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The Egalitarian Moment: Asia and Africa, 1950–1980
This book outlines a major feature of twentieth-century world history that arguably affected more people than the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. It is the first to discuss as related developments the many attempts in Asia and Africa in the third quarter of the twentieth century to create egalitarian rural societies (landlord abolition in Egypt, India and Iran; ujamaa in Tanzania; land reform in Indonesia; collectivization in China, Vietnam and Ethiopia), their failure, and the differentiated rural regimes that despite landlord abolition remain there to this day.
148 pages, Hardcover
First published November 24, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 7, 2023
"The laws of the Emperor yield to the custom of the village."
This is an excellent, albeit brief, survey of what D.A. Low calls the "Egalitarian Moment", the search, from roughly 1950-1980, across much of the world for a more equitable and just rural order. Low surveys a variety of societies, each with their own political cultures and histories. The list includes India, Egypt, Vietnam, China, Iran, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and more.
Low's focuses on what he calls the "rich peasants", a strata of the peasantry which had noticeable wealth, political power, and prestige in villages across the many societies he mentions. With some local variation, the general picture is remarkably similar: these rich peasants are "Janus-like functionaries who represent the government to the people and the people to the government." This group often had complex client-patron relationships with the poorer and landless peasants in their villages, a virtual monopoly on political power and contact with the "outside world", and access to credit, land, and agricultural inputs. This was not necessarily a relationship of clear feudal exploitation. Rather, the "headmen" and the rest of the village were often tied to one another by informal bonds like patronage, partisanship, caste, etc.
As a result of their influence, however, Low argues that these groups managed to act as a bulwark against the creation of egalitarian alternatives to the established order in the countryside. At times, the rich peasants were intentionally propped up by "rightist regimes" like that of the Shah in Iran or the Thai military. On the other hand, these peasants also posed significant challenges for leftist regimes like those in China, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Some states were more successful at confronting these problems than others. Ultimately, however, the result was broadly the same:
"Whilst the world had come to have a fairly good idea about how to curtail the power of those who lived in big houses at the end of driveways (and the landlord abolition which was carried out in a number of countries surveyed here- Egypt, India, Iran, Ethiopia, China, and Vietnam- was clearly a major achievement), it was still very much at a loss to know how to go about curbing the power of those who lived in the better houses in the village. As a consequence although in the third quarter of the twentieth century there were a good number of egalitarian moments in the countries we have considered, they all proved, for the time being at least, to be little more than blinkings at an egalitarian mirage."
The book itself is an adaptation of a series of lectures Low gave in the 1990s, but a copious amount of footnotes have been added to the published text. It is readable, convincing, and interesting throughout. Part of me does wish it had been slightly longer, as it is only 126 pages long.
Low essentially sticks to his central point throughout the book, and constantly repeats it through his various case studies. While it can sometimes feel repetitive, the fact that this phenomenon was so widespread is quite striking. I also enjoyed learning, even if only very briefly, about the histories of some societies I don't know much about. Overall, a fantastic read which I learned a great deal from.
This is an excellent, albeit brief, survey of what D.A. Low calls the "Egalitarian Moment", the search, from roughly 1950-1980, across much of the world for a more equitable and just rural order. Low surveys a variety of societies, each with their own political cultures and histories. The list includes India, Egypt, Vietnam, China, Iran, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and more.
Low's focuses on what he calls the "rich peasants", a strata of the peasantry which had noticeable wealth, political power, and prestige in villages across the many societies he mentions. With some local variation, the general picture is remarkably similar: these rich peasants are "Janus-like functionaries who represent the government to the people and the people to the government." This group often had complex client-patron relationships with the poorer and landless peasants in their villages, a virtual monopoly on political power and contact with the "outside world", and access to credit, land, and agricultural inputs. This was not necessarily a relationship of clear feudal exploitation. Rather, the "headmen" and the rest of the village were often tied to one another by informal bonds like patronage, partisanship, caste, etc.
As a result of their influence, however, Low argues that these groups managed to act as a bulwark against the creation of egalitarian alternatives to the established order in the countryside. At times, the rich peasants were intentionally propped up by "rightist regimes" like that of the Shah in Iran or the Thai military. On the other hand, these peasants also posed significant challenges for leftist regimes like those in China, Tanzania, and Vietnam. Some states were more successful at confronting these problems than others. Ultimately, however, the result was broadly the same:
"Whilst the world had come to have a fairly good idea about how to curtail the power of those who lived in big houses at the end of driveways (and the landlord abolition which was carried out in a number of countries surveyed here- Egypt, India, Iran, Ethiopia, China, and Vietnam- was clearly a major achievement), it was still very much at a loss to know how to go about curbing the power of those who lived in the better houses in the village. As a consequence although in the third quarter of the twentieth century there were a good number of egalitarian moments in the countries we have considered, they all proved, for the time being at least, to be little more than blinkings at an egalitarian mirage."
The book itself is an adaptation of a series of lectures Low gave in the 1990s, but a copious amount of footnotes have been added to the published text. It is readable, convincing, and interesting throughout. Part of me does wish it had been slightly longer, as it is only 126 pages long.
Low essentially sticks to his central point throughout the book, and constantly repeats it through his various case studies. While it can sometimes feel repetitive, the fact that this phenomenon was so widespread is quite striking. I also enjoyed learning, even if only very briefly, about the histories of some societies I don't know much about. Overall, a fantastic read which I learned a great deal from.
March 5, 2024
The other reviews on this page are excellent and I defer to them for general discussion of the book.
I'd like to zoom in on one historical argument. Low argues that the rich peasantry, ie. the well-connected upper layer acting as the servicing node for other peasants in the region, was the beachhead upon which the waves of egalitarian policy crashed. Low essentially frames this as a question of power and volition: if it weren't for the kulaks' uncanny ability to cling to power in collectives, communal farms or situations of state abdication, progressive regimes could have enacted the egalitarian redistribution of land and helped everyone to their fair share of soil. Hence the failure of Nyerere and Nehru, the apocalypse of Indonesian communism, and so on.
But what if this pattern of failure isn't an indictment of the world, but of the programme? On the one hand, realizing "a fair share" of a finite resource for a growing mass of peasants is an impossible task. But on the other, more significant hand, its realization offers no benefits beyond itself: no political stability, no intensification of agriculture or trade, no rationalisation of resource use. The case of China (and to a much lesser extent Vietnam) is indicative here: after a decades-long crushing pro-poor-peasant regime, Deng voluntarily reoriented towards the most resourceful and creative strata, finding a stable base for growth and state building.
Low's repeat reference to Stolypin are the real lynchpin: to the author, Stolypin personifies the kulak regime, rooting a stable order in the farming middle class. But the actual punchline to this setup is, of course, the Russian Revolution; the real prize of striking a deal with peasant society is the opportunity to undergo the dislocation of urbanisation and industrialisation. From the point of view of modernity, the peasantry, as Barrington Moore, Huntington, and Marx himself argued, are a recessive class; the challenge isn't to institute egalitarian smallholder utopia, but to midwife new classes and shift power away from the acres and into the cities.
I'd like to zoom in on one historical argument. Low argues that the rich peasantry, ie. the well-connected upper layer acting as the servicing node for other peasants in the region, was the beachhead upon which the waves of egalitarian policy crashed. Low essentially frames this as a question of power and volition: if it weren't for the kulaks' uncanny ability to cling to power in collectives, communal farms or situations of state abdication, progressive regimes could have enacted the egalitarian redistribution of land and helped everyone to their fair share of soil. Hence the failure of Nyerere and Nehru, the apocalypse of Indonesian communism, and so on.
But what if this pattern of failure isn't an indictment of the world, but of the programme? On the one hand, realizing "a fair share" of a finite resource for a growing mass of peasants is an impossible task. But on the other, more significant hand, its realization offers no benefits beyond itself: no political stability, no intensification of agriculture or trade, no rationalisation of resource use. The case of China (and to a much lesser extent Vietnam) is indicative here: after a decades-long crushing pro-poor-peasant regime, Deng voluntarily reoriented towards the most resourceful and creative strata, finding a stable base for growth and state building.
Low's repeat reference to Stolypin are the real lynchpin: to the author, Stolypin personifies the kulak regime, rooting a stable order in the farming middle class. But the actual punchline to this setup is, of course, the Russian Revolution; the real prize of striking a deal with peasant society is the opportunity to undergo the dislocation of urbanisation and industrialisation. From the point of view of modernity, the peasantry, as Barrington Moore, Huntington, and Marx himself argued, are a recessive class; the challenge isn't to institute egalitarian smallholder utopia, but to midwife new classes and shift power away from the acres and into the cities.
August 3, 2008
An exceptionally erudite and elegantly concise essay. In the aftermath of colonialism, attempts at replacing rural landlordism with more egalitarian alternatives, cut across geographical regions, ideologies and cultures. They all ended in failure. Low brings to light the many extensive similarities of the various rural regimes despite ideological differences.
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