Introduction: Moral Economy, Capitalism, and State Power in Rural Protest

Scott Evan Guggenheim and Robert P. Weller

This book originated in the Symposium on Peasant Rebellions held at the Johns Hopkins University on January 24-25,1980. Yet partly as a result of the Symposium, the revised papers collected here are not limited either to peasants or to rebellions. A full understanding of peasants means knowing how they articulate with other classes, and a full understanding of rebellions means knowing how they relate to other forms of protest (or to the lack of any protest). This book thus addresses some important questions that an approach toward "peasant rebellions" alone would bypass: when do peasants act as a class, and when do they act separately? When do people rebel, when do they choose a less violent form of protest, and when do they remain quiescent?

The essays collected here examine the forms rural violence has taken through the past three centuries of social and economic change. Each essay is independent, yet each also corrects and refines earlier conceptions about three shared theoretical concerns, which we discuss in detail below. The first shared concern is moral economy: several of the authors examine how people use accepted forms of standardized protest in particular historical contexts. The second is the growth of capitalism: each essay clarifies how changes in the class structure may lead to the loss of old forms of protest or to the creation of new forms. Third is the influence of the state: many of the essays stress the independent role the state plays in determining particular forms of rural action or inaction. The authors, who include anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists, root their treatment of these theoretical, social scientific ideas in concrete historical cases; this book is an interdisciplinary attempt to challenge some of the traditional theories of peasant rebellion.

Moral Economy

Moral economy concentrates on the system of rights and obligations that surround interpersonal and interclass relations in rural societies. Although moral economy may be taken to include as diverse a variety of theorists as Eric Wolf and Jim Scott (see Popkin, 1979: 5-8), moral economists agree that we should examine shared normative standards of what constitutes proper behavior.

Scott (1976) and his students have popularized what we shall call the strong version of moral economy theory. In this version, social obligations permeate the transfer of surplus from the peasantry to the nonproducing classes, and economy is thus inseparable from morality.

Woven into the tissue of peasant behavior, then, whether in normal local routines or in the violence of an uprising, is the structure of a shared moral universe, a common notion of what is just. It is this moral heritage that, in peasant revolts, selects certain targets rather than others, and that makes possible a collective (though rarely coordinated) action born of moral outrage....

We can begin, I believe, with two moral principles that seem firmly embedded in both the social patterns and injunctions of peasant life: the norm of reciprocity and the right to subsistence.... Reciprocity serves as a central moral formula for interpersonal conduct. The right to subsistence, in effect, defines the minimal needs that must be met for members of the community within the context of reciprocity. Both principles correspond to vital human needs within the peasant economy (Scott, 1976: 167).

The peasant is obligated to pay his rent, and the landlord is obligated to guarantee the peasant a minimum level of subsistence; peasants have rights as well as duties, though this is not to say that these rights have never been violated. Indeed, peasants throughout the world have evolved many forms of protest to violations of their customary rights, ranging from emigration, to joining the priesthood, to food riots, to outright rebellion (see, for example, Adas, 1981).

Scott (1977b) has suggested that peasants create and sustain ideologies intrinsically opposed to the dominant world view. Peasants, in this view, develop their own concept of justice to interpret their basic conflict with their landlords. This folk ideology is often a specific reversal of elite ideology: "Any moral order is bound to engender its own antithesis, at least ritually, within folk culture" (Scott, 1977b: 33). Peasants may subordinate themselves to the elite ideology, or they may dissent from it; which alternative they choose depends on the material relation between the peasants and the elite. In either case, peasants understand that their interests differ from the interests of their masters.

The strong version of moral economy argues that peasant ideologies and institutions provide useful building blocks for constructing revolutions. In times of structural change, landlords will no longer meet peasant expectations, and peasants will attempt to reassert the traditional morality. According to Scott, because the peasants' alternative universe "represents the closest thing to class consciousness in pre-industrial agrarian societies" (1977b: 224), reassertion of the traditional moral economy may be an effective ideology for rebellious organizations. Indeed, such an ideology may be truly revolutionary, by seeking to alter the new structural conditions.

Thaxton's essay, "Mao Zedong, Red Misérables, and the Moral Economy of Peasant Rebellion in Modern China" illustrates several aspects of the strong version of moral economy. Thaxton attributes much of the success of the Chinese Communist Party in organizing peasants to the Communist offer of a renewed traditional system of rights and duties. In contrast to the usual stereotype of outside organizers who easily turn peasants to their purposes, Thaxton offers a picture of outsiders who must adapt to the "alternate symbolic universe" of the peasantry.

Wasserstrom's "Indian Uprisings under Spanish Colonialism" also fits parts of the strong version of moral economy. He shows how Mexican Indians in the eighteenth century adapted Christianity to protect their way of life. They rebelled to protect a traditional moral economy. Wasserstrom concludes that "not economic exploitation alone, but rather the destruction of their way of life itself prompted these people to reject colonial rule and to try their hand at a desperate throw of the dice."

The milder version of moral economy generally takes a more negative position on the possibilities of a truly peasant-based revolution (see, for example, Hobsbawm, 1971; Wolf, 1969a). This version assumes neither peasant solidarity nor class consciousness. The breakup of peasant societies under capitalism may lead to violent outbursts, they say, but these outbursts are never politically effective. Peasants may take part in genuine revolutions, but only as the allies of other groups.

Although the mild version of moral economy sees a less stable and a less unified peasantry than the strong version (especially under capitalism), it also recognizes that peasants may have an array of traditionally sanctioned types of protest. Hobsbawm (1959), for example, treats social banditry as a traditional response to violations of accepted norms. Tilly has also discussed ritualized protest among European peasants. He writes elsewhere, for instance, that food riots "occurred not so much where men were hungry as where they believed others were unjustly depriving them of food to which they had a moral and political right" (Tilly, 1975: 389). His essay in this book also stresses that violations of the moral economy were a major cause of contention in seventeenth-century France. Adas's essay also mentions a traditionally sanctioned repertoire of unrest including petitions to officials, transfer of allegiance to new patrons, flight from unacceptable situations, entry into religious groups, cooperation with bandits, gangs, and, of course, rebellion (see also Adas, 1981).

Samuel Popkin (1979) has criticized moral economy theories, without differentiating between strong and mild versions. He faults moral economists primarily for romanticizing and idealizing the peasantry. Using Vietnam to illustrate his case, Popkin argues that many of the institutions moral economists claim promote village redistribution of wealth actually accentuate stratification. He shows furthermore that commercialization of the economy under capitalism did not threaten the subsistence base of peasants as a unit; instead, some peasants benefitted from capitalist expansion by finding alternatives to local forms of exploitation. Villages, according to Popkin, "are best viewed as corporations, not communes, and ... patrons with multistranded ties are best seen as monopolists, not paternalists" (1979: 4).

Several of the essays here make similar criticisms, concentrating especially on the stronger version of moral economy. Skocpol examines Scott's work in detail, and agrees that he romanticizes the peasantry. Adas writes that Burmese uprisings under the British stemmed from frustration with the market, not from threats to a subsistence ethic—the very abundance of rice was causing problems for the Burmese. Roseberry also argues that Venezuelan peasants experienced no subsistence crisis. More importantly, Venezuela had no precapitalist peasantry; there was no traditional peasant moral economy because the peasantry was created by capitalism (see also Roseberry, 1978).

Other authors emphasize the exploitative (rather than the mutualistic) nature of ties between elites and peasants. Traditional peasant institutions such as marriage and inheritance, labor arrangements, and ritual hierarchies may contribute to exploitation of peasants (Cancian, 1965; Cole and Wolf, 1974; Terray, 1972). All of this evidence casts doubts on the idea of a traditional moral economy of mutual rights and duties.

Yet Popkin's alternative itself has problems. He argues that we can best understand peasant life as a series of decisions about the possible rewards of various types of investments. Peasants decide to join collective action based on (1) expenditure of resources, (2) positive rewards, (3) probability of success, and (4) leadership viability and trust (Popkin, 1979:24). In contrast to the moral economists, Popkin does not stress shared norms. Instead, "norms are malleable, renegotiated, and shifting in accord with considerations of power and strategic interaction among individuals" (Popkin, 1979: 22).

One problem with decision-making theories is that the criteria for making decisions are not created by isolated individuals, nor are they objective givens. They are instead the "malleable" and "shifting" norms that Popkin mentions. Individuals' decisions may indeed change social norms, but at the same time, social norms affect individuals' decisions. We agree with Alavi that "men do not act or think in isolation from other men, nor are their goals formulated entirely by private contemplation" (1973: 34). Furthermore, the structural factors which limit choice must be considered. "The constraints built into a structure...never enter into choice; individuals may not only be unaware of them, but they may be systematically excluded from consciousness" (Silverman, 1975: 120).

Thus, while Popkin's criticism of moral economy may have validity, his alternative is difficult to accept. Furthermore, not all aspects of moral economy can be rejected. We gain from the moral economists' emphasis on shared norms, even though they may have romanticized the norms they discuss. Shared norms need not be a romanticized subsistence ethic; they may instead be a repertoire of accepted forms of protest—including food riots, social banditry, rebellions, and so on—in response to violations of various kinds of values. Shared norms also need not be entirely traditional; they may instead be flexible reactions to new structural conditions.

Many of the essays here substitute a more "malleable" and "shifting" view of norms for the romanticized moral economy that Popkin effectively criticizes. Tilly, for example, shows how standardized forms of protest extended throughout seventeenth-century France; they arose in response to similar pressures created throughout the country by the state and its apparatus of war. That is, the Frenchrepertoire of unrest was not simply part of a tradition-bound moral economy; it was also a creative reaction to new structural conditions.

Wasserstrom makes a similar point: high taxes and a low standard of living under Spanish colonialism had created a new moral economy in southern Mexico by 1620. The communal solidarity of the Indians was a reaction to the Spanish, not a reflection of their peasant tradition. The traditional Burmese moral economy that Adas discusses also adapted to the changing effects of British rule in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Saya San, for example, the most famous modern Burmese rebel, combined nationalist party politics with traditional Buddhist themes of rebellion. Roseberry treats the same theme, showing how a very "traditional" Venezuelan uprising—a caudillo war in 1929—was in fact part of a tradition that extended back only to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and that resulted from the growth of coffee plantations. Mintz, in his afterword, also advises us to reconsider exactly what the apparently backward-looking goals of rebellious peasants really meant in particular historical situations.

This volume thus offers a revised view of moral economy. Many of the essays specify agreed-upon repertoires of unrest that clarify why peasant action takes particular forms. Yet it cannot be assumed that these repertoires are bound by peasant traditions—instead, they must be viewed as the result of tradition interacting with the objective conditions of particular situations. Peasant norms must not be idealized in defiance of real historical differences, and investigators must not be blind to flexibility of norms in light of ongoing structural changes. The following sections explore how two crucial causes of structural changes—capitalism and the state—influence rural action.

Capitalism

Capitalism has created an increasingly integrated world system. The major changes in world trade that Wallerstein (1974) documents for the sixteenth century affected the forms of protest in many parts of the world. Continuing changes in the structure of the world system, especially in the nineteenth century (see Migdal's essay), have also meant continuing changes in rural unrest. We have arranged the essays here in roughly chronological order to reflect and clarify the historical development of this system.

All of the essays illustrate the results of commercialization of the economy under capitalism.

The spread of the market has torn men up by their roots and shaken them loose from the social relationships into which they were born. Industrialization and expanded communications have given rise to new societal clusters, as yet unsure of their own social positions and interests but forced by the imbalance of their lives to seek a new adjustment. Traditional authority has eroded or collapsed; new contenders for power are seeking new constituencies for entry into the vacant political arena. Thus, when the peasant protagonist lights the torch of rebellion, the edifice of society is already smoldering and ready to take fire (Wolf, 1969a: 295).

Tilly examines one effect of commercialization in seventeenth-century France: the state promoted commercialization to support its war machine, and the market thus became a major focus of contention by the end of the century. Migdal analyzes the extensive commercialization of much of the world in the late nineteenth century. He discusses in turn: (1) changes in land tenure, which were intended to increase yields and to increase planting of cash crops, and which often resulted in the consolidation of large landholdings; (2) changes in taxes, which were increased and collected in cash, forcing peasants into the market, and often overwhelming them with debts; and (3) construction of railroads, which helped the market expand into previously inaccessible areas.

The essays which follow Migdal's confirm his scenario. Adas, for example, shows how newly market-bound peasants in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Burma reacted against the new economy with attacks on moneylenders and with anti-tax campaigns. Thaxton also points to the problems that increased tax demands and the related increase in cash cropping caused for twentieth-century Chinese peasants.

Ties to the world market could also affect the tactical advantages peasants held in some conditions (see Wolf, 1969a: 290-294). Land ownership had traditionally provided many peasants with the resources to maintain rebellions, but the new economy often left people landless. Mountainous (or otherwise marginal) geographic locations made it difficult for authorities to exert control, but improved transportation to feed the market also limited this advantage for peasants.