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

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 .

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

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 .


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

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

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

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


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-

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


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

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-


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 .


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-


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 .

Social Theory and Social Welfare

Peter Taylor-Gooby and Jennifer Dale

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The book is commendably up-to-date ; it has a thumbnail sketch

of monetarism, even attempting a definition of sterling M3 ; . .

. The authors have achieved their aim of providing a readable

Marxist text on social policy .' - Times Higher Education

Supplement

5.95 paper 304 pages

City, Class and Capital

New Developments in the Political Economy of Cities and

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Edited by Michael Harloe and Elizabeth Lebas

The last decade has seen radical changes in the study of urban

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6.95 paper 224 pages

Publication October

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Edited by Eugene Kamenka and Alice Erh-Soon Tay

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8 .95 boards 4.95 paper208 pages

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41 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DQ

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


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 à 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 :

Èvery 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 ìnstitutionalise 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


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


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


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 .


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


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-

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


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

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

Capital & Class. - 1981. - Issue 15

Documents

production of coffee

coffee planters

coffee accountedfor

major offensive

coffee tree givesits

communal landholdingwere

recognised form of land

major new development