The Second Edition of the Agricultural Political Economy School was organized in Tunisia by Siyada Network, the Transnational Institute and the “Nomad 08” Association, from November 26 to December 3, 2024. The session focused on the four key questions of agrarian political economy:
- Who owns what?
- Who does what?
- Who gets what?
- What do they do with what is produced?
Delegates from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and the Philippines participated in the sessions. This second edition is considered to be a continuation to the first one, held in Morocco in August 2023, which explored various schools of thought discussing agrarian and environmental issues. These training sessions are led by Dr. Jun Borras, a professor and researcher at the University of Amsterdam
(This report is considered to be a media coverage of the training and does not necessarily reflect an exact account of the trainer’s statements. Any inaccuracies are unintentional and remain the responsibility of Siyada website.)
Day One:
Morning Session:
On the morning of November 27, 2024, the participants reviewed what had been covered in the first school in Morocco, reaffirming the ideas behind the four questions that discuss agrarian political economy.
The discussion then shifted to the first question: Who owns what? With focus on landowners and their means of ownership, including the acquisition of land and surplus value extraction which enables wealth accumulation for the bourgeoisie.
Following the morning session, group presentations explored real-world cases related to property ownership in the Arab region, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Dr. Jun also provided examples illustrating the consequences of neglecting class analysis in social issues. For instance, the rise of the far-right in the Netherlands has led to immigrants being scapegoated for the country’s problems, cutting aid to progressive associations, restrictions on English-language education in favor of Dutch, which means systematic exclusion of those who do not speak Dutch.
These examples highlight the importance of understanding political economy to grasp the role of class dynamics in social struggles. Marxism views the class as the driving force behind societal struggles, not the rational individual, while liberalism advocates for maximizing the role of the rational individual (at the expense of the concept of class) and pursuing the profits which underlie exploitation and colonialism. The rational individual always seeks to maximize profit and benefit.
According to Dr. Jun, capitalism, as a social system, is the root cause of inequality and the basis of exploitation.
Regarding popular education, Dr. Jun noted that many references are available in English. As a result, only a small group has the ability to read about the traditional formations, leading to significant disparities among participants in training. However, this does not prevent providing a list of post-training references based on questions and interventions.
Concerning the working method, Dr. Jun emphasized that their approach does not follow the traditional top-down approach in context to popular education but is rather dynamic and collective.
In this context, Dr. Jun explained the close relationship between theory and practice, emphasizing that relying solely on practice without theory leads to empiricism, while experimental work, without a theoretical foundation, results in limited understanding. Empiricism merely observes events, but without theory, it becomes impossible to connect various societal phenomena, leading to fragmentation. Conversely, excessive theorizing without linking it to experience results in dogmatism and sectarianism, hindering the ability to operate within a pluralistic framework.”
The main question is: How do we build pluralism(ity) and organize differences? How do we distinguish ourselves from liberalism, which allows multiple perspectives but is distorted because it does not reflect real societal differences but rather mere variations that serve capitalist interests?
On the other hand, traditionally, there is one path to change for socialist or communist parties adopting a singular perspective.
Therefore, when considering alternatives, we must define what we are thinking about and how and what to think about, ensuring a connection between the concepts and practice.
In the political economy, there are four fundamental questions:
1. Who owns what?
2. Who does what?
3. Who gets what?
4. What do they do with what is produced?
These questions are deeply interconnected and thinking about them as a whole leads to understanding the development of productive forces.
There is a relationship between productivity and the available capital, as productivity is linked to the use of energy, raw materials, pesticides, etc., all of which are paid services and goods, inevitably leading to discussions about the environmental cost of production.
It is essential to note that focusing solely on class analysis is insufficient; other intersecting elements such as gender, race, religion, and history must also be incorporated.
Afternoon Session:
Dr. Jun pointed out that the global food system has achieved massive production with staggering numbers, but there is a significant paradox between abundance and hunger. Hunger is primarily linked to the inability to afford food, as food has become a commodity driven by profit. Moreover, this contradiction persists due to the availability of unhealthy, disease-causing foods.
Capitalist agriculture contributes to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, and despite the devastating social and environmental costs of this food system, it has produced unprecedented wealth accumulation and inequality favoring a minority. Simultaneously, 30% of food is wasted after production.
This system has also contributed to the rising unemployment and those working in precarious conditions. The global food system, reliant on chemical inputs alongside destructive military industries, is one of the most profitable and exploitative sectors of global capitalism.
Dr. Jun provides an objective evaluation, noting that capitalism carries both positive and negative aspects. The positive aspect lies in the vast potential for creativity and innovation driven by overabundance in production. However, this positive aspect is accompanied by destruction due to its massive environmental cost.
The capitalist system has provided food but at a great cost, including the extinction of certain animal and plant species, to the extent that we now speak of the sixth mass extinction of living beings. For example, pesticides, which are vital to capitalist agriculture, have gradually led to the disappearance of bees.
It is certain that a good political economy considers both the positive and negative aspects of capitalism, however, many analysts today believe this duality is no longer possible for capitalism as the negative aspects have become overwhelmingly dominant.
Historically, the production cycle was disrupted due to urban expansion. In rural areas, waste returned to the soil which maintained fertility. However, as cities grew, this cycle could no longer be maintained due to the absence of organic fertilization, which led to the search for alternative soil nutrients, like phosphate, followed by the use widespread use of chemical fertilizers.
With the development of capitalism, the gap between production, consumption and waste disposal sites has widened, leading to what is called the metabolic rift.
There has also been a shift in the spatial and temporal separation of production: an increasing spatial divide alongside a shrinking time gap. This is linked to the energy flows that have enabled a reduction in production time. Undoubtedly, the cycle imposed by capitalism will not last and will eventually collapse.
To understand this, it is necessary to clarify that there are three types of production cycles:
1. Simple production cycle, which is characterized by a narrow margin between inputs and output.
2. Contracting production cycle, which starts small and continues to shrink.
3. Expanding production cycle, where production achieves a surplus and the surplus is reinvested, and so on.
The third case applies to capitalism and leads to crises. The capitalist produces for profit, and overproduction puts pressure on wages and leads to colonialism to open external markets.
The greatest challenge is how to frame the struggles collectively without fragmentation. In all cases of struggle, whether local, regional, or international, class logic must be considered, enabling us to confront the system as a whole. Without this, a comprehensive alternative cannot be built.
We must start from our reality while building alternatives, not from abstract wishes. This means that it is not necessary to reach complete and final solutions, as we must abandon the alll-or-nothing logic.
Imagining an alternative to capitalism requires a transformation of property relations. Imagining this alternative does not mean creating a wish-list, but rather placing these relations under the microscope of analysis and seeking ways to change them.
There are three types of ownership:
1. Private ownership: Practically excludes others from ownership, which is primarily concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie and seperates producers from their production.
2. Communal ownership: A collective shared ownership.
3. State ownership: A blend of the previous two types.
Day Two:
Key questions discussed included:
- Who owns the land?
- What is the role of production?
- What is the form of ownership?
- What is the alternative?
After discussing the workshops’ outcomes, Dr. Jun presented some conclusions, emphasizing the importance of expanding the discussion on ownership and the need to link concrete issues raised with theoretical issues. For example, regarding land, it is not only about ownership, but also about other elements such as water, seeds, and social relations.
In this context, Dr. Jun reiterated that ownership in political economy is not only related to means of production but also to technology, infrastructure, and so on.
Day Three:
Morning Session
The agricultural issue and its role and position in the development of productive forces are fundamental in the agrarian political economy. Currently, there is pressure on small producers’ agricultural activity due to the decline in product value and the rise in input costs.
In previous historical stages, agriculture and farming were generally a driving force for revolutionary action and in other cases, it was a factor of counter-revolution. The reason for this lies in the extent to which peasants benefit from production returns and the relationship between input costs and selling prices. Does the production obtained by peasants improve their situation, or does it impoverish them?
Here, the discussion revolves around production, not reproduction, and is explained by considering production in terms of exchange value (market value) rather than use value (direct consumption).
Land is not the only determinant of value of production. For example, in India, some peasants own land, but the wealthiest are those who own technology to access water. Therefore, when discussing peasant ownership, it is not enough to talk only about land, but also irrigation, technology, and the ability to process produced materials.
Due to the inability of a large number of peasants to continue production, they undergo “proletarianization,” meaning they transition from being peasants to laborers. When capital requires resources without needing labor (the workers themselves), a surplus of workers is created which is known as the relative surplus population. This surplus is used to pressure wages, which Marx called the reserve army of labor in capitalism.
Some of these workers migrate across the Mediterranean to be exploited by capital, which easily disposes of them when it no longer needs them.
Marx and later Lenin predicted the disappearance of the peasantry and the spread of large farms under capitalism. Therefore, a significant portion of Leninists reject the concept of “food sovereignty” because it does not allow for feeding the working class, as argued by Canrest Fid and relying on small peasants cannot feed the planet, especially since the most enthusiastic currents for food sovereignty realize that unions are not interested in it.
Afternoon Session
The groups began to work on answering the second question: Who does what? Then, they returned to exploring alternatives in response to the above question.
This session included group discussions among participants, where there were questions about the nature of available alternatives in the current context of the general situation under capitalism today.
Day Four:
Morning Session
Dr. Jun asserts that Marx and Lenin predicted the disappearance of peasants, so most Marxist-Leninists believe that solving the agrarian question lies in large-scale production using chemicals without considering ecological damage or the separation between production and consumption sites (metabolic rift). However, there are ecological Leninists who adopt the concept of food sovereignty.
Ecological Marxists believe that changing production relations alone is not enough; the ecological dimension must be incorporated into production.
Dr. Jun moves on to discuss the relationship between ownership and labor, concluding that there is a connection between them, and that those who own something determine who does what. The question of “who does what” is not random work but a result of the characteristics of global capitalism. For example, the concentration of workers in a certain place responds to the needs of capitalism in that area of the world. Issues like illegal work or unemployment are subject to supply and demand in the capitalist economy. Similarly, “illegal” migration is viewed as merely legal oversights.
Capitalism works to convince people that precarious work and unemployment are natural, but this is not the case. Therefore, the primary task regarding work is to not normalize these ideas.
It is impossible to definitively determine the fate of people and their standard of living after their numbers are reduced in primary sectors (agriculture and fishing; pre-industrial production). How their situation will evolve, whether good or bad, depends on the surrounding conditions and the manner in which the reduction occurs. For example, Chinese peasants who moved to urban areas to work as laborers did not experience their situation worsening despite their families remaining in their villages. On the contrary, their situation improved and agricultural workers from other countries, such as Myanmar, replaced them. These new agricultural workers had worse living conditions in their home countries. Therefore, a change in class status does not necessarily lead to bankruptcy; everything is context dependent.
What Marx predicted about the disappearance of peasants has not happened, and it is likely that they will not disappear. The reason is that they practice a form of self-exploitation (Henry Bernstein 2010) by extending working hours to increase productivity and they continue this strategy to survive.
Another reason is that capitalists pay wages and may face bankruptcy, while the small peasant works on his land with great flexibility (long working hours, employing family members, etc.). The continuation of small peasants also depends on their exploitation of migrant agricultural workers. Ultimately, the persistence of small peasants is linked to the provision of cheap labor.
In any case, it is essential to highlight the social relations that produce goods and the conditions under which they are produced. Goods and producers are often separated: we consume goods without linking our consumption to the conditions of their production. This is a phenomenon called “commodity fetishism.” It is crucial to consider this when thinking about alternatives.
Lenin said that some small peasants might persist due to the ability to work in parallel, meaning the peasant becomes semi-proletarian, which Tanzanian writer Issa Shivji called “partial proletarianization.” Bernstein also spoke of ‘peasant classes’ instead of a singular peasant class, while Kautsky said that small-scale agriculture would persist but would be subject to capital. Currently, small peasants produce 70% of the world’s food.
The question posed is whether we can find solutions within capitalism to support small peasants, or if the solution come from outside capitalism.
In preparation for the 2025 International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty World Forum in India, there is a discussion on the proposal to exit capitalism, but the ideas are not mature enough. As Gramsci said, “The old is dying, and the new cannot be born yet.”
Capitalism relies on the generalized commodification of daily life, and the commodities are produced and sold for profit. In the commodity lies the price of labor, raw materials, and taxes paid to produce it. What remains after deducting these costs is profit.
Global capitalism inflates profits by expanding profit margins while narrowing producers’ share, limiting it to what is sufficient for the biological reproduction of power (i.e., feeding workers only).
What contributes to the growing profits of capitalists is the failure to account for environmental costs, which are not compensated in monetary terms for capitalism. Capitalists treat natural resources as a gift from nature, so they do not consider environmental costs. All this has allowed for further accumulation of capitalists’ wealth, especially under neoliberalism.
Here, Dr. Jun moved to discuss what capitalists do with income and profits. He clarified that most people would answer that the income is spent on basic needs, but generally, profits are spent on consumption, entertainment, and expanded reproduction of capital through:
- Further accumulation within the country.
- Using funds and reinvesting them into the capital cycle elsewhere.
Accumulation can occur through pure financial speculation or producing goods.
The state intervenes to impose taxes that do not consider the size of income earned, meaning taxes do not increase with income. On the contrary, capitalism in its current phase exempts the wealthy from taxes and places the burden on the poor, who also bear the burden of value-added taxes (VAT) due to their larger numbers compared to the wealthy. This means that the vast consumption in society is carried out by the working classes.
What are these taxes used for? They go towards building infrastructure and providing social services such as health, education, etc. However, the state is stepping back from providing these services while increasing expenditures to prepare areas for investment. When the state fails to provide these services, the working classes bear the cost.
Afternoon Session: Group Work
The group work aimed to answer the following questions:
What do we do with goods? What do we do with income? What is the role of taxes, and what is the environmental cost?
Day Five:
Dr. Jun mentioned that Henry Bernstein (in his book Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change) points to the inevitability of the disappearance of peasants. However, Marx relied on the logic of periodic crises in capitalism along with the contradiction between labor and capital, concluding the inevitability of revolution.
The very characteristic of the continuous expansion of capital lies its weakness and eventual downfall. However, capital has managed to reproduce itself until now. Capitalism has created conflicts and wars during crises but has also developed technology.
Through the methods employed, capitalism is able to resolve its difficulties and setbacks, but quickly gives rise to new crises, such as unemployment. For capitalism, there is also a stark contradiction in that large peasants have historically opposed foreign competition and the improvement of the working conditions of agricultural laborers.
In classical political economy, there is a tendency to increase productivity and distribute production fairly. In order to increase productivity, industrial chemical agricultural production is resorted to. This was achieved in Russia previously, China, and Cuba. Even now, some Marxists believe the future belongs to this model.
Henry Bernstein wrote: “Does the development of productive forces always lead to progress?” He argued that there is a lack of analysis in traditional Marxist political economy regarding the environmental issues, but did not provide an answer to the environmental damage caused by chemical agricultural production. Nevertheless, he said that the future of humanity lies in large-scale chemical production, although other Marxists disagree.
It is worth noting that Marx did not adequately address environmental issues and John Bellamy Foster is considered to be the founder of the environmental Marxist movement.
The environmental issue constitutes one of the major contradictions in capitalist production: the contradiction between the expansion of capital through intensive production and nature. Capitalism resorts to a set of reforms and solutions, such as relying on electric energy in transportation, but it also creates new environmental disasters.
Capitalist companies also offer other solutions, such as compensating for gas emissions by buying land in countries like West Africa and converting them into reserves. This involves halting human and economic activities on that land, causing the displacement of populations who can no longer engage in any productive activity.
Nancy Fraser argues that capitalism deliberately caused the ecological crisis, while socialism caused the environmental crisis incidentally.
Capitalist logic, based on the logic of accumulation or what she calls “the infinite reproduction of capital,” causes environmental destruction. She concluded that capitalism cannot find solutions to the environmental crisis, whereas socialism could, provided the metabolic rift is considered.
Ecological Marxists defend the concept of food sovereignty, which refers to the right to choose the type of production and have its inputs and outputs closely linked.
Alternatives can start with small local initiatives, but it is necessary to propose holding polluters accountable through taxes and paying the ecological debt. Some argue that these solutions are ineffective and the only solution is a comprehensive change, with the ultimate alternative being ecological socialism. This requires a class analysis that includes other elements such as gender, race, religion, and all forms of oppression.
Day Six:
On the sixth day, participants discussed the role of the state, and the session concluded with an evaluation meeting where participants emphasized the quality and importance of the training and provided suggestions for further development.
The following morning, participants left the training venue.
Translated by: Noran Samy
Original text on: The Link
