Inequality and the Peasant Mode of Production: Theories of Production, Distribution and Ideology

The ‘rediscovery’ of the peasantry as a socio-economic category of major global importance has been seen by some as one of the most significant events in the recent history of the social sciences. 1 It is now widely recognised that the bulk of the world’s rural population (and therefore the bulk of its total population) are ‘peasants’, and that this enormous group of humanity is by no means a passive and homogeneous rural proletariat, but has proved itself, on the contrary, to be a diverse and politically active force — as evidenced by the successful peasant revolutions of East and Southeast Asia, and the less successful but not necessarily less significant peasant movements in South Asia, Latin America, Africa and even Europe (where many people had forgotten that peasants still existed at all). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.