本文為在台灣任教的印度神學家周勉（M.P.Joseph）為「新使者」所寫的文章。中文翻譯已刊載於120期「新使者」，限於篇幅略有刪節。在此刊出Joseph教授的原文。
M.P.Joseph近年致力於全球化的研究，有著堅強的左派立場。可惜他在台灣任教多年，卻少有機會和台灣學者交流。
“Land for Profit” delegitimize the motherhood of Nature:
Struggles of peasants under neo-liberal globalization
Demonstrations in front of the Presidential Office in Taipei by farmers from Dapu Borough, who were forced to give up their land for a science park, highlighted the plight of the farmers in the neo-liberal economic policies. Farmers in Dapu and Miaoli County felt that their right to life is denied when the government seized and demolished rice paddies ready for harvesting in order to make way for development projects. Does the incident of land grabbing by state and industrial houses tell that the farmers have any space in the economic life of the nation? Or are they “expendables” in the eyes of the “modernizing” nation state? These questions were answered to some extent by the refusal of President Ma Ying-jeou to give an ear to the grievances of the farmers. To the political rulers of the neo-liberal nation states, farmers are not a force to reckon with. They hold no economic power and thus no political power.
Dapu incident, however, is not an isolated case. Tales of farmers from Nandigram and Singur in the West Bengal State of India tell the plight of tens of thousands of farmers in the globalized world. There, land was acquired in most cases at gun-point (terrorizing people is one way of obtaining their consent), under the colonial Land Acquisition Act (1894). The acquired land in Singur was to be given to one of the biggest industrial house named Tatas to develop automobiles for the global market and in Nandigram for an Indonesian chemical factory. The land is cordoned off and policed by the state police. The dispossessed villagers are lost to history. A fortunate few among them may probably become wage slaves of the Tatas and the multi national chemical company, on the land on which they were once owners. Once they become wage slaves their stories will be trumpeted by the neo-liberal media to showcase the success of global capitalism.
Peasant societies around the world are going through a process which is now termed as de-peasantization. During the late sixties and early seventies the term de-farmerization was used to identify the problems faced by the small farmers in Africa. The onslaught on farming economy brought by the policy of import-substitution proposed by the developmental ideology was the context of those observations on de-farmerization. However, by the middle of 1980’s a new political term, “de-peasantization”, has evolved to delineate the realities encountered by the small peasants. The studies to examine the changing political economy of farmers contributed to the identification of this term. These studies concentrated more specifically on the changing economic scenario of the small peasants like the corn farmers in Mexico in 1970’s and 1980’s. As the WTO regulations set to determine the fate of agricultural economies around the world and the disappearance of small peasants have became a grave phenomenon in agricultural production, the enquiry on de-peasantization became pertinent. For example, in the Philippines around 2.7 million small peasants lost their relationship with agricultural economy in the period of 1994 to 2000 and they migrated to cities and other countries.
Peasants – An aberration in civilized society?
De-peasantization in the global south has intensified due to various factors. Conversion of agricultural land for industrial development in the name of development and modernization, as witnessed in Dapu and Miaoli, is one of the primary reasons for the disappearance of peasant communities. This process was intensified with the myth that peasant societies represent a relatively less civilized society while advanced industrial society is the epitome for civilization.
Narrative of modernity made it easy for neo-liberal rhetoric to become a commonsense in public consciousness. Modernity was introduced not just as an economic or cultural project but as a moral imperative; where modern is considered as good and therefore is a moral obligation. In the opposite end of modern is traditional, termed as primitive. Since modern is good, traditional represents evil. Modernity thus is a teleological theory and within this narrative peasants as a class represent the traditional which need to be wiped out for the construction of a modern, utopian and civilized society. In the concept of modern, utopian, civilized society, peasants are the binary opposites and thus no place in the construction of modern societies. This narrative is constructed as a public consciousness that encouraged people to look-down upon peasant communities, if possible as cancer to the body politics of the modern civilized societies. Thus the civil societies are rather insensitive to the struggles of the peasant communities to ensure their right to life. In some cases, civil societies are inimical to the demands of the peasant organizations. The so-called “modern society” encourages peasants to negate their very being and to turn away from their culture.
Modernity narrative also made accumulation as a moral obligation. Since prosperity equals good life, any means to gain prosperity assumed moral legitimacy. According to this logic, to be poor, and having no ability to accumulate is a moral sin which invites eternal damnation and hell. Accumulation is a fetish in modern society. Production practices that are not oriented towards faster rate of surplus generation hence are a moral anathema in this logic.
This narrative implies that peasants as a social category are a moral aberration; and their physical and conceptual presence is unacceptable to the growth towards modernity.
WTO regulations and Peasant economy
WTO rules are framed to support this myth that profit seeking industrial society is the moral objective of modern system. WTO thus promoted several measures to ensure that privately owned industrial development has priority in the development planning of each nation. But that doesn’t mean that human society could exist without a supporting food industry. Food production is vital for the sustenance of any society. The remedy that WTO proposed is to encourage monopoly control on agriculture by few Multi national agro business companies by eliminating small farmers from having any role in agricultural production. And that is what is taking place in the present system. Around 80 percent of food production and distribution is already in the hands of 5 or 6 major agro business companies from the Western nations.
Further, to ensure the death of small peasants, WTO forced nation states to withdraw public or state support to peasant communities around the world. Although, the peasant communities through hard labor produce and bring cheap food products to the market at a price mostly below cost price, WTO regulations prevented the social support given to the vital role farmers played in national economy. It is a simple fact that industrial centers and urban cities around the world have developed only because of the support provided by peasant communities. Industrial revolution also owes its debts to the peasants. Since the peasants produced and supplied cheap food to the industrial class, they had the luxury to move into new areas of production, without being bothered by questions of how to meet their sustenance. Even now, urban centers thrive without engaging in food production due to the fact that farmers brought cheap food to support the urban population. This generosity was exploited and the ruling communities later reconstructed the political economy of their respective nations to ensure that the peasant communities continue to work with the sole objective of supporting the needs of the industrial class in the urban centers. The WTO regime however, refused to accept the role of the peasants and thus encouraged nation states to withdraw all social support offered to them.
The myth of Green revolution
Green revolution is another nail placed on the coffins of the rural peasantry. Green revolution accelerated the process of private control over bio-technologies and seeds in the hands of few companies. Small peasants were made to realize that their share in agricultural economy is rather limited. Rapid variations in the seed price in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India explain this scenario. Traditionally small peasants depend upon the government owned seed processing units to procure seeds for their agricultural process. But in 2003, to oblige the guidelines on monetary supply set by International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organizations, the state government closed down 14 out of 24 seed processing units of Andhra Pradesh State Seed Development Corporation. This space for seed development was replaced by Multinational Agro-business corporations such as Cargill and Monsanto. As a result, seed price jumped 1428% between 1991 and 2005. Genetically modified varieties are sold in 2005 at a price which is higher by 3555% compared to the median price of 1991. Majority of the farmers suicide in India has occurred in this state is therefore not an accident.
Food aid programme of the US government named under PL 480 and other similar policies marked the beginning of the shift in agricultural production. As an imposed political measure, third world governments around the world were forced to accept cheap grain from the US producers from 1951 onwards. Since these exports were subsidized by US federal government funds, farmers in US were able to dump huge amount of grain for a rock bottom price around the world. By 1965 more than 80% of US wheat imports were totally financed by US food aid. As a result of the control of grain market by dumping cheap grains, US producers prodded the third world farmers to abandon food production and move into different areas of agricultural production, mainly cash crops. By 1970 US share of world export in wheat, maize and soybeans has increased to 35%, 50% and 90% respectively.
As a result, basic food production in the rather self-sufficient, surplus producing third world has been ceased and they began to produce for the luxury needs of the northern consumers with produces such as cut flowers, vanilla beans, coco-seeds and others. However, the prices of these luxury items were at the mercy of the buyers and not the producers. Producers in the third world had no control on market and therefore they always remained in the subsistence level, producing for the demands of the western customers.
Moral bankruptcy of WTO regulations on subsidy
In recent years, WTO regulations accelerated the process of food export from the north to the south. While import liberalization was made mandatory to be part of the WTO regime, it suggests two different moral yardsticks in allowing subsidy payment to farmers. While public subsidies to the small farmers in the third world countries were written off as an immoral intervention by state in the freedom of market, WTO allowed huge subsidies to be paid to the corporate farmers hailing from the rich Northern hemisphere. This double standard in the moral administration of the international financial agencies assisted the corporate food regimes to reduce the price of the global farm products by as much as 57% below the actual cost price. The case of cotton farmers explains this new scenario. In 2001, 25,000 cotton growers in US received roughly 3.9 billion dollars in subsidy payment for producing cotton crop that was worth only US$ 3 billion. Meaning that they were able to dump the products in the market for whatever prices pleases them. These subsidies strengthened their maneuvering control over the global agricultural market.
Subsidies to corporate farmers increased while totally withdrawing any state support to the small and medium farmers in the third world. Duke of Westminster, for example, receives 350,000 pounds sterling for the 1200 diary cows he owns as subsidy per year. European Union provides a daily subsidy of US$2.7 per cow to the dairy farmers in Europe, while around 3 billion people or roughly half the population in the world lives with less than US$2, remarkably less than the subsidy that Europeans are paying for the maintenance of a cow per day.
Import of food products with artificially created market price has devastating impacts on small peasants around the world. Indonesia was rated as one among the top ten exporter of rice before WTO came into effect. After participating for three years in the WTO regime, Indonesia has emerged as the largest importer of rice in 1998.
WTO regime redraws the agricultural production map within few years after its advent. According to the report from Foreign Agricultural Service of US department of Agriculture, “America export more meat than steel, more corn than cosmetics, more wheat than coal, more bakery products than motor boats, more fruits and vegetables than household appliances.”
As a consequence producers in the third world lost their ability to engage in production. They are now redundant. This process is what is described as de-peasantization in short.
Peasants under Neo liberal globalization
Construction of the neo-liberal ideology rationalized the process of de-peasantization. A term commonly used to denote neo-liberal globalization is “money-theism”; the rule of money. In a theistic society the concept of God offered authority to rule. Under the new theism, the all centers of authority and power are replaced by money or capital. Whatever ideologies or practices fit to satisfy the ever–expanding thirst for growth of capital, is employed in the current process. In the words of the peasant activist Marcos of the Zapatista Movement of Chiapas: “neo-liberalism is the attempt to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there ….” and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico.
Globalization is only a myth that neo-liberal economic model has constructed. There are two process taking place under neoliberal economic paradigm. (a) Development of giant corporations with virtual control of global production, replacing small and medium size producers, both in industries and agriculture. Small producers are wiped out for offering monopoly control over production and market to the big corporations. (b) Emergence of transnational finance capital which frees itself from any social responsibility and function within the logic of its expansion.
The growth of a market for securities and shares cohabited with the rise of big corporations. The text book economics suggests that the role of stocks and shares is to pool the savings for more productive investments. However, very seldom it is a reality. Capital market has different functions now. Capital circulated in the financial market has very little role in supporting production or trade. It is calculated that hardly two percent of transferable liquid capital exchanged in the global financial market accounts to production, distribution, and services. Capital in speculative form travels from one place to another in a matter of seconds with the aim of increasing its value. Value is added to capital in speculative market for capital and money.
Creation “from nothing”
How is it morally justifiable that wealth is created in the speculative market alone? Peasants have no ability to create wealth, neither labour has. They are outside the speculative capital market, and those who failed to participate in the speculative capital remain marginalized from the world of wealth. The market of speculative capital has defeated all the given economic theories. It was traditionally considered that, value was created through a complex interaction between varied forms of raw material, capital and labour. Since raw material and capital was fixed, the role of labour in the creation of value was hailed as cardinal. Invalidating this traditional view, transnational capital creates value “from nothing”, from the void. No need to engage in production; instead one could buy and sell currency notes or shares and stokes, and wealth is created.
Creation “from nothing”, is a concept of the Bible to remind that there was no materials cause in the act of creation by God. This concept is the theological expression of the fact that the world and human beings along with space and time owe themselves solely to God and not to another cause. Exclusivity of God is now under question since financial market claims the possibility of creating “from nothing”. No material foundation is required for creation under the speculative realm of the capital market. This is indeed a faith crisis.
Two issues are involved. One, the replacement of the import of Divine in personal and collective life by money. Second, is the rationalization of sin. Deification of the tangible possibilities (including finance market) is a sin according to the creation narratives, but that is what ne-liberalism proposes.
When money assumed the ability to create value, labour, including peasants lost their capacity to create value. Living labour became redundant, expendable. That is why peasants are seen as a problem. While capital is an asset, or a cause for celebration, labour is viewed as a curse, a source for distress.
Capital [or mammon] is deified and living labor [the true image of divine] is demonized. Peasants who are engaged in life sustaining food production are also demonized by the capitalist neo-liberalism.
“Living well- A Biblical imperative”
Deification of money was made possible through an undergirding logical assumption that commodities and money alone have the power to provide satisfaction to humans. And as a corollary, the market has created the notion of “living better” as the primary goal of life. Living better is possible by having uncontrolled thirst for consumption, and unbridled search for accumulation of wealth and resources. It suggests that if you have more, you live better, therefore buy and consume more. In short this logic tells that “having determines the being”. Living better is but to exploit human beings, and to plunder nature.
In contrary to the notion of living better, the Biblical vision, shalom, or “living well”, seeks the well-being of all. It seeks to create a social system that ensures primacy to those engaged in the life sustaining activities of society. Living in shalom starts with the question of what about the wellbeing of my neighbour, my children, my grand- grand-children. Well being of others regulates the production practices of the peasants.
Participation in agriculture production is not the criteria to define a peasant. As a generic term, peasant is one whose economic activity is informed by the ethical challenges to offer to the needs for sustaining the collective life of society. Not only is the sustenance of the life of people, but of the nature as a whole; health of the life system of the soil, of trees, of water systems are the concern of the peasant community. Peasants mediate among all organic systems as a mediation of life. And since they mediate life, they assume the role befit to that of a priest. Religious doctrines presuppose that the priests are the ones who mediate life as the spirit does. Holy Spirit [Ruah] as the breath of the Divine mediates and retrieves life. Mediation of life in essence is the mediation of God, and that is why the peasants are the Priests in its true sense.
Moreover the peasants produce not for market but for the survival of life. Though this is an organizing value of the peasant communities, it is under threat at the present time. When production is for the sustenance of life, invariably production should adhere itself to the physical limits informed by the needs of consumption. That is why peasant communities do not fit themselves in the modernized consumer culture.
Peasant in their very being is a counter narrative to the fetish of money economy. And being a critique of the fetish they celebrate life, celebrate the life giving potentials of earth and social systems.
De-peasantization thus is not a crisis that few peasants around the world are facing. It is not the moral or political quandary emanated from the suicide of hundred and forty thousand peasants in the past few years in India. Since 2002, one farmer is committing suicide in every 30 mints in India. Of course these deaths forced by the neo-liberal economic policies questions the moral legitimacy of the present systems of production and distribution. But more than the moral question surrounding the peasant communities, de-peasantisation is an expression of a deep crisis of the humanity, a crisis in which the constructed fetish of market and money replaces the foundational values of life.
(M.P.Joseph)
