8
For Wolf, the crucial insurrectionary capacities possessed by communal, property-
holding peasants are not cultural as Scott would have it, but lie instead in the material and
organizational advantages their situation offers for collective resistance against outside
oppressors.
In sum, Wolf, Scott, and Brockett, contrast completely with the previous mentioned
group of authors, arguing that the poorest peasants which do even not hold a property
(including rural labors and tenants), lack the means to organize and unify themselves under
the
‘same flag’ through a rebel organization to fight for change the system and their
situation; and small landowners rebel whenever they have opportunity, because they are
often threatened with eviction by large landlords, which see the small family farms
independent from and competing with large holders.
Who rebels? Social science theory is based on the premise that peasant rebellion is a
direct response to one or more conditions that affect peasants. Prosterman and Reidinger
(1987) focused on landlessness, Moore (1966) on exploitation, Wolf (1969) on agrarian
capitalism, Scott (1976) on subsistence, and Paige (1975) on combinations of income sources
of cultivators and non-cultivators which results in violent upheavals. Paige also, in his
critique of Seligson (Seligson 1996) suggests another source for rebellion: the predominance
of a
“semi-proletariat” (he calls it a pobretariado of impoverished peasants). But, Seligson
argues that we may be looking at the wrong places for finding the
“right type” of peasantry
which instigates insurgency. Paige notes correctly that the areas in El Salvador with the
strongest FMLN control did not have high degrees of landlessness (Seligson 1996, p.151).
Seligson is convinced that the academic community needs continue to examine issues of land
tenure, proletarianization, and poverty, but we ought to be more careful when we seek to link
cause and effect, as many did in this debate.
Skocpol thinks it is fruitless to predict peasant behavior on the basis of any broad
speculation about the nature of the peasantry. She agrees with Moore (1966) and Adas (1979)
that before looking at the peasant, it is necessary to look at the whole society, because
peasants are only part of the story. Focusing on them alone cannot allow us to understand
peasant-based revolutions. There is a need to include state, class structures, and transnational
economic and military relations. There is a tendency of scholars to narrow peasants and
agrarian economies (Skocpol 1982, p.178). Of course we should look at society as a whole,
but class relations within the peasantry can give us a sense of in which conditions a certain
category of them would rebel. In agrarian countries, the peasantry is the great majority of
population and focusing on them we can achieve a good image of that society.
My first hypothesis -
H1: Part of landlessness peasants (tenants,
sharecroppers, migratory workers) as much as part of small landholders are
active participants and/or passive supporters of rebellions.
Both landless and small landowners peasants are not homogeneous bodies, where all
have the same reaction to exploitation and poverty. As said previously, there are absentee and
present large landlords, and the relations between the low and high classes of peasants vary.
But, when difficulties and bad harvest years arise, there is a tendency of rebellion. Not every
poor peasant will join. It depends on the opportunities each one sees for him/herself, after a
cost-benefit analysis, the extent the landlord control of the peasant, and other conditions. I do
not see exclusion of one group because of the other presence. Both have interests and fears.
Convention