Class Differentiation of the Peasant Population
Channel: Inštitut za delavske študije
Date: 2014-05-09

Marko Lovec: Slovenian Agricultural Production Structure, the Problem of Class Consciousness in Agriculture and the Role of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU

Stane Kavčič: The Size Structure of Agricultural Holdings in Slovenia and Their Importance for Slovenian Food Balance 
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Slovenian agriculture is characterised by small farms of 6,5 ha in average. Almost half of the utilised agricultural area is cultivated by agricultural holdings smaller than 10 ha. In 2012, agriculture employed 8 % of the population. The concentration of agricultural land is a slow yet steady process: between 2000 and 2010 the average size of holdings increased from 5,5 ha to 6,5 ha. The productivity of Slovenian agriculture remains low, lagging behind most of the other European countries: in Slovenia, a single annual work unit (AWU) cultivates 6,3 ha, which is almost three times less than the EU-27 average and four times less than the EU-15 average. Family farms, which rarely hire labour force, predominate (98 % of all economically active persons in agriculture performs labour on their own family farms). Income from farming in most cases does not enable subsistence for the family: in 2002 only 20 % of agricultural holdings provided (an equivalent of) full employment for its active members. With the exception of hired labour and notwithstanding the tendency towards agricultural land concentration, the dominant social bond in this sector remains self-exploitation of family labour. The managerial structure of agricultural holdings in Slovenia is still fundamentally patriarchal and pre-capitalist; there is only 27 % of female farm holders, even though women account for 43 % of AWU or 46 % of all active persons. The CAPs policy, whose aims are gradually shifting from market regulation to cultural landscape preservation, in a way serves to consolidate these relations.

Slovenian agriculture interlocks with capitalist economy in two ways: through the market of agricultural products and services (not labour force); and as a source of additional income (a source of livelihood) of the labour force employed in other economic sectors. In this respect, the pre-capitalist farming (with self-exploitation within the family) serves to subsidise the capitalists. The class analysis of Slovenian rural or peasant population thus has to provide an account of the various combinations of diverse economic activities, enabling the reproduction of agricultural households. The old Marxist analysis of the class character of peasant population, which regarded the scope of ownership over land and the means of cultivation as the main criterion, is insufficient insofar as it was more about income classes than about social classes in the Marxian sense.

The aim of this panel is to analyse the archaic agricultural sector, particularly the position of its labour force in capitalism. What is its perspective? Do peasants constitute a class? If not, which classes constitute the fragmented character of peasants? What are the prospects of the re-agrarisation in countries such as Croatia and Slovenia? In the global South, the so called re-agrarisation is a form of resistance to expropriation; can in our context a return to the countryside provide an answer to the dissolution of the welfare state (and of the public sector in general) and to deindustrialisation? Is it a coincidence that in the time of crisis we are once again speaking of cooperatives?