By JOSÉ RAIMUNDO TRINDADE*
The Amazon constitutes the largest area of expansion of national agrarian capital, and the elements of the agrarian question and land income obtained in this region are factors for analyzing the current Brazilian accumulation cycle
Introduction
The agrarian issue corresponds to one of the main themes of economic and sociological debate in the formation of capitalism. Still at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, the debate between Marxist authors became intense considering three key aspects: (i) the political aspect referring to the role of the peasantry in the class struggle (Engels[I]); (ii) the differentiation of the peasantry and its relationship with the production process (Lenin[ii]); (iii) the forms of capitalist organization in agriculture and, mainly, the affirmation of different models of capitalist rural expansion (English, Prussian, American) (Kautsky[iii] and Lenin). To these three aspects, a key issue would be added in the 20th century: (iv) the value transfer relationship between the agrarian and industrial sectors (Preobrajensky[iv]).
The Brazilian debate[v] on the agrarian issue would be as or more “hot” than the international debate, and we have arrived in this second decade of the 21st with the joint resumption of the aforementioned aspects, which we will address briefly, returning in future texts in their specificities, with the advance of agribusiness and the Amazon stage as a central territory of capitalist accumulation and agrarian and environmental conflict place this discussion in a priority order.
In turn, the treatment of land rent (Marx[vi]) and its connection with the various elements of the “agrarian question” constitutes a central economic nexus for thinking about the relationship between “unequal development”, transfer of value and agrarian conflict, as we will seek to rehearse.
The text we present develops a first approach between land income and the agrarian issue, taking the Brazilian Amazon as the stage for analysis. In this sense, the text presented is placed within a tradition of resumption of the so-called “agrarian Marxism”, converging with authors who consider that the agrarian issue continues to be a key component for the interpretation of capitalism and its overcoming.
The article is divided into three sections, in addition to this introduction: firstly, we will address the theoretical aspects of the agrarian issue, making only some inferences to the Brazilian case; the second section will deal theoretically with land rent, seeking to rehearse its interaction with what we consider the core of the agrarian problem in the current Brazilian and, at the limit, Latin American capitalist situation; Finally, we make a first approximation of the two structural elements discussed and capitalist agrarian expansion in the Amazon.
The different faces of the agrarian question
The classic debate on the agrarian question begins with Marx himself (1867, 1894). In volumes 1 and 3 of Capital, two questions are introduced that will be key to the treatment of capital accumulation and the relations between agrarian, agriculture and class relations in capitalism. Still in book 1, in Chapters 23 and 24, respectively called “The general law of capitalist accumulation” and “The so-called primitive accumulation”, the author introduces monographs dealing with the formation of the “British agricultural proletariat” and the “expropriation of land belonging to the rural population”.
It is worth making four brief observations: (i) firstly, Marx analyzes the English case very specifically, observing that the “last great process of expropriation that deprived farmers of the land was the so-called clearing of states”, which implies the literal expulsion of any population from rural properties. This process, as a model of agrarian capitalist development, constituted the economic and sociological basis of British industrial capitalism.
(ii) As the author observes, English agrarian capitalism constitutes itself by forming a broad “rural proletariat”, and its mark will be “a constant emigration to the cities, the constant transformation of rural workers into “supernumeraries” through the concentration of leases”; (iii) This model is not generalizable, as noted in relation to the Italian case in which “urban workers were massively expelled to the countryside and there gave an unprecedented boost to small-scale agriculture”; (iv) The tone of the agrarian question for Marx was related to the way in which the expansion of accumulation produced a system of complementarity between industry and agriculture, as well as making the relationship between countryside and city an interaction of dependence of the rural in relation to the urban.
The political debate and, more specifically, the role of the peasantry in the class struggle was outlined by Marx and Engels in two important works: The 18 Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx) and The peasant question in France and Germany (Engels). In these two works we can highlight two fundamental aspects: (a) the social dispute takes place in a concrete way where economic, social and political factors overlap, making it not possible to differentiate them, in terms of their interactions, which constitutes the center of the analysis “relational dialectics”, which makes the struggle of social classes a dispute of interests of each specific historical construction. Engels observed how necessary it was to attract the peasantry to a position of confrontation alongside the proletariat.
(b) The internal differentiation of the peasantry constitutes part of the explanatory logic of this social segment. In the Marxist perception, as Byres (2020, p. 416) explains, the peasantry does not constitute “autonomous entities, but is part of the existing rural class structure”.
The peasantry is a small commercial producer or part of what González (1977) called Simple Mercantile Economy[vii], producing a surplus that is commodified under capitalism, but its reproductive base is fundamentally family-based, producing on a small scale, even though in many cases it can achieve greater productivity. The scale of production can be minimal, guaranteeing only family reproduction (small producer); average, guaranteeing a level of commercial surplus that enables an average social level (average producer); or high production, characterizing a rich peasant.
This was basically the typology established by Lenin when analyzing the case of Russia at the end of the 2020th century. As Byres (417, p. XNUMX) observes, “differentiated peasantries can reproduce themselves over long periods of time”, which establishes a non-linearity in terms of the possible transition from peasant production “to fully developed capitalist agriculture”.
The works of Kautsky and Lenin established two central aspects in relation to the understanding of the so-called “Russian populists”. The understanding that the peasantry does not constitute a “mode of production”, as conceived by authors such as Chayanov[viii] they demarcate in a very expressive way the difference between the Marxist camp and views that place emphasis on the demographic issue.
The notion of mode of production, also coming from Marx, constitutes a qualitative basis for understanding historical transitions, which makes capitalism a new mode of production and refers both to the majority new condition of production of economic surplus based on salaried exploitation of the workforce, regarding the mechanisms of appropriation of this surplus by a certain social class (bourgeoisie) and the predominant existence of an exploited social class (proletariat).
The existence and permanence of social segments that are not homogeneous in terms of class constitute a historical factor that predominates in most concrete economic and social formations. Thus, the peasantry does not constitute its own mode of production, but a complex social segment that reproduces its living conditions through land ownership and control over means of production, and may have internal differentiations, as observed by Lenin, and is currently observed in large numbers of countries.
The different possibilities of “capitalist agrarian transitions” established in history in concrete cases studied were schematized in four modeled paths: (i) the “English” path already exposed; (ii) the “Prussian” path, treated by Lenin and Kautsky and which relate to a transition from “above” into an agrarian capitalist emerges from the “landlords”; (iii) the “American” path from “below” where the formation of agrarian capitalism arises from the “rich peasantry”; (iv) a fourth way, to be better addressed, refers to an agrarian capitalism resulting from the relational interaction between the State and landowners, which constitutes the basis of Brazilian logic, called by Octávio Ianni the “agrarian State” .[ix]
Land and land income[X]
Land constitutes the universal object of human work, as it provides the indispensable means for social reproduction. It constitutes a fundamental means for carrying out the work process, whether indirectly, when it provides the worker with the place to develop their activities and their work process, the field of action, such as workshops and roads, or directly, as is the such as soil in agriculture or waterfalls for electricity production.
Furthermore, in agriculture, land is the basis of the work process, and there is no cultivation without a substrate of arable land, water as an input, greater or lesser solar incidence, depending on the type of cultivation, and the energy of the workforce. who sows, plows, cultivates and harvests the produce. Two forces produce wealth: “work is the father of material wealth (…) and the land is the mother” (MARX, 2013).
Lands are naturally and socially differentiated, they have peculiar qualities (temperature, rainfall, drainage, sunlight, fertility, etc.) which, for agriculture, are capable of conditioning the work process in such a way that they make a given place, at the same time, , inappropriate for certain cultures and exceptional for others. These are qualities that, unlike a machine or any other artificial object, cannot be reproduced at will through work, even though they can be economically altered through the use of different technologies and productive investments.
In the capitalist mode of production, where agricultural branches constitute a link in the social division of labor and where land is a class monopoly, the determinations regarding the private appropriation of land and its specific productive and locational characteristics define land rent as an appropriation of profit extraordinary by land owners.
Private ownership of land constitutes a form of monopoly, which creates barriers to capital accumulation and mobility. As accumulation and the credit system expands, it is given a price, thus acquiring an exchange value, without, however, having value, since it is not something reproducible by human work, transforming into a financial asset , capable of being traded as fictitious capital. But this irrationality of being the bearer of an exchange value without possessing value, hides, as the old Marx (2017) states, “a real relation of production”, a production of value that is, under the conditions of capitalist competition, in appropriate part, by the land owner.
Differential land rent results from differences in labor productivity, obtained by the qualitative or locational conditions of the best soil, both because they require lower constant and variable capital costs compared to the worst, and because these non-reproducible conditions are monopolizable, fixed to their natural base. There are two soil differentials, which provide unequal productivity and, thus, requirements for the existence and variation of differential income: the quality of the land (its “fertility”) and its location in front of the markets. Because the more fertile and better located the land, the smaller the amount of work required for the production and distribution of goods.
As the different areas of privately appropriated land have different natural qualities and dimensions, where explorations with unequal applications of capital are based, analytically, it is necessary to distinguish differential income into two types: differential income of the first type (RDI), whose unequal return it results from the investment of capital of equal magnitude on land with the same cultivated surface, but of naturally unequal qualities; and differential income of the second type (RDII), whose unequal returns on individual capital invested in equal surfaces result not from the natural difference in land, but from the “industrial difference”, that is, from the differential in capital investment.
Preferred lands for capitalist exploitation are those that offer soils that combine the best quality and the best location, as this increases profits, however the production mainly of agricultural products on a large scale requires extensive land conditions, which projects income from the absolute type, derived from the “imperfect mobility of capital as a result of fragmented and dispersed land ownership” (SWYNGEDOUW (2020).
Considering merely the differential income of the first type, the movement of capital does not necessarily take place towards the less “fertile” lands (from the best to the worst), but also in the opposite direction, if compensated by the location. This movement becomes even more complex if we consider intensive capital investments, which, acting together with nature, improving soils and the circulation of goods in space, create even broader possibilities for territorialization and capital accumulation. However, this does not nullify its foundation (which is also its historical starting point): the naturally unequal base, providing extra profits, that is, the RDI.
Land ownership thus becomes a condition of intercapitalist competition, and the income levels provided guide capital in the countryside. It then goes beyond its passive role as a mere receiver of the surplus created, and actively participates in coordinating its own production, as stated by David Harvey (2013), this can also be seen in the expansion of Amazonian land markets, as Costa (2022) observes. ).
Agrarian issues and land income in the Amazon
The Amazon constitutes the largest area of expansion of national agrarian capital, and elements of the agrarian question and land income obtained in this region are relevant factors for analyzing the current Brazilian accumulation cycle. Considering the expressions of accumulation through spoliation that leads to an increasing loss of land by small producers, which in the debate on the agrarian issue implies the expropriation of local producers from their places of origin and the replacement of traditional forms of production by capitalist production (or then the subordination of the former by the latter).
Considering the Brazilian agrarian territorial dynamics, in which land is concentrated in mechanized agricultural activity to the detriment of family production, it is expected, with its expansion, that the number of smaller-scale agricultural establishments will be strongly affected by land appropriation.
The proportion of small properties has decreased more markedly in the Legal Amazon compared to the rest of Brazil, a reality that can be evidenced from the variable proportion of properties with less than 10 hectares compared to the total properties in the territory in question . It is clear that the proportion of establishments with less than 10 hectares decreased from 66,5% of the total in 1970 to 36,9% in 2020 in the Legal Amazon, while for Brazil, the reduction was from 51,2% to 50,1. XNUMX%.
At the same time, the proportion of medium-sized establishments (from 10 to 100 hectares) in the Legal Amazon grows, from 21,6% to 43,2%, while this value remains practically the same for Brazil. These data highlight the concentration of land and the advancement of agrarian capital in the Amazon, with this region remaining a locus of expansion of the agricultural frontier and appropriation of natural resources and land.
At the same time, when analyzing the other extreme, of larger properties, it is also possible to notice that the Legal Amazon tends to increasingly concentrate land. As shown in figure 5, while the proportion of establishments from 100 to 1000 hectares and above 1000 hectares remains stable for Brazil (between 8,4% and 0,9% respectively), there is a significant increase for the Legal Amazon.
In this sense, in 1970, establishments of 100 to 1000 hectares were 8,8% of the total, rising to 14,7% of the total in 2017, while those of more than 1000 hectares rose from 0,9% to 2,3% of the total in the region.
Still based on the 2017 Agricultural Census data, a land structure with a high concentration of land is observed, the result of the long period of concession of public lands for the implementation of agricultural enterprises, something that became more intense during the Military Dictatorship and, as pointed out, between others Octávio Ianni reinforced the Brazilian “agrarian State”. Thus, considering the notion of family farming used by IBGE, which largely responds to the poor and middle peasantry of the Marxist perception, we have that for the Legal Amazon of a total of 919 thousand establishments, around 81,5%, approximately 749 thousand they referred to family farming; however, when looking at the total area of the respective establishments, we see that peasants own only 21,6% of the area of rural establishments, that is, only 28 million hectares, which gives us an average establishment of only 38 hectares.
Another important piece of evidence of this conflict between capital and labor concerns cattle farming, which is also the locus of international capital action from large companies, such as Marfrig and JBS. The latter company, in 2021, had a record net profit of R$20,5 billion, in the same year in which, according to the FAO, around 116,8 million Brazilians lived with food insecurity to some degree. In 1990, the Brazilian cattle herd was approximately 147 million heads, with the Legal Amazon having a total herd of 26 million.
In 2010, the numbers had evolved in such a way that the Brazilian herd exceeded 209 million heads and in the Legal Amazon it reached 77 million. In 2020, for a national herd of 218 million heads, the Legal Amazon already represented almost 43% of the total, with approximately 93 million heads.[xi]
Costa (2022) observes that “the appropriation of new lands was concentrated in Mato Grosso (41%) and Pará (36%), which together represent 77% of the total”, and in these two units there is an expansion of agribusiness whose logic is the extensive use of land, whose gains are based on both the production of commodities and the financialization of land based on absolute income. Annual deforestation in the Legal Amazon responds to the growing process of land occupation, whether as part of agribusiness expansion or as part of financial gain from land use.
Thus, Pará and Mato Grosso were the ones that deforested the most between the years 2004-2020, totaling 112,8 thousand km² of forests felled in the period (almost 171,5 thousand km² of all states). This area deforested by the two states is greater than the sum of the territorial extensions of Paraíba, Rio Grande in the North and Sergipe.
The agrarian issue and the logic of earning via land rent are at the center of the deepening of Brazilian dependence as a model of precarious sovereignty and the model of capitalist expansion in the Brazilian Amazon, central points of analysis and permanent debate.
*Jose Raimundo Trinidad He is a professor at the Institute of Applied Social Sciences at UFPA. Author, among other books, of Agenda of debates and theoretical challenges: the trajectory of dependency and the limits of Brazilian peripheral capitalism and its regional constraints (Paka-Tatu).
References
Alexander Chayanov. The organization of the peasant economic unit. Buenos Aires: Nova Vision, 1974.
David HARVEY. The limits of Capital. Sao Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.
Erik SWYNGEDOUW. Land Income and Land Ownership. In: FINE, Bem and SAAD FILHO, Alfredo. Dictionary of Political Economy. São Paulo: Popular Expression, 2020.
Eugênio Preobrajensky. The new economic. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1979.
Francisco de Assis COSTA. From land structure to deforestation dynamics: the formation of a land market in the Amazon (1970-2017). Economic Policy Note nº 019. MADE/USP, 2022.
Friedrich Engels. The peasant question in France and Germany. Coimbra: Spark, 1974.
Humberto Pérez GONZÁLEZ. Political Economy of Capitalism (volumes 1 and 2). Lisbon: Seara Nova, 1977.
João Pedro Stédile (org.). The agrarian question in Brazil (several volumes). São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2011.
José Raimundo Trindade and Lucas Paiva Ferraz. Accumulation through spoliation and agricultural activity in the Brazilian Amazon. Magazine of the Brazilian Society of Political Economy, 67 / September 2023 – December 2023. Accessed at: https://revistasep.org.br/index.php/SEP/article/view/1051
José Raimundo Trindade and Paulo Paixão Junior. Land income and large capitalist planting of oil palm in the Brazilian Amazon. Economics Magazine Essays, Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, Brazil, v. 39, no. 1, 2024. Accessed at: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/revistaeconomiaensaios/article/view/67001
Karl Kautsky. the agrarian question. São Paulo: Editorial Proposal, 1980.
Karl Marx. The capital (Books 1 and 3). São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013 and 2017.
Terence J. BYRES. The agrarian question and the peasantry. In: FINE, Bem and SAAD FILHO, Alfredo. Dictionary of Political Economy. São Paulo: Popular Expression, 2020.
Vladimir Illitch Lenin. The development of capitalism in Russia: the process of formation of the internal market for large industry. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1982.
Notes
[I] The peasant question in France and Germany. Friedrich Engels. Coimbra: Centelha, 1974.
[ii] The development of capitalism in Russia: the process of formation of the internal market for large industry. Vladimir Illitch Lenin. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1982.
[iii] The agrarian question. Karl Kautsky. São Paulo: Editorial Proposal, 1980.
[iv] The new Economic. Eugênio Preobrajensky. São Paulo: Peace and land, 1979.
[v] The Brazilian debate is reflected in the collection organized by João Pedro Stedile and published by Expressão Popular.
[vi] Capital (Books 1 and 3). Karl Marx. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013 and 2017.
[vii] Considering the Marxist understanding, GONZÁLEZ (1977) defines some parameters of differentiation between the simple mercantile economy and the capitalist mercantile economy in five points: i) in the EMC there is a special commodity that is not present in the EMS: the workforce, whose condition is wage employment as a pattern of exploitation; ii) EMS has a secondary and subordinate character, EMC has a general and dominant character; iii) EMS is based on small ownership of the means of production, while EMC is based on large capitalist ownership of the means of production; iv) in EMS the owner of the means of production and the direct producer are one and only person, or part of a family relationship; while in EMC, what is central is the salaried relationship and the exploitation of other people's labor, finally; v) the immediate logic of EMS is the satisfaction of needs (subsistence), while in EMC it is the obtaining of added value, profit.
[viii] Alexander Chayanov. The organization of the peasant economic unit. Buenos Aires: Nova Vision, 1974.
[ix] See our publication on this website at the link: https://dpp.cce.myftpupload.com/a-questao-agraria-no-brasil-segundo-octavio-ianni/
[X] For an in-depth treatment of land income, check out our article Trindade e Paixão (2024).
[xi] Check IBGE: Municipal Livestock Survey. Access at: https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/acervo#/S/PP/A/40/T/Q
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