AGRARIAN REFORM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST AGRICULTURE IN ALGERIA

Algeria was chosen as a case study of a "state capitalist" former colonial country in which the state owns the major means of production, promotes rapid industrialization and economic change, and encourages both the public and private sphere to adopt capitalist/wage-labor social relations. Within a Marxian framework, three alternative explanatory hypotheses concerning the impact of the agrarian reform on the structure of the private agricultural sector were examined. They were dependency theory, the theory of the non-capitalist way, and the theory of the capitalist way. The research procedure entailed an investigation of the methods and institutional changes accompanying the agrarian reform, both on a macro level and on a micro level for twenty communities representing all agricultural regions. In each case, the pre-reform socio-economic class structure (not including the "self-managed" sector) was described in terms of the distribution of the forces of production, including the land, crops, irrigation, animals, mechanization, use of fertilizer and other improving techniques, and employment of wage labor. The impact of the reform on this structure was then evaluated. It was found that the reform predominantly curtailed the pre-capitalist tenures, more on publically than on privately-held land, and mainly the holdings of small-scale absentees. The capitalist tenures, even large-scale ones, were generally left intact. In some cases, the capitalist farmers benefitted from the reform. In all cases, the number of poor peasants and agricultural workers who benefitted from the reform was a small proportion of the eligible population. The minority who became beneficiaries were organized into cooperatives under the authority of the ministry of agriculture and the national bank and expected to run their farms as business firms, often employing wage labor. Because of the closing out of the pre-capitalist tenures, most other poor peasants and agricultural workers have been moving into wage labor. The rural and urban wage-labor class has been enlarged as a result. The conclusion reached is that the theory of the capitalist way is more correct in this case study than either of the other theories. The agrarian reform in Algeria appears to have promoted the development of a capitalist/wage-labor social system. This conforms to the overall thrust of the "state capitalist" development path.