and Russians should return to shifting swidden agriculture or the simplest kind of nomadic pastoralism, or, as in the example he later uses to illustrate nonexploitation, medieval Swiss peasant agriculture? If he means his definition to have policy implica- tions-to tell us what we ought to do-for industrial societies, I suppose, the absence of exploitation would mean (a) political democracy, so that the millions of ordinary people in Russia and the U.S. have a voice in how much taxes they pay and how their taxes are spent, a voice proportionate to their numbers; and (b) some variant of guild socialism (see Cole 1917), that is, something like Yugoslavian workers self-manage- ment, some sort of producers co- operatives, so that factory workers them- selves control the means of production. Although how this is to be arranged in an industrial economy of specialized factories without the factory workers who make cars or steel having to buy needed supplies at prices set by others I do not know, since factory workers making cars or steel will presumably be buying food produced by factory workers packaging food, at prices not determined by the factory workers making cars or steel. Personally, as an old democratic socialist, I find Dunns policy implications quite congenial, but not for reasons having anything to do with defini- tions of exploitation.

Anthropology is a social science. If, as I believe, Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Poppers The Open Society and Its Enemies made important points about methodology in all the social sciences and about Marxism as well, so, too, I suggest did Wittgensteins Philosophical Investiga- tions (see Dalton 1975:112-114). Particular- ly in anthropology, which is not a highly mathematical or statistical social science, the meaning and usage of concepts is crucial (note that Dunns definition of exploitation depends on the meanings of two phrases: control the means of producing and marketing goods, and self-governing). If segmentary lineage, joking relationship, u nil ineal descent, Sanskritization, reciprocity, and big-man are thought by anthropologists to be analytically useful concepts, i t is because (a) they could be defined precisely, (b) their meanings could be illustrated by immediate reference to actual practice or institution in actual soci- eties of time and place-the Nuer, Tallensi, village India-and (c ) the concepts could be

DISCUSSION AND DEBATE 64 5

used to make analytical points (supported by persuasive factual evidence) about the distinctive attributes of those societies, a t - tributes that were not obvious before an- thropologists employed those concepts. I do not think that exploitation and surplus have these three properties.

Finally, I disagree utterly with Dunn o n the subjective aspect of exploitation, on the need t o know whether or not peasants (or others said to be exploited) feel themselves t o be exploited. I think that the least ambiguous meaning of exploitation is in- justice, and those who suffer injustice feel outrage and resentment at the unfairness being inflicted on them and, indeed, some- times rebel. If peasants in Red China today d o not feel exploited despite the fact that even more is taken from them in taxes than was the case before 1949 (Moore 1966:227, referring to Yang 1959:158-159, 174-175), it is because they feel the high taxes they pay are just: that the taxes are being levied fairly, that their taxes will not be stolen by corrupt officials, and that they approve of the developmental and welfare purposes their taxes are spent on-even though the Chinese peasants d o not have a voice in the levying or spending of their taxes.

References Cited Cole, G . D. H.

1917 Self-Government in Industry. Lon- don: Bell.

Dalton, George 1974 Economic Systems and Society:

Capitalism, Communism, and the T h i r d W o r l d . Harmondswor th : Penguin.

1975 Karl Polanyis Analysis of Long- Distance Trade and his Wider Para- digm. I n Ancient Civilization and Trade. Jeremy A. Sabloff and C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, eds. Albuquer- que: University of New Mexico Press.

1943 Essays o n Lozi Land and Royal Property. Rhodes-Livingstone Institute Paper No. 10.

The Lozi of Barotseland in North- Western Rhodesia. I n Seven Tribes of British Central Africa. Elizabeth Colson and Max Gluckman, eds. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Gluckman, Max

1961

Middleton, J., and D. Tait 1958 Tribes without Rulers. London:

Routledge. Moore, B., Jr.

1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.

Roscoe, John

millian. 1911 The Baganda. London: Mac-

Rosman, Abraham and Paula Rubel 1 9 7 1 Feasting with Mine Enemy. New

York: Columbia University Press. Strathern, A.

1 9 7 1 The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yang, C. K. 1959 A Chinese Village in Early Com-

munist Transition. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.

Submitted 1 0 November 1975 Accepted 26 November 1975

On the New Ecology Paradigm

ANDREW P. VAYDA Cook College, Rutgers University

Having been characterized by Brush (AA 77:803, 1975) as a leading proponent of a new paradigm for analyzing man-environ- ment relationships, I would like, in rather summary fashion, t o state several points which have been elaborated elsewhere (Vayda and McCay 1975; Vayda 1976, Ch. 1) and are missing from Brushs article:

(1) In a paradigm whose major feature is a reintegration of the analysis of cultural adaptations with general ecological analysis (Brush, p. 803), the idea of carrying capacity presented by Brush need not have the importance which he attributes t o it. Analy- sis of how people or any other organisms respond to the environmental problems that they encounter in particular times and places can, as often as not, be pursued without any calculations of carrying capacity.

(2) What are the key variables t o be analyzed depends very much on the environ- mental problems confronting the organisms. Categorically assigning primacy in analysis to such variables as energy inputs and outputs (Brush, p. 804) is t o be avoided if research o n responses to many problems (e.g., floods, water shortages, predation) in addition to food shortages is to be undertaken.

(3) A concern with change, far from being inimical to the study of homeostasis, is essential to it insofar as some properties of any homeostatic system must a t times change so as t o maintain other properties important for survival. For discussions and some illustrations of this, see Bateson (1972:346-363, 494-505), Slobodkin (1968, 1974), Slobodkin and Rapoport (1974).