Deconstructing the Peasantry: Class and Development in Rural Kenya

Abstract

This essay illustrates the power and reach of the new Marxian class analysis when it is applied to the economic development of the third world. Economic development in third world countries has been analyzed, debated, and promoted but the implications of class analysis (in the surplus labor sense) have rarely been explored. This essay will reexamine the concept of the peasantry that has played such an important theoretical role in Marxist theories of development. In contrast to the typical concept of the peasantry as a rather homogeneous group differentiated according to levels of income and/or property ownership, we develop a theory of the peasantry based on a surplus labor theory of class. A surplus labor theory of class will allow us to investigate in a systematic way how the multiple class structures of so-called less developed rural economies contributed to their “underdevelopment.” This question derives in part from Kautsky's parallel inquiry into the nature of the class structure in the rural economy of a country supposedly in transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist forms of production. We redirect this question to investigate empirically the complex class nature of rural Kenya by looking at data concerning household productive activities. Based on our findings we will explore the implications for political action and policy that promote various forms of non-exploitative class structures in rural Kenya.

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