State, capital and legitimation crisis: Land and water in California's Imperial Valley

Contemporary Crises 4 (1980) 1 - 2 6 1 @ Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company , Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

STATE, CAPITAL AND LEGITIMATION CRISIS: LAND AND WATER IN CALIFORNIA'S IMPERIAL VALLEY

BILL BARCLAY JANET SCHMIDT DICK HILL

Agribusiness in California's Imperial Valley faces a legal challenge to its very existence. For almost four decades the large growers in the Valley have relied upon irrigation water from the All American Canal built by the federal government as a part of the Boulder Canyon Project. Federal reclamation law states clearly that no individual is to receive water from federal projects for more than 160 acres of land. Yet average farm size in Imperial County approaches 700 acres and more than 75 percent of county farmland is in holdings of 1,000 acres or more [1]. Today court suits brought both by Valley residents and by land reform groups elsewhere in California have forced the Department of the Interior to take steps towards the enforcement of reclamation law. Effective enforcement of the law would fundamentally alter the social relations of agrarian production both in the Valley and throughout much of the rest of western agriculture.

The roots of this crisis lie within the nature of capitalism as a mode of production whose internal development is driven by the twin forces of competition and class struggle. Politically these twin forces generate two contradictory class imperatives, the need to reproduce the social relations necessary for continued capital accumulation and the need to legitimate capitalism as a form of social organization. Because the capitalist state, as a crystallization of class relations [2], is structured by these societal contra- dictions, state policy reflects the contradictory demands of accumulation and legitimation [ 3 ].

On the one hand, then, social policy must aid capitalists in their search for profits, for accumulation of capital is the basis of prosperity and growing state tax revenues. On the other hand, social policy must also justify this aid in the name of the public good. The legal challenge to the agricultural capitalists of the Valley has placed these imperatives in antagonism to each other

San Diego State University, San Diego, Cal., U.S.A.

because provision of the water fundamental to capital accumulation in Valley agriculture was legitimated in terms of the preservation of the small family farm.

We begin this paper with a description of early efforts to develop the Valley. Although agriculture was successfully established, neither land speculators nor Valley farmers created a predictable and secure environment for capital accumulation [4]. Thus in the second section of this paper we analyze the efforts of Valley growers to obtain state social capital outlays for the necessary irrigation infrastructure. We focus upon the fragmented nature of state power in the American federal system, the mediation of interest group conflict, and the emergence of a class-conscious perspective on the development of the Colorado basin [5]. In Section III we turn to the problem of legitimation and the impact of state intervention. Here we show how state social capital outlays contributed to the rise of large scale agriculture and the demise of the very family farms they were supposed to preserve. The final section of the paper traces the legal conflicts over the interpretation of reclamation law. Here we argue that the antagonistic imperatives of accumulation and legitimation reproduce class conflict within the state itself.

The Failure of Speculative and Agrarian Capital

To early settlers, the present day Imperial Valley was the Colorado Desert, a forbidding and desolate place. Created by the rich silt deposits of the Colorado River, the Valley was potentially fertile f a rmland- provided a reliable source of water could be found. Since the valley lies below the bed of the Colorado, this seemed simple. In 1896 a group of land speculators organized the California Development Company (CDC), cut an intake, and used old river channels to bring water to the Valley [6]. "Colorado Desert" was changed to the more attractive "Imperial Valley" and the Imperial Land Company was organized as a CDC subsidiary. Water was the important resource and it was the CDC's sale of "water rights" at $25/acre that provided the speculative profits [7].

The CDC's pursuit of quick profits within an interest group perspective initiated three decades of conflict over water and resulting unstable rates of capital accumulation in Valley agriculture. Political problems began at once. By treaty and usage the Colorado was considered navigable by both the U.S. and Mexico. As Mexico emphasized to Washington, private capital could not divert water in a manner which altered navigability. The CDC asked both the War Department and Congress to authorize its present and future use of the river but failed due to opposition from Mexico, competing agrarian capitalists in the Colorado basin, and the newly created Bureau of Reclama-

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tion [8]. Capital, however, knows no political loyalty. CDC president Anthony Heber (a former Kern County Land Company agent) angrily told a congressional committee: "It is my earnest desire to worship at our own altar and to receive the blessing from the shrine of our own Government, but if permission is not given we shall be compelled to worship elsewhere" [9].

The decision to "worship elsewhere" meant negotiations with Mexico. Engineering mistakes provided an additional rationale for this action. The original intake was poorly located and silting had already forced new cuts

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and considerable dredging. Thus, in 1904 Heber reached an agreement with Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz for an intake and canal below the border [ 101.

While this "multinationalization" of CDC speculative capital solved the immediate political problems, the Colorado proved less tractable. Continued silting threatened reduced water supplies in the Valley and triggered talk of lawsuits against the CDC. Rather than continue to pay for the costs of dredging, the CDC decided on a cut further south. Propelled by the thirst of capital for surplus value, they failed to take the elementary precaution of constructing a headgate for flood control [ 11 ]. The Colorado responded by submerging both the CDC and much of the Valley; by mid-1905 over 80 percent of the river was flowing into the Valley, creating the Salton Sea. Unable to control the flood, the CDC called upon the Southern Pacific for help. After a two year struggle the railroad had both stopped the flood and acquired the stock and properties of the CDC [ 12].

Victory neither tamed the river nor laid a secure basis for Valley development. In 1910 hastily built levees barely stopped a second flood [ 13]. The next year, the agrarian capitalists of the Valley established a quasi-public agency, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) which acquired the irrigation works of the defunct CDC in 1916. That same year, the Colorado changed its tactics. Unable to flood the Valley, the river shifted to the low phase of its cycle and water had to be rationed to IID growers [ 14]. It was clear that, alone, neither developers nor agrarian capitalists could develop the Valley. The erratic fluctuations in the supply of water and the endless political and economic conflicts over control of the Colorado prevented planning by Valley growers on the basis of calculable risks. Recognizing the failure of private capital, the liD sought state aid in rationalizing the conditions of capital accumulation. They turned to the federal government for the social capital outlays and the political economic mediation necessary to provide a permanent solution to the problems of flood control and irrigation in the Valley.

Uneven Development, Political Conflict, and State Mediation

From 1911 until the passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act in 1928, Imperial Valley capitalists struggled to socialize the costs of irrigation and flood control in order to stabilize the rate of capital accumulation in Valley agriculture. Because capitalism is a mode of production that lacks any coord- inating mechanism beyond the market, uneven development and the logic of capital accumulation brought the Valley into conflict with the interest group horizons of other fractions of agrarian capital during this effort. Agrarian

capitalists in the upper basin (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico) and the remaining lower basin (Nevada and Arizona) states feared that the Valley's early and rapid development would reduce the water available for their own growth. The anarchic nature of this competitive economic struggle was reproduced in political conflicts between state and federal agencies. Without the intervention of the federal executive, the divergent basin interests would have been unable to transcend their particularistic concep- tions of the requirements for successful capital accumulation. The Colorado River would have been developed in the fragmentary and wasteful manner characteristic of the competitive phase of U.S. capitalism [ 15 ].

The IID's first independent effort to control the Colorado is a case study of the anarchic nature of capitalist production and illuminates the political difficulties which flowed from an interest group approach to use of the Colorado. During the low flow of late summer 1915, the IID diverted the entire fiver by constructing a dam below their intake. However, during the following winter, the Gila River (in Arizona) reached record levels and water backed up behind the dam. The resulting flood destroyed much of the town of Yuma and farms in the area although the Imperial Valley was untouched. When the IID began to rebuild the dam in 1916, Yuma growers and business people threatened to blow up both them and the dam. The IID ignored the threat until the Yuma Water Users Association obtained a court injunction which required the dam to be destroyed before each flood season [16]. Coupled with growing expenditures on the Mexican levees, the yearly destruction and rebuilding of the dam increased flood control costs to the Valley five-fold between 1915 and 1917-1920 [17].

Rising costs renewed IID interest in obtaining their particularistic needs through state intervention at the federal level. The IID helped finance a Department of Interior canal feasibility study in 1917 and got California representative William Kettner to introduce a bill for a canal on the American side of the border in 1919. Both efforts came under attack from several angles. Chambers of Commerce and regional booster groups had already presented petitions calling for both flood control and water storage in various parts of the basin. In addition, a veterans group, the Soldiers', Sailors', and Marines' Land Settlement Congress, endorsed Interior Secretary Lane's call for reclamation of more than 4,000,000 acres throughout the Southwest in the form of homesteads for family farmers. Needing support of representatives from other basin states, Kettner added provisions for storage, veterans preference, and a 160-limit "in any one ownership" for water to developers of new lands when he reintroduced the bill in 1920 [18]. Despite these modifications, representatives from other basin states remained skeptical. The bill was shelved and the Kincaid Act, which authorized a survey of the entire Colorado for the location of potential dam and storage sites, was

passed. In 1921, the results of the survey, known as the Fall-Davis Report, were issued, calling for a dam "at or near" Boulder Canyon and an "all American" canal for Valley irrigation [ 191.

The publication of the Fall-Davis Report brought the interest group conflicts between competing fractions of agrarian capital in the basin into the state apparatus. The central issue was, of course, who was to get how much water? Under the legal doctrine of prior appropriation, those who made first use of water had first rights whether or not they lived by the stream in question. Southern California was the most rapidly growing area in the region and thus the claims that the Imperial Valley (along with the Los Angeles

• Metropolitan Water District) were placing on the Colorado posed a threat to the other basin states. Uneven development meant that the finite waters of the Colorado might be spoken for by California before they could be used upstream [20]. The remaining basin states read the Fall-Davis Report as a particularistic appropriation of state power by the Valley capitalists. This fueled their opposition to Valley demands and to any comprehensive development of the basin unless future water supplies were allocated in advance [ 211.

Basin congressional unity was essential for obtaining the social capital outlays recommended in the Report. Thus the Colorado basin states began the task of "dividing the waters" through the Colorado Compact. The Compact, however, almost failed to materialize. The fragmentation of power within the American federal system meant that the negotiating teams from each state merely reflected the interest group horizons of the capitalists within those states. Additionally, many local capitalists followed the example of the Valley and sent their own lobbyists who pressured the negotiators to represent the fragmented interest group demands of their own state. The talks dragged on with no progress and constantly threatened to break down com- pletely.

It required the intervention of state managers [22] to prevent the competing capital interests from destroying each other. Valley representative Phil Swing had helped select Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover as the representative of the federal executive to the talks and the delegates had elected him chair [23]. On Hoover's urging, the delegates finally devised an in- genious solution. Rather than trying to allocate the water among the various states, they simply agreed to allocate between upper and lower basin states as a whole, leaving decisions within each group to be worked out later. Even with this agreement, ratification in the state legislatures was very difficult, and Arizona, left to face California in lower basin negotiations, refused out- right, necessitating a six-state rather than a seven-state Compact [24].

The process of political mediation had transformed the demands of Valley capitalists. It was no longer a particularistic claim by a fraction of capital for

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state intervention to aid in capital accumulation. The Fall-Davis Report and the Colorado Compact had taken the problem of accumulation to a higher political level which encompassed a larger geographical area. The congressional battle for the Boulder Canyon Project (which culminated in 1928), was fought in terms of regional development with the basin states (with the exception of Arizona and sometimes Utah) presenting a united front. Swing recruited Gifford Pinchot and Harry Slattery (prominent conservationists) to help establish the National Boulder Dam Association which used speakers, press releases, and letter-writing campaigns to establish nationwide support for regional growth and the conservation of resources [25]. In sum, state intervention at the federal level (the legislative and the executive) translated accumulation demands by a fraction of capital into legitimation activities. The result was a gap between the specific class-bound nature of state policies to create the conditions for capital accumulation in the Valley (and the basin as a whole) and the representation of these policies within the political sphere [ 26].

Legitimation, Accumulation, and Political Crisis

The 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act has been a two-edged sword for the agrarian capitalists of the Imperial Valley. On the one hand, it solved the problem of capital accumulation by assuring a stable and predictable supply of irrigation water. On the other hand, it contained the roots of a political crisis for Valley agriculture. The particularistic demands of Valley (and Colorado basin) capital had been processed politically in terms both of regional development (as discussed above) and the preservation of the small family farm. Yet in the Valley as elsewhere, competition and class struggle, the logic of capital as a mode of production, has negated that promise. Aided by the very state intervention they sought, Valley use of land and labor re- sembles factories in the fields rather than the family farm.

LEGITIMATION: EQUALITY AND DEMOCRACY

The ideal of equality permeates the founding documents of the American regime. Both the Federalist Papers and the Jeffersonian political tradition emphasized the need for widespread property holding as the basis for a stable democracy. Unlike Europe the social structure of American development was to be an egalitarian one, rooted in the allocation of the public domain to the mass of the population in the form of the family farm [27]. This political weltan-schauung was embodied in the Homestead Act of 1862 which promised a quarter section of land to any family who would live upon and develop it.

Although the frontier was closed by the 1890s, the arid lands of the West remained sparsely settled. Cheap land was insufficient incentive when water was scarce. Thus the 1902 debates over the Reclamation Act were concerned both with providing water from federal projects to encourage settlement and with controlling land monopolization and speculation. President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid supporter of the opening of the arid lands, persuaded eastern Republicans to provide the political support that assured passage of the Act. This support was forthcoming because Roosevelt was a strong opponent of monopoly in land and helped shape the anti-monopoly provisions of the Act. The key provision, Section 5, of the Act reads as follows:

No right to the use of water for land in private ownership shall be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres to any one landowner and no such sale shall be made to any landowner unless he be an actual bona fide resident on such land, or occupant thereof residing in the neighborhood.

It was clear from Senate and House debate that Section 5 was intended both to prevent the formation of large estates and to break up any preexisting large holdings [28 ].

Emphasis on homebuilding and the widespread distribution of agrarian property did not end with the 1902 Act. The acreage limitation and/or residency requirements were reiterated in reclamation legislation in 1910, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1926, and again in 1950 and 1953. In addition, Congress legislated specific mechanisms for the disposal of excess lands at prices set by the Secretary of Interior and based upon the value of the land prior to the delivery of water. The 1926 Omnibus Act strengthened these provisions and granted the Secretary the power to confiscate unsold excess lands [29]. Thus Congress repeatedly emphasized that the socialization of the costs of the development of these lands could only be legitimated if the relations of distribution (the allocation of benefits) were as widespread as possible.

In their political struggle to obtain federal social capital outlays for the dam and canal, Imperial Valley growers had presented themselves as an example of the small farmers who needed federal aid to develop arid lands, precisely the situation to which the 1902 Act was directed. They were helped by the fact that the most politically visible opponents of the dam were a land syndicate organized by Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and the private power companies. Thus Swing and the IID lobbied in terms of opposition to vested interests and support for the small entrepreneur [30]. As a basis of political legitimation, then, acreage limitation has strong roots in both U.S. land law and in the politics of the dam and canal itself.

Thus the Boulder Canyon Project Act is closely tied to reclamation law. The first section of the Act provides for the All American Canal "to be reimbursable, as provided in the reclamation law," i.e., through proceeds from sale of arid lands plus payment by the users of the water. Section 14

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makes the Act "a supplement to the reclamation law" and states that "said reclamation law shall govern the construction, operation, and management of the works herein authorized, except as herein otherwise provided." There are no provisions for setting aside the acreage limitation or residency requirements of the reclamation law. If such provisions had been suggested, it is likely that the Act would not have passed. After all, the Imperial Valley and the rest of the Colorado basin were asking for social capital outlays which exceeded the sum of all previous Bureau of Reclamation projects.

ACCUMULATION: LIBERTY AND GROWTH

The founding documents of the American regime contain the promise of liberty as well as the ideal of equality. Liberty has meant the right to accumulate property through the pursuit of self-interest in the market place. Thus liberty and equality contradict each other, for within a market society, the pursuit of equality means a limitation on the right to accumulate unequally, while the pursuit of liberty undercuts equality. Equality has, therefore, been redefined as equal right to accumulate u n e q u a l l y - equality of opportunity. In the context of an extensive frontier and the ideal of equality in the disposal of public lands, the liberty to accumulate unequally sustained petty commodity production in agriculture while generating a monopoly sector of large business in urban industry [31]. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century agribusiness emerged from the centralization and concentration of agrarian capital. This process occurred earliest in California where the pre- cursors of contemporary "factories in the field" appeared in the first decade of this century [32].

Agribusiness appeared later in the Imperial Valley than in the remainder

TABLE I

Average Farm Size and Percent of Land in Farms of 1,000 Acres or More, Imperial County and California

Percent of Land in Farms of Year Average Farm Size (Acres) 1,000 Acres or More

Imperial County Calif. Imperial County Calif.

1920 122.4 242.6 6.8 60.1 1930 127.1 224.4 12.3 63.6 1935 129.7 202.4 14.1 62.3 1940 155.1 230.1 30.4 66.1 1950 279.9 266.9 45.5 71.4 1959 381.2 371.6 52.6 75.6 1974 665.9 493.3 NA 80.2

Source: Calculated from U.S. Agricultural Censuses, 1920-1974

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of California. As Table I indicates, Imperial County remained an area of small farms until the latter 1930s. Prior to 1935 farms of 1,000 acres or more were less than 1 percent of the total and controlled less than one-eighth of the land. This is a striking contrast with the state as a whole where farms of over 1,000 acres covered three-fifths of total farmland and farm size was almost double that of the county. Even during these early decades the county was not exclusively an area of small owners. Tenants and managers were a common feature of the Valley from the beginning. Owner-operators were almost 45 percent of the farmers, however, and held 25 -30 percent of the farmland. Thus, there was a core of small family farmers who knew they would benefit from the arrival of federal water and who were undoubtedly among the large majority of land holders who voted to accept the 1933 contract with the 160-acre limit [33]. There also existed landholdings which would have fallen under the excess land provisions of reclamation law and, in the managers, tenants, and laborers there existed a group capable of farming in the Valley if they were granted access to land.

The arrival of federal water under the Boulder Canyon Project was not used as a lever to extend and consolidate the pattern of family farming, however. Instead, federal social capital outlays were the stimulus for the development of large-scale agraria n capitalism in the Valley. The proportion of land in farms of 1,000 acres or more remained unchanged from 1910 to 1925. The Boulder Canyon Project Act was passed in 1928 and land in farms of over 1,000 acres grew 400 percent between 1925 and 1940. With the completion of the All American Canal in 1942, large farms began to dominate the picture of land distribution in the Valley. Between 1945 and 1950 these farms grew from one-quarter to one-half of the total area and by the 1970s they encompassed three-quarters of county farmland. For the first time the Valley land distribution approximated that of the state as a whole.

TABLE II

Average Farm Size and Proportion of Total Farmland by Tenure of Operator, Imperial County, 1920-1974

Year Full Owners Part Owners Managers and Tenants

Average % of Total Average % of Total Average % of Total Farm Size Farmland Farm Size Farmland Farm Size Farmland

1920 97.3 32.8 258.5 12.7 126.2 54.9 1930 75.9 20.0 282.5 14.8 138.4 65.1 1940 94.0 28.4 445.0 31.5 160.6 40.1 1950 152.8 28.6 595.6 40.8 285.1 28.8 1959 173.3 20.0 704.5 51.8 383.8 28.2 1974 220.3 14.2 1,212.4 60.9 698.9 24.7

Source: Calculated from U.S. Agricultural Censuses, 1920- I 974.

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Average farm size increased along with land concentration. Until the mid-1930s, average farm size in the county was well under the 160-acre limit and considerably smaller than the state average. Average farm size grew by little more than one-quarter between 1935 and 1945, an increase quite similar to that for the state as a whole. However, after the delivery of federal water, average farm size in the county grew 68 percent between 1945 and 1950 and another 36 percent between 1950 and 1959. During this same period, average farm size in the state grew only 47 percent, and by 1959 average farm size in the county exceeded that for California for the first time. Today less than 800 operators control over 500,000 acres. Thus state social capital outlays set in motion a process of land concentration and increasing farm size at a much more rapid rate than was occurring in the remainder of the state.

Farms in the agricultural census are defined as all land under the control of a single individual or partnership whether the land is owned, rented, or leased. Thus the census reports operating units rather than accumulating units, and statistical categories may mask the property relations of agrarian capitalism in the Valley. In Table II we have assembled the data in a manner which reveals the emergence of distinct class fractions within Valley farm operators. Full owners live on and operate only the land they own, part owners live on and operate land they own and rent or lease additional land, while tenants and managers do not own any of the land on which they live and work. Full owners have remained approximately 45 percent of total farm operators for at least a half century but their sociological role has changed dramatically. Their share of total county farmland has declined from one-third to one-seventh and, more importantly, their average farm size has dropped from 85 percent of the county average to one-third today.

Fur ther , they make little use of the hired labor which has been the key to large-scale agriculture in the Valley. In sum, they have been increasingly marginalized in Valley agrarian structure. While tenancy in the county has remained double the state average, this category of farm operator has also declined in the Valley, both as a portion of total operators and as a proportion of total farmland.

It is the emergence of the part owner among the propertied classes in the county which is the most significant development in the last 50 years. Once again, this shift in property relations coincides with the transformation of Valley agriculture through state social capital outlays. Particularly important is the doubling of the share of farm land under the control of part owners between 1930 and 1940. Part owners are closely tied to absentee owners, for both the 1925 and the 1945 agricultural censuses reported that half the land farmed by part owners was rented. The rapid growth in farm size after the arrival of federal water has been primarily a growth of land under the control of part owners. It is they and their absentee allies who have benefitted most from state social capital outlays.

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Where did the new land under the control of part owners come from? The answer to this question illuminates the dynamics of capital accumulation in the Valley and the relationship between state social capital outlays and large- scale absentee ownership. Prior to the completion of the All American Canal, maximum acreage farmed in the county was approximately 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 - 85 percent of which was under the control of full owners and tenants. The completion of the canal and related dams provided a secure and reliable source of water, bringing the major risk factor in Valley agriculture under control [34]. Rationalization of the conditions of capital accumulation through state social capital outlays made possible the addition of 150-200,000 acres to county farmland [35]. This increase of 3 5 - 5 0 percent of total farmland went to part owners. In both 1930 and 1950 the land in full-owner and tenant operated farms was 343,000 acres; however, land under the control of part owners jumped from 60,000 to 243,000 acres. Clearly absentee land owners had held additional acreage for speculative purposes. Rather than executing the contracts (required under reclamation law) for the disposal of this land, the Department of Interior has provided these absentee owners with windfall profits: Imperial County ranked third in the nation in the value of agricultural products per acre in 1974 [361. The absentee landowners involved are among the largest in both California and the nation: Tenneco, Southern Pacific Railroad, United Fruit, Kaiser-Aetna, and the Irvine Land Company are all involved in Valley agriculture [37].

The contradictory political meaning of state intervention in the Valley is rooted in the conflict between the legitimation of that intervention in terms of southwestern development through the family farm and the logic of capital accumulation which has broken the restraints of petty commodity production. Federal irrigation water has increased the land under cultivation and provided a secure and predictable water supply which assures stable rates of capital accumulation in Valley agriculture. Thus the social relations of production have been altered by state social capital outlays and agrarian egalitarianism undermined. At the same time, the agrarian capitalists of the Valley have socialized the costs of irrigation water. Water from the All American Canal is given without charge to Valley growers. This subsidy undercuts the market rationale (the pursuit of liberty) for private capital accumulation and thus makes the legitimation of social capital outlays in the Valley even more difficult [38].

Legitimation and Legal Ideologies

While competing capitalist fractions have sought the help of the state in their drive towards continued capital accumulation, so, too, have dissident groups a t tempted to obtain access to state power i~or their own ends. In the

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case of reclamation of arid lands, the arena of conflict has centered around the legal process and the problem of legitimation. Much of the struggle has been formulated in terms of legal ideologies, as the landless and small propertied have attempted to force compliance with the law, and large landowners have resisted their efforts and sought to change the law. Due to the separation of powers in the federal system, the legislature, executive, and the judiciary were each able to evade the problems of enforcement by passing the issue onto another branch.

An examination of the history of reclamation law reveals a conflict of over 40 years between entrenched large capitalist growers and speculators (and their supporting intellectuals and government bureaucrats) and various organized and unorganized anti-monopolists who have emerged during dif- ferent periods of the twentieth century. This latter group has at various times included small farmers, sharecroppers, veterans, church groups, the AFL-CIO, community activist groups [39] and agricultural laborers (and their supporting intellectuals and government bureaucrats). Each side in the conflict has laid claim to the notion that it is preserving "true" American social relationships. Growers and large landowners claim they are preserving the fundamental value of "liberty," defined as the right of any individual to accumulate as much land as he or she possibly can. On the other hand, small farmers, unions, and agricultural workers claim they are preserving the fundamental value of "equality," based on widespread ownership of land and production by many small farmers and homebuilders rather than one large farmer and a class of landless serfs.

These ideologies, rooted in the contradictory imperatives of accumulation and legitimation, have manifested themselves in legal battles in the courts, the Department of the Interior, and the Congress. Historically, opposition to enforcement of the excess land law has generally moved in two directions: attack on the law itself (through the legislature and the courts) and pressure on administrators to weaken enforcement. The former is preferable since congressional enactment is more final. In 1944, 1947, and 1958 the struggle centered around Congress, as growers attempted to obtain exemptions from the taw and/or to have the law changed. However, they were unsuccessful. Since the 1930s, pressure on the executive branch has been more effective. Administrative bureaucracies of the executive branch are in frequent contact and exchange with those fractions of capital they are charged with regulating. In fact, administrators often come from these very groups and easily come to share a world view with those they regulate. Without the active and organized support of class fractions which favor the implementation of reclamation law, enforcement is easily undermined. Administrative officials of the Depart- ment of the Interior, except for a brief period in the late 1940s, have con- sistently sought to avoid enforcement [40].

The struggle in the 1970s centers on the judicial branch, as small farmers

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and landless persons have been more successful in bringing their concerns to court. The judiciary appears to place more emphasis on the need for legitimation. In fact, it has recently been forced to support openly the application of reclamation law and the break-up of large landholdings, in turn forcing the executive branch into a show of enforcement. Landowners have therefore begun a concerted effort in Congress to have the law changed.

THE POLITICS OF ACCUMULATION: THE LEGISLATURE AND EXECUTIVE

The first administrative interpretation concerning the application of reclamation law to the Imperial Valley was made in 1933 by Secretary of the Interior, Ray Lyman Wilbur, in what came to be known as the Wilbur letter. While Wilbur's Executive Assistant, Northcutt Ely, expressed the view in 1930 that reclamation law was incorporated into the Boulder Canyon Project Act and was therefore applicable to the Imperial Valley, it appears that by 1933 his views had changed. In February of 1933, just ten days before the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt (who would perhaps have been less sym- pathetic to large landowner claims than the Hoover administration), a letter opinion was obtained from the Secretary of the Interior to the effect that reclamation law's 160-acre limitation did not apply to excess landowners in the Valley. This letter was written at the request of an attorney for the Imperial Irrigation District, who indicated that the IID only desired the letter if it would be favorable to their position [41]. It was thought that such a letter might be useful in a pending lawsuit in the Valley.

Secretary Wilbur's argument for nonapplicability of the law was based on the fact that Section 5 of the 1902 Reclamation Act specifically stated, "No right to the use of water for land in private ownership shall be sold for a tract exceeding 160 acres . . . " [Emphasis added]. Water from irrigation projects such as the Boulder Canyon Act was to be delivered, not sold, and no charge was to be made for water so delivered. Therefore, Section 5 did not apply. Also, the argument was made that lands irrigated from the All American Canal were not covered under the Reclamation Act because such lands had a "previously vested water right" which could not be tampered with [42].

This episode marks the beginning of a long history of attempts by the large landowners to manipulate the law for their own benefit. Matters were further complicated in 1933 by the existence of several lawsuits around the applicability of reclamation law to the Boulder Canyon Project Act. In January, 1933, the Imperial Irrigation District commenced an action in the California Superior Court, Imperial County, to confirm the validity of the contract between it and the United States for the construction of the dam at Boulder Canyon and the All American Canal (Hewes v. All Persons, No. 15460). Judicial confirmation proceedings were required by the contract and by

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California and federal law. The validity of the contract was challenged by the nearby Coachella Valley, which was also to benefit from the construction of the water works, and also by a landowner who owned more than 160 acres (Charles Malan v. IID, No. 15454).

Charles Malan alleged the invalidity of the contract because it took away, without compensation, his "previously vested water rights" for land in excess of 160 acres (he owned 200 acres). The Superior Court dismissed Malan's action on the basis that he had no capacity to sue under California law since the irrigation district was already maintaining an action for validation, and that his interests were being protected and his lawsuit unnecessary.

In May of 1933, the court held the contract valid. But it also held that Section 5 of the Reclamation Law of 1902 did not apply (Hewes v. All Persons, supra.). The court used an argument similar to that used forty years later in a suit in federal court to enforce reclamation law (U.S.v. IID, 332 F. Supp. 11 [1971]). In the court's opinion, the Boulder Canyon Project Act incorporated reclamation law specifically in three places, relating to reimbursement, expenditures, and the construction, operation and management of the works. The Act did not adopt reclamation law generally. There- fore, the authority of the Secretary regarding delivery of water was not to be found in reclamation law, but in the Project Act. Section 5 of that Act authorized the Secretary to contract for the delivery of water under such general regulations as he may prescribe. The contract between the U.S. and IID contained a provision that "except as provided in the Boulder Canyon Project Act, reclamation law shall govern the construction, operation, and maintenance of the works to be constructed hereunder." Thus, in the court's opinion, neither the Boulder Canyon Project Act nor the contract limited the acreage to which water might be sold or delivered.

However, this California court, while it had jurisdiction to confirm the contract, exceeded its authority in determining the applicability of a federal statute. Later courts would find that its discussion of this collateral issue was not binding as precedent (Yellen v. Hickel, 352 F. Supp. 130 [1972] ; U.S. v. IID, 559 F. 2d 509 [ 1977] ).

Court records do not indicate whether the Wilbur letter was ever used in the case. However, the Wilbur opinion left a legacy of controversy in its wake. Later Solicitors and Secretaries of the Interior, members of the judiciary, and legislators would argue that owners of land in excess of 160 acres were entitled to rely and had in good faith relied on this ruling for many years, and therefore, to enforce the law would be grossly unfair and disruptive to the economy of the Valley [43]. Yet, as we shall see, Wilbur's ruling was by no means accepted or granted legitimacy throughout the years. In 1945, a new opinion was issued by Solicitor Fowler Harper, strongly repudiating the Wilbur ruling as having been obtained under conditions of clear political

16

partisan help at the request of counsel for the Imperial Irrigation District, who sought the ruling only if it "would be that the 160-acre limitation did not apply" [44]. Solicitor Harper based his opinion on the following facts: (1) excess land provisions were a "firmly established, time-honored and sound public policy"; (2) the Wilbur ruling only referred to Section 5 of the 1902 Reclamation Act and ignored all other supplements and amendments thereto which expressly elaborated the congressional scheme of acreage limitation, and in fact did use the term "delivered" rather than "sold"; (3) whenever excess land provisions did not fit the special circumstances of a project or area, special exemption and waiver had always been made by Con- gress, and the notion of exclusion by omission is not favored by the law; (4) study of congressional debates indicates that excess land provisions were the heart of reclamation law; (5) the Boulder Canyon Project Act, by its Section 14, was clearly declared to be a supplement to reclamation law. The IID sought to avoid a formal ruling emerging out of this opinion from either the judicial or executive branch, for it quite probably would have found against their interests.

Throughout the years, various Solicitors and Secretaries of the Interior issued further inconsistent and contradictory opinions. In 1957 Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin examined the Wilbur letter and arrived at the same conclusion as Solicitor Harper (Memorandum, Arizona v. California, No. 10 Original, 357 U.S. 902 [1957] ). But again Department of the Interior administrative enforcers were reluctant to move against large landowners. In 1958, Solicitor Elmer Bennett, while acknowledging that the Wilbur letter might be an incorrect interpretation of the law, suggested again that landowners had been entitled to rely on that decision and should not be abruptly advised of a change in the law [45].

In 1958 Congress again considered the scheme of reclamation law, with the introduction of three interrelated bills. One bill proposed to give the Secretary of the Interior the power to fix the size of farm units on federal reclamation projects at more than 160 acres (S.B. 2541, 85th Congress, 1st Session). Should it have passed, the issue of the validity of Secretary Wilbur's decision would have been moot. Hearings were held on the bill, but no action was taken, indicating that as late as 1958 there was strong support for the existing law.

It appears that the three branches of government were unable to find a way to both aid capital accumulation and at the same time protect the integrity and legitimacy of social ideologies of democracy, equality, and widespread ownership of land. In 1961, Senator Clinton P. Anderson, Chair of the 1958 Congressional Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, again raised the issue of the applicability of reclamation law to the Imperial Valley, in a letter to Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall. He received an

17

answer nine months later (his letter had been "misplaced"), indicating that the executive branch hoped to study the matter further. In 1964, Solicitor Frank Barry issued his opinion on the history of administrative nonenforcement and concluded that the Boulder Canyon Project Act plainly incorporated the provisions of reclamation law which imposed acreage limitations on lands served from federal reclamation projects. Barry noted further:

The interpretation in the Wilbur l e t t e r . . , was clearly wrong and could not effect a change in the statutes enacted by Congress. The fact that the Department has failed for over 30 years to enforce the excess land l a w s . . , in Imperial Valley cannot legitimize a violation of punic policy contrary to the spirit and the letter of the law [46].

Secretary of the Interior Udall now had an opportunity to test the validity of the Wilbur and Barry rulings by denying water to owners of excess lands and allowing them to contest the denial in court. However, instead, the Department at tempted to negotiate a contract with the IID incorporating acreage limitations [47]. This failed, and the Department of the Interior, rather than denying the water as it had the power to do, chose to bring a lawsuit in 1967 to enforce compliance (U.S.v. Imperial Irrigation District, 322 F. Supp. 11 [ 1971]). This choice might be seen as a delaying tactic, or as a way of passing an unwanted chore on to the judicial branch.

THE POLITICS OF RECLAMATION: THE JUDICIARY

In 1967 the problem of nonenforcement of reclamation law was laid in the hands of the judiciary, specifically the United States District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego), in a case presided over by Judge Howard B. Turrentine. The court held that land limitation provisions of reclamation law did not apply to the Imperial Valley. The basis for the decision was that Congress had not intended the Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928 to incorporate the acreage limitation requirement of reclamation law in the 1902 and 1926 acts (U.S.v. Imperial Irrigation District, 322 F. Supp. 11 [1971]). Judge Turrentine determined that the Project Act was supplemental to reclamation law only with regard to construction, operation, and management, and did not apply with regard to "delivery." A further basis for the decision was the need to protect landowner "present perfected water rights" emerging out of the Colorado River compact and recognized in the Boulder Canyon Project Act and Arizona v. California (376 U.S. 340 [ 1964] ; 373 U.S. 546 [ 1962] ). Judge Turrentine also held that Congress would have included express mention of acreage limitation in all sections of the Project Act, and not simply relegated the issue to indirect inclusion, had it really -intended it to apply.

In justifying his decision, Judge Turrentine analyzed the legislative history

18

of the Boulder Canyon Project Act, stating he approached the issue of acreage limitation "with reluctance" (322 F. Supp. 20). This is unusual, as courts generally find great merit in conducting legislative histories [48]. The judge narrowly conceptualized a legislative history as an examination of the introduction of various bills from 1919 to 1928 designed to implement the Boulder Canyon reclamation project and whether or not each contained a specific acreage limitation provision. Since the final version of the bill did not specifically contain such a provision, he determined that it had not been incorporated. Thus, the government plaintiff lost its case. The decision was made soon thereafter by the Justice Department and the Department of the Interior not to appeal. As a result of this decision, the entire pattern of reclamation policy was at stake, not only in the Imperial Valley, but elsewhere throughout the West [49]. Chaos might result in all states where reclamation law had been applied and might be applied in the future. As Paul Taylor indicates:

Spokesmen for the judicial, the administrative and the legislative branches of government each sought to lay responsibility for the death of public policy upon the others. The judicial branch charged the legislative with defective bill drafting and an obligation, unfulfilled, to monitor enforcement by the administrative branch. The administrative branch laid blame on the legislative branch for having opened the door to frustration of policy by administrative and judicial interpretation. And a member of the Congress appealed vainly to the administration not to abandon its support of public policy as written, but to press on through the judicial hierarchy for a favorable decision [ 50].

Further confusion over the law ensued when, at approximately the same time Judge Turrentine rendered his decision, another judge of the same U.S. District Court, William D. Murray (Visiting Judge, Montana), rendered a totally contradictory decision in another case involving reclamation law in the Imperial Valley (Yellen v. Hickel, 355 F. Supp. 200 [S.D. Cal. 1971] and 352 F. Supp. 1300 [1972]). In this case, the U.S. Department of the Interioi~ was the defendant and the plaintiffs, a doctor (Ben Yellen), an agricultural labour contractor, and 121 landless agricultural laborers who reside in the Imperial Valley. initially, the judge rendered summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, but excess landowners, who felt the government was not sufficiently protecting their interests, sought leave to intervene, and a full trial was held. The major issue in this case was whether the residency requirement of reclamation law (S.5 of the 1902 Act) applied to the Imperial Valley via the Boulder Canyon Project Act's Section 14. The residency requirement is analogous to the excess land provision in reclamation law, in that both elements were implementations of the policy of anti-monopoly.

In rendering his decision in Yellen v. Hickel, Judge Murray first argued that "delivery" was included in the terms "construction, operation, and maintenance" of the Project Act. He based this argument on Ivanhoe Irrigation District v. McCracken, 357 U.S. 275 (1959) where the U.S.

19

Supreme Court held the 160-acre limitation applicable even though there was no °"sale," but rather, a contract between the government and the irrigation district to repay the construction costs of the project. A ""sale" was to be construed as a scheme by which all participants in a project share its costs by contracting to repay the government expense. Secondly, while Judge Turrentine argued that Congress would have expressly included reference to acreage limitation in the Boulder Canyon Project Act had it desired that aspect of reclamation law to apply, Judge Murray argued that the absence of express repeal was evidence of congressional intent to include it by reference. Judge Murray also held that residency was not simply a thres- hold requirement, but a durational one as well. Otherwise, this would be contrary to the whole tenor of reclamation law which was not intended to provide supplemental income to former residents. Judge Murray rejected the landowners' claim of vested water rights. The user of water simply has a privilege to that use which is subject to state and federally imposed conditions (352 F. Supp, 1306). The property right in water is vested in the state. The landowners' arguments failed for four reasons: 1) there was no right to take water from the Colorado, a navigable river, and no perfected water rights as of 1929, but merely an intake clogged with silt and a Mexican diver- sion; 2) the landowners were perfectly free to use their original diversions in lieu of Project water; 3) the landowners never complied with the decree in Arizona v. California (376 U.S. 340 [ 1964] ) requiring them to submit their claims to water rights in the Colorado River for acknowledgment by the Secretary of the Interior; and 4) pre-project water rights were irrelevant because the IID derived a benefit from the use of a government facility and therefore reclamation law was applicable.

The landowners also raised the question of whether their constitutional rights were being denied (equal protection under the Fourteenth Amend- ment) in discriminating between residents and nonresidents as to the receipt of water. The court felt this was, however, a reasonable and permissible distinction to make. The Judge also ruled on the effect of the Wilbur letter and subsequent administrative nonenforcement , and held that the intent of Congress and interests of the public could not be thwarted because of the nonfeasance of public officials. The rule of law requiring deference to administrative interpretations of long standing (Tallman v. Udall, 380 U.S. 1 [1965]) did not apply in this case because there was no one consistent administrative interpretation and the case involved national policy rather than the construction of an administrative regulation. Also, the 1933 lower state court decision in Hewes v. All Persons (supra) was not an adjudication of Section 5 residency rights, as that court did not have jurisdiction over a question collateral to the contract confirmation proceeding.

Thus, there emerged two diametrically opposed opinions by the same court on the issues of: 1) previously vested water rights, 2) administrative non-

20

enforcement of congressional policy, 3) application of reclamation law to the Boulder Canyon Project Act, 4) state court adjudication of reclamation law, and 5) the intent of the legislature as to the purpose of reclamation law. The government (Department of the Interior) found itself in the embarrassing position of claiming in one case (despite its history of nonenforcement) that reclamation law (Section 46 of the 1926 Act) did apply to the Imperial Valley, and in the other case defending the nonapplicability of reclamation law (Section 5 of the 1902 Act). The government's position was rejected in both cases. Thus, it was up to the appellate court to decide the issues of acreage limitation and residency. The government appealed the residency case of Yellen v. Hiekel (now Yellen v. Andrus, the new Secretary of the Interior), and the plaintiffs in that case were permitted by the Court of Appeals to intervene in the acreage limitation case (U.S.v. l iD) and pursue that on appeal in combination with the residency case (U.S.v. IID, 559 F. 2d 509 [1977]).

Once at the appellate level, Yellen, et al. floundered on the question of standing. Although the appellate court had previously granted the group standing at the District Court level, it now reversed itself and declared that Yellen and the agricultural laborers lacked the requisite direct personal interest or injury to pursue the residency appeal. However, the court decided there was standing to intervene in and appeal the government's original acreage limitation case. Because the government had standing to sue, a party seeking to intervene need not possess the standing necessary to initiate the lawsuit. The Yellen group was within the class of beneficiaries of reclamation laws, as potential purchasers of farm land at prices set according to the 1926 Reclamation Act. The court noted that there were approximately 800 owners of irrigable land in the IID whose holdings totalled over 160 acres, and that the land holdings of this group was over 233,000 acres. Sale of these excess lands would make family size farms available for purchase at prices below current market prices. Thus, a particularized injury was stated: in order for the Yellen group to buy land they must pay higher prices than they would if Section 46 of the 1926 law were enforced. The court then went on to analyze the issues.

The 1933 Superior Court case of Hewes v. All Persons (to confirm the contract between the U.S. and the IID) was held to have simply established the validity of that contract. Its discussion of whether the Boulder Canyon Project Act incorporated excess land limitations was irrelevant and purely "elicta," and did not foreclose consideration of the applicability of reclamation law by later courts.

The court held that the Boulder Canyon Project Act was incorporated into the framework of reclamation law, and that acreage limitation applied to the Imperial Valley. Had Congress desired to exempt the Imperial Valley,

21

it would have done so by express enactment. As for "present perfected water rights" recognized in the Colorado compact, the court held that no individual landowner had filed a claim under the terms specified in Arizona v. California,

376 U.S. 351 [1964]. Under California law the IID holds legal title to the Colorado River water in trust for the landowners in common. Thus, users of water do not possess rights that can be considered private property. The Secretary of the Interior is required to supply a certain quantity of water to the IID, but need not supply a particular amount to any one landowner.

The landowners also raised narrow arguments that the scheme of the Boulder Canyon Project Act was inconsistent with reclamation law (particularly Section 46 of the 1926 Act). The court rejected these arguments, and noted that the legislative history clearly indicated congressional intent to make the Project Act part of reclamation law and to have excess land limitations apply. Finally, the court rejected the landowners' argument that they were entitled to rely on long-standing administrative practice based on the Wilbur letter of 1933. The court felt that because the Wilbur letter referred only to Section 5 of the 1902 reclamation act and water "sold," without regard for Section 46 of the 1926 reclamation act which referred to water "delivered," this portion of the letter was irrelevant. The court considered the administrative history of the letter (Solicitor Harper's critique, Solicitor General Rankin's memorandum, and Solicitor Barry's rejection) and found it to be an informal, legally incorrect opinion entitled to no deference. Simple inaction based on previous inaction could not be elevated to an administrative determination to which courts should defer. The landowners were not entitled to rely on the Wilbur letter, particularly since many excess holdings were acquired even before the Wilbur letter was issued. If a landowner could indeed show reliance to his detriment, he might be entitled to greater compensation upon the sale of his excess lands. Thus, the court found for the Yellen inter- venors and the government against the landowners. In September, 1978 the landowners asked for a rehearing by the court of appeals on the issue of standing to intervene. They argued that standing was based on an erroneous district court ruling on standing (Yellen v. Hickel - the residency case), and therefore the basis for intervention had disappeared.

Plaintiffs in other areas of California have also sought enforcement of reclamation law through the courts. The litigants in these cases have generally been small famil~y farmers or those who seek to create small family farms. The case which had the greatest effect on the potential enforcement of the law involved irrigated lands in the Fresno area, National Land for People v. Bureau Reclamation, 417 F. Supp. 449 (1976), heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In this case the court upheld National Land's contention that the Bureau of Reclamation must make public its rules and regulations governing excess land sales which are to be carried out

22

under the provisions of reclamation legislation of 1902 and 1926. The court ordered the Bureau of Reclamation to initiate rulemaking proceedings pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, and enjoined the Bureau from approving any excess land sales thus far submitted.

In August, 1977, the Department of the Interior, in response to this court order, announced that it would enforce the acreage limitation and residency requirements of reclamation law. The Bureau of Reclamation issued proposed Reclamation Rules and Regulations in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (Federal Register, 42, 165, August 25, 1977:43044). The public was given until November 23, 1977 to submit comments, suggestions, or objections. Public hearings were held. Secretary of the Interior Andrus spoke upholding the anti-monopoly ideology of the small farm tradition:

The law is good. It is in tended to get the family farmers ou t there on the land. There are social values that exceed some of the economic values . . . . I don ' t quarrel one bit wi th giving a subsidy to locate farmers on the land . . . . But when the benefi ts accrue to c o r p o r a t i o n s . . . I f ind fault with tha t [51] .

The regulations define the procedures by which excess lands are to be sold and who might qualify as a purchaser. Residency is included as a requirement. The Bureau said its rulemaking was designed to discourage speculation and aid in the establishment of genuine small family farms. The past practice of allowing an excess land seller to arrange privately for sale was abolished, and the Department of the Interior was to choose among prospective purchasers by lottery [52] or other impartial means. The Department specifically stated in its proposed rules that the quality of the environment would not be affected and that no environmental impact statement was required.

Soon after these rules for the sale of excess lands were proposed, a lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, County of Fresno v. Andrus, No. F-77-202 (December, 1977), which is still pending. This suit was filed by excess landowners requesting a preliminary injunction enjoining the rulemaking proceedings of the Bureau of Reclama- tion in order to obtain an environmental impact statement (EIS) in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq. The district court issued the injunction and restrained the Department from continuing the rulemaking procedure until such statement was prepared. The government decided not to appeal this ruling to a higher court. The Environ- mental Impact Statement approximately a year in completion should be available in the summer of 1979. This of course lets the administrative branch off the hook until then, and it is not surprising that the decision was not appealed. Attention will thereby be shifted to Congress, and the Depart- ment can continue its policy of nonenforcement.

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In May of 1978, the Bureau of Reclamation prepared a revised draft of rules and regulations for acreage limitation, "to serve as the proposal on which the EIS will be drafted" [53]. Since this is classified an internal working document, it is not available for public distribution. It is curious, however, that new rules have been prepared before the study which is to indicate the impact of the old rules on the environment.

Lawsuits by the Yellen group, National Land for People, small farmers, and community organizations illustrate how members of the insurgent strata may attempt to force the state to follow its own laws and clearly expressed values internalized by a vast majority of the population. The struggle in the courts which has formed around these suits and others has forced the state to examine its all too obvious policy of support for agribusiness and land monopoly i n opposition to the law. Because the theory and practice of government are contradictory, the way is open for insurgents to force compliance with the legal ideology.

The courts generally appear at this point to favor legitimation over capital accumulation, and to have rejected notions of private ownership of public water resources. Administrative nonenforcement and congressional inaction have not been allowed as substitutes for actual lawmaking. In essence, the judicial branch has sent the issue of reclamation law back to Congress to create, if it will, a new legal ideology supporting corporate agriculture [ 54].

Conclusion

The issues raised by reclamation law in the Imperial Valley illuminate the contradiction which lies at the core of the American political economy. The agrarian capitalists of the Valley argue that liberty, the right to accumulate unequal amounts of wealth, is the essence of the American dream. In contrast, lawsuits by insurgent groups are rooted in the assumption that the promise of the American experiment is equality, the legitimation of the social relations of market society through widespread ownership of the means of production. These antagonistic class imperatives are thus carried by social groups with conflicting interests. At this point, the issues are largely confined to a few agricultural regions in California. However, the implications extend much further than a single county or state. Fourteen of the fifteen wealthiest agricultural counties lie in the arid region west of the hundredth meridian. Nine of these are in California. This agribusiness success depends not upon land and climate but upon the relationship between the state and class political power. All fourteen of these counties, and much of the rest of western agriculture, rely upon state-financed irrigation projects for their rise and growth.

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The theoretical problems in understanding the rise of agrarian capital in the West are complex. The political interests of competing class fractions were expressed through the particularistic appropriation of state power. In turn, the intersection of these forces and their mediation by policy currents produced divergent actions by government agencies and branches seeking to realize the class imperatives of accumulation and legitimation. It required state mediation at the federal level to process politically social capital outlays as legitimation expenditures. Yet that transformation was a fragile one, based upon the stability of class relations in western agriculture. The weakness of this stability of class domination is made clear by the court battles between agrarian capitalists and landless laborers. Thus, accumulation and legitimation stand in contradiction to each other in both the economy and the state.

Notes

1 Calculated from U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1977). 1974 Census o f Agriculture, Vol. 1, Part 5, California State and County Data, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 73-74. Throughout this paper we have used statistics for Imperial County since the Department of Commerce does not separate Imperial Valley from the rest of the county. Farmland in the Valley accounts for approximately 97 percent of total farmland in the county so the fit is very close.

2 Therborn, G~Sran (1978). What Does the Ruling Class do When it Rules?, London: NLB. 3 O'Connor, James (1973). The Fiscal Crisis o f the State, NY: St. Martin's Press; Poulantzas, Nicos

(1975). Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: NLB. 4 Kolko, Gabriel (1963). The Triumph of Conservatism, Chicago: Quadrangle, esp. pp. 2 - 4 and

279ff. 5 Interest group perspectives represent the immediate and narrow concerns of a fraction of capital,

the domination of accumulation over legitimation. Since fractions of capital are in competition with each other, the logic of capital accumulation generates conflicting pressures on and within state agencies and leads to contradictory policies. Thus interest group consciousness alone would make the reproduction of capitalism as a mode of social organization problematic. The relative autonomy of the state (the fact that it is not simply an instrument in the hands of capital) allows a process of political mediation and the creation of a class conscious perspective which integrates the imperatives of accumulation and legitimation. This perspective and the resulting policies may actually conflict with the immediate profit interests of a fraction of capital since these do not necessarily coincide with the reproduction and expansion of the accumulation process. See O'Connor, op. cit., pp. 65-70 ; Poulantzas, Nicos (1973). Political Power and Social Classes, London: NLB, pp. 255-295; Therborn, op. cit., pp. 162ff. Theo J. Majka makes this same distinction in "Regulating Farmworkers: The State and Agricultural Labor Supply in California," Contemporary Crises 2:141-144.

6 Hosmer, Helen (1966). "Triumph and Failure in the Colorado Desert," American West 3:37-8. 7 Hosmer, op. cir., p. 40; Hundley, Norris, Jr. (1966). DivMing the Waters, Berkeley: University of

California Press, pp. 31-32. 8 Hundley (1966), op. cit., p. 34; Hundley, Norris (1975). Water and the West, Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press, pp. 21-25 ; Taylor, Paul (1973). "Water, Land, and Environment Imperial Valley: Law Caught in the Winds of Politics," National Resources Journal 13(1): 1-35.

9 Tout, OtisB.(1931).TheFirstThirtyYears, SanDiego:ToutandSons, p. 99. 10 Hosmer, op. cit., pp. 44 -45 ; Hundley (1966), op. cit., p. 22. 11 Taylor (1973), op. cit., p. 5.

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12 Kennan, George (1917). The Salton Sea, NY: McMillan; Schonfield, Robert (1968). "The Early Development of California's Imperial Valley," Southern California Quarterly 50:397-415; Tout, op. cit., pp. 107-109.

13 Nadeau, Remi A. (1950). The Water Seekers, NY: Doubleday, p. 168. 14 Schonfield, op. cit., pp. 419-422; Tout, op. cit., pp. 112-121. 15 Kolko, op. cir.; Weinstein, James (1968). The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State: 1900-1918,

Boston: Beacon, esp. pp. ix-xv. 16 Nadeau, op, cir., pp. 169-170. 17 Dowd, M. J. (1951). The Colorado River Flood-Protection Works of ImperiaI Irrigation District:

History and Cost, E1Centro, CA: liD, pp. 61-62. 18 Hundley (1975), op. cit., pp. 38-43, 49-50. 19 Nadeau, op. tit., pp. 178ff. 20 Huffman, Roy E. (1953). Irrigation Development and Public Water Policy, NY: The Ronald

Press, pp. 38-45. 21 See e.g., Hosmer, op. cit., esp. pp. 44ff. 22 Block, Fred (1977). "The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the

State," Socialist Revolution, Vol. 7, No. 3. 23 Hundley (1975), op. cir., p. 35; Nadeau, op. cit., p. 171. 24 Moeller, Beverley Bowen (1971).Phil Swing and Boulder Dam, Berkeley: University of California

Press, pp. 34-36; Nadeau, op. cit., pp. 212-220. 25 Moeller, op. cit., pp. 93-95. 26 In this process of political mediation the conflict of interest groups, which pluralist analysis

emphasizes, is an empirical reality. However; this empirical data acquires political meaning only within a theoretical conception of the capitalist state as the crystallization of the contradictory class imperatives of accumulation and legitimation. See O'Connor, op. cit., pp. 63-68; and Offe, Claus (1974). "Structural Prbblems of the Capitalist State," in Klaus yon Beyme (ed.) German Political Studies, VoL 1, Beverly Hills, California: Sage, p. 49ff.

27 Williams, Win. A. (1966). The Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle, pp. 159ff. See also Beard, Charles (1913). The Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, NY: Harcourt and Janovich; and Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay (1961). The Federalist Papers, NY: New American Library, esp. Nos. 10 and 41.

28 Department of Interior (1964). Acreage Limitation Policy, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 7ff.

29 Ibid., pp. 6-10 , 20. 30 MoeUer, op. cit., pp. 86ff; Tout, op. cit., pp. 252ff. Space prohibits any discussion of the conflicts

between Valley capitalists and the Chandler interests. See Gottlieb, Robert and Irene Wolt (1977). Thinking Big, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, pp. 161if; Hundley (1966), op. cit., pp. 44ff; Moeller, op. cit; and Nadeau, op. cit., pp. 17ff.

31 Averitt, Robert (1968). The DueIEconomy, NY: Norton. 32 McWilliams, Carey (1971). Factories in the Field, Santa Barbara, CA: Peregrine Publishers,

pp. 81ff. 33 The vote was 4,947 to 729. In votes by secret ballot, California farmers have generally accepted

excess land law for water, Taylor, Paul (1958). "Excess Land Law," Rocky Mountain Law Review 30:1.

34 U.S. Dept. of Interior (1941). The Story of Boulder Dam, Conservation Bulletin No. 9, Washington, D.C. : U.S. GPO, pp. 35-40.

35 U.S. Depart. of Interior (1956). The Contribution of the All American Canal System, Boulder Canyon Project, to the Economic Development of the lmperial and Coachella Valleys, California, and the Nation, Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, p. 4 and U.S. agricultural censuses 1945, 1950, 1954, 1959, and 1964.

36 U.S. Dept. of Commerce (1978). 1974 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 4, Special Reports, Part 2, Ranking Counties and States, Washington, D.C. : U.S. GPO, p. 2.

37 Baltis, George and Maia Sorter (1970). "Water, Land and Power." Fresno, Calif.: National Land for the People; Barnes, Peter (1971). "Water, Water for the Wealthy," New Republic, May 8,

26

1971, pp. 9 -13 ; California Agrarian Action Project (1977). "Largest Imperial County Farm Operators," Davis, Calif.: Imperial Valley Press, Jan. 9, 1965.

38 Ballis and Sorter, op. cit; Barnes, op. cir. 39 Community groups active in reclamation issues include National Land for People, California

Agrarian Action Project, California Rural Assistance League, and National Coalition for Land Reform.

40 Taylor, Paul (1955). "Excess Land Law: Execution of a Public Policy," Yale L. J. 64:504; Fellmeth, Robert C. (1971). Power and Land in California. Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Responsive Law, III-52.

41 Department of the Interior (1956), op. cit., p. 41. 42 Department of the Interior (1964), op. cit., p. 30. 43 Ibid., pp. 4 3 - 4 6 ; Burgener, Clair W. (1978). Statement before the Subcommittee on Water and

Power Resources, Committee on Interior, U.S. House of Representatives, July 17. 44 Ibid., pp. 32-44 . 45 Ibid., pp. 43 -45 . 46 Taylor (1973), op. cit., p. 13 47 Ibid. 48 Jacobstein, J. Myron and Roy M. Mersky (1973). Fundamentals o f Legal Research, New York:

The Foundation Press. 49 Taylor (1973), op. cir., p. 18. 50 Ibid., p. 20. 51 Leary, Mary Ellen (1977). "The New 'Winning of the West,' "Nation, Dec. 17, p. 648. 52 Called "communistic" by growers. Ibid. 53 Barrett, Clifford (1978). Personal communication to authors from Assistant Commissioner,

Bureau of Reclamation, October 27. 54 The Environmental Impact Statement was due to be released in the summer of 1979. However,

the study was extended to encompass the impact of acreage limitation on 17 Western states, and is now scheduled for completion in November or December, 1980. In the meantime, on Septem- ber 14, 1979, the Senate passed a bill raising the 160-acre limit to 1,280 acres and exempting the Imperial Valley and several other farm areas in California from all acreage restrictions. The bill will now be debated in the House. Should it pass, the EIS will be a moot issue, and the battle between small and large farmers openly resolved in favor of capital accumulation. A new form of legitimation will probably emerge to justify the liquidation of the ideologies of equality and anti-monopoly.

State, capital and legitimation crisis: Land and water in California's Imperial Valley

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