Society for Latin American Studies

Agrarian Social Movements and Forms of Consciousness

Author(s): John Gledhill
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1988), pp. 257-276
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies
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Bull.Latin.Am.Res.,Vol.7, No.2, pp.257-276, 1988.

Printedin GreatBritain.

Movements

Social

Agrarian

+ .00
()261-305()/89$3.00
Pressplc
Pergamon
Studies
SocietyforLatinAmerican

and

Forms

of

Consciousness

JOHN
Department

GLEDHILL

of Anthropology,

University

College,

London

of class
in 'social movements'
which are not simple expressions
in
For
is
new
Latin
America.
decades, anthropologists
opposition
nothing
to the study of rural 'millenarian'
and historians have dedicated themselves
and to urban phenomena
movements
ranging from syncretic religious move?
on specific
for urban
demands
ments to barrio organisations
focused
services. There have always, of course, been those who have argued that
in terms of class, and that move?
everything should ultimately be understood
ments which emphasise other identities and realities reflect problems of 'false
which are a legacy of the colonial era and the uneven nature
consciousness',
of capitalist development.
are in vogue
Today, however, 'social movements'
and it is generally argued that their Latin American manifesta?
everywhere
and European
are some?
tions, like their North American
manifestations,
'new'
thing
(Slater (ed.), 1985).
In this paper I combine discussion
of contemporary
with a
developments
of some
historical view in order to offer a critical examination
retrospective
of the theoretical and political tendencies
which are emerging from the 'New
literature. It is important to begin by recognising that part
Social Movements'
of the impetus
a 'social movements
towards what is rapidly becoming
industry' in academia has come from intellectual tendencies within advanced
of the
capitalist societies, despite the fact that one of the leading exponents
in Europe,
view of social movements
Ernesto
self-styled
'post-Marxist'
Laclau, happens to be of Latin American origin.
Interest

OLD WORLD
NEW SOCIAL

PERSPECTIVES
MOVEMENTS?

ON THE

'New Left' of the late 1960s has been succeeded

The European
by a newer
Left, whose central orientation is what Ellen Meiksins Wood (1986) defines
as 'the retreat from class'. Class is displaced
from analytical centrality in
social analysis and the platform of radical politics in the late capitalist epoch
is redefined: 'radical democratisation'
of the means
socialisation
supercedes
of production.
These theoretical and normative shifts are premised on rejec?
to the capitalist
tion of the classical Marxian claim that what is fundamental
in world-historical
of the
mode of production
terms, is its constitution
as the 'universal class', the first social revolutionary
force in
'proletariat'
history capable of abolishing class society as such.
about the
1980s theorists are hardly the first to have become disillusioned
potential of the 'core' working class. Faith in the inevitability of
revolutionary

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a mechanical
collapse of capitalism under the weight of its own sociocontradictions
was already a minority view among the Left in
economic
took
Lenin's day. But the real break with traditional Marxist assumptions
place in the 1960s, which brought to prominence both the work of the Frankfurt School, in particular Marcuse, and various 'Third Worldist' positions
which posed the breaking of the imperialist chains of the capitalist world
for renewing the possibility of socialist
system as a necessary precondition
revolution in the metropolitan
countries. Many based their case on a theory
of global capitalism which asserted that sustaining capitalist accumulation
on the
and relatively high living standards in the 'core' was contingent
of
for
the
and
this
position are
exploitation
periphery. Arguments
against
now well rehearsed, but what is strikingly different about the 'new revisionists' of the 1980s is their general lack of interest in questions relating to the
political economy of capitalism (Gamble, 1987, pp. 114-115).
Some versions of the argument against a class based radical politics rest on
the assertion that capitalism has demonstrated
its ability to provide a relative
material prosperity for a majority of the working class (Kitching, 1983).
Others, including Laclau (1987), take the view that socialist parties and trade
unionism are in decline in the advanced capitalist countries because the
decline of manu?
'working class' is shrinking in line with the proportional
million
of
This
not
a
miles
as
a
source
is
away from the
employment.
facturing
'post-industrial
society' model of Daniel Bell (1973), and there are striking
echoes of the 1950s and 1960s 'plural societies' paradigm in 'post-Marxist'
analyses (Navarro, 1988, p. 431). There is no compelling reason to think that
and trade unionism were leading European societies in
Social Democracy
the direction of a socialist society in the Marxist sense (Przeworski,
1985;
and Sprague, 1986). But there are pitfalls in swallowing
the
Przeworski
notion of 'post-industrial
society' without troubling oneself with the issues
of capitalism on the
which lay at the heart of Marxian theory: the dependence
of
value
and
an
in
surplus
objective concept of 'exploitation'
production
are perfectly consistent with rising
which increasing rates of exploitation
in the
material consumption
standards and, for that matter, participation
ownership of capital. Marx sought to demonstrate that the whole of capitalist
of necessity':
become
the
the bourgeoisie,
'prisoners
society, including
are
alienation
and
of
naturalised
accumulation
through
placed
imperatives
this perspective may, interalia,
beyond normal consciousness.
Abandoning
close off certain obvious ways of criticising existing socialisms. It can also be
debated whether notions of class identity and class models of society are of
and American
workers
among modern European
declining significance
(Navarro, op. cit., p. 435).
The abandonment
of class models by the theorists of the New Social
Movements
is, however, premised on a significant theoretical claim: that
there is no theoretically
acceptable
way of moving from an 'objective'
of
of
with respect to capitalist relations of
the
social
place
agents
specification
on the one hand, to their
of accumulation,
and processes
production
ideological orientations and political behaviour, on the other. Even if it can
be demonstrated
through such 'objective' analysis that it is in the material
interests of particular social agents to overthrow capitalism, the political

AGRARIAN

SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS

259

of real people is, and always has been, shaped by identities and
consciousness
interests other than those of class. To a considerable
extent this position was
already anticipated in the work of theorists who continued to see themselves
as Marxists, in particular Nicos Poulantzas
1975; Cutler et al.,
(Poulantzas,
1977, pp. 189-206).
need 1980s
Classical
writers like Rosa Luxemburg
would scarcely
of the 'working class' constituted
a
theorists to tell them that fragmentation
problem. She was also well aware of the limitations of trade union organisa?
of social democratic political move?
tions and the problem of the cooptation
ments under capitalism. Luxemburg placed her faith in praxis: in particular,
of the
she argued that the 'mass strike' produced
a mutual reinforcement
workers' economic
and political struggles, through the 'mental sediment'
of action, producing
the 'intellectual,
which outlasted particular episodes
cultural growth of the proletariat' (Luxemburg,
1986, p. 38). As far as the
ofthe 1980s are concerned
this kind of process is historically
post-Marxists
on
of
the
Marxists
to argue that Marxism has
no
defence
It
is
part
exceptional.
of concrete
the need for specific historical investigations
always recognised
of the factors which determine
the growth of
reality, and the complexity
not to mention the need for political leadership
consciousness,
revolutionary
in shaping that consciousness.
The argument is that Marxism is theoretically
no acceptable
and has provided
incoherent
theory of the links between
and political
economic
class position,
consciousness
objective
ideology
because no such theory is possible.
To Latin Americans,
some of the considerations
advanced in the Euro?
from
irrelevant
to
the
'retreat
class'
seem
may
region's social realities,
pean
particularly in an era of crisis. If, as Connolly (1985) argues, the root of the
problems and essential unity of the 'formal' and 'informal' sectors lies in the
then a 'material
fact that peripheral
is a low wage capitalism,
capitalism
too readily. On the
cannot be dismissed
interest' argument for socialism
often shift from
other hand, as her own analysis demonstrates,
individuals
in the course of the family
to forms of 'self-employment'
wage-labour
will
cycle, whilst different working members of the household
development
be involved in different forms of work at any one moment of time: this could
of class identity is even more of a problem in
suggest that the fragmentation
Latin America, particularly for those who try to link the formation of class
to the socialising effects of the capitalist labour process. If we
consciousness
of problems raised by discussion of the
turn to the countryside,
anticipation
are readily apparent. Following
the lead of Roger
New Social Movements
in
De
has
classical
Leninist
fashion
that a substantial
Bartra,
Janvry
argued
proportion of a rural population being progressively
squeezed by 'functional
dualism' could ultimately be deflected from 'backward-looking'
attempts to
recover peasant status, towards alliance with the urban proletariat and an
correct' proletarian
'objectively
position (De Janvry, 1981, pp. 267-268).
But there have long been expressions
of dissent from this judgement
on
demands for land. Within the modern literature on Mexico, some
campesino
have emerged from 'circulationist'
Marxist perspectives,
others from a neo1984, pp. 154-160).
position
Chayanovian
Neo-Chayanovians
(Hewitt,
are moving towards
reject the idea that peasants and urban proletarians

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common objective as the 'gravediggers of capitalism': for Arturo Warman,

of the campesino
what is crucial is the anti-modernism
struggle, and the
for
an
a
it
offers
alternative
to
bureaucratic, urban-biased,
humanity
prospect
industrial socialism (Warman, 1972, p. 129).
Another
sort of anticipation
of part of the New Social Movements
lies in arguments against the imposition of Eurocentric
models
perspective
on Latin American social reality: these would include some theorists who
have attempted
in
to fuse the traditions of Marxism with indigenismo,
particular Mariategui. Many would, of course, argue that the new 'postMarxism' is really just good old fashioned non-Marxism,
dignified with this
peculiar, if fashionable, style of appellation in an attempt to lend legitimacy to
what is essentially a capitulation
to liberal politics (Wood, op. cit:, Geras,
if
even
this
is
it scarcely invalidates the theoretical
However,
true,
1987).
arguments advanced apriori.
THE SUBSTANCE
PARADIGM

OF THE NEW SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS

The 'post-Marxist'
critique of class-based models is particularly trenchantly
expressed in Ernesto Laclau's writing (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Laclau,
1985). Like all polemics, Laclau's discussion of 'classical' views sometimes
crosses the boundary between heroic simplification
and caricature. But the
issues it identifies with are, I believe, real ones.
The critique has three elements. Firstly, in both orthodox Marxism and,
one should stress, a great deal of non-Marxist social theory, the identity ofthe
agents participating in social conflicts is defined in terms of an 'empiricalreferential' group unity. That is, particular struggles are labelled in terms of
social structural categories?'peasant',
'bourgeois', 'proletarian' in the case of
Marxist theories (Laclau, 1985, p. 27). Secondly, the existence and outcome
of conflict is explained in terms of an underlying
historical-teleological
scheme: such as 'the transition from feudalism to capitalism'. This explana?
tory practice objectifies the 'meanings' of struggles: explaining them does not
the
depend in any way on the content of the actors' consciousness?what
meaning of their situations and actions is for them, or their subjective aims
and aspirations?what
they think they are doing and hope to achieve by doing
it. It also, Laclau argues, constitutes
a form of 'essentialist
reductionism'
universalism
based on a Eurocentric
(Laclau, op. cit., p. 30). Thirdly, this
a
model
of politics as the 'representation
of
produces
general perspective
interests'. In the last instance, the meaning of all political struggle is again
and this is how politics is ultimately
given in social structural categories
it
be
to
Whilst
hard
find many Latin American Marxists
explained.1
might
who would really debate an issue like: 'Was the revolution of such a year the
democratic
revolution?'
Marxist analyses
bourgeois
{ibid), sophisticated
of bourgeois
revolution in
like Enrique Semo's model of the 'long-cycle'
Mexico clearly do rest on the explanatory
Laclau
identifies
procedures
(Semo,1978).2
Laclau's alternative perspective firmly rejects such 'totalising' views of the
social. He argues that subjectivity
is based on autonomous
identifies:
'proletarian' identity is generally as multiple as that of any other stratum,

AGRARIAN

SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS

261

over other forms of identity as

identity as a worker enjoying no dominance
consumer, resident ofa particular locality, affiliate of formal political parties,
etc. Identities are not givens but discursive constructions:
hegemony is not an
external relation between
unified and preconstituted
social
homogenous,
agents (Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., p. 58), but a process by which social
agents are constructed
through discourses
(on ethnicity, gender, politics,
a
in
which
'there
is no a priori, necessary relationship
between
process
etc),
the [different] discourses' (Laclau, op. cit., p. 31). The influence of Foucault's
view of power is apparent (Foucault,
1979; Alonso, in press): in place of
unifying totalities of power (classes and the state) and despite the conscious
attempts of dominant groups to impose 'discursive regimes' on society, only
and contingent
links' are established
between
different dis?
'precarious
courses through 'articulatory practices' which head in the direction of 'fixity'
and totalisation' only to be subverted again.
It should be said that whilst this line of analysis may 'enable gender and
of discursively
as dimensions
and
ethnicity
[to] recover their specificity
politically organised subjugation' (Alonso, op. cit.), emphasis on 'discourses'
and contingency
may have its limitations if we persist in seeking to explain
the historical appearance of particular hegemonic practices or the salience of
particular 'subject positions' in particular historical and social contexts. It is
for example,
to compare
Laclau's
with
interesting,
general statements
of the distinctions
discussion
which might be made between
Molyneux's
'gender interests' and 'women's interests' in relation to class factors, in her
contribution
to David Slater's volume
(Molyneux,
1985). Yet even for
Laclau all is not discourse, since he concedes that there are limits' to the flow
of discursive
practices in the world and is prepared to revive a form of
historical determination
in diagnosing
the New Social Move?
objectifying
ments' newness (Geras, op. cit., pp. 73-74).
As far as Laclau is concerned,
the development
of late capitalist
with their increasing
social
societies,
bureaucratisation
and
has
led
towards
a
'commodification',
complexity,
of social antagonisms
but away from their expression
as crises
proliferation
of a 'total' model of society (Laclau, 1985, p. 38). Given a lack of unitary and
totalising identities, Laclau argues, the particular demands relating to specific
areas of social relations lead to a direct politicisation
of the space occupied by
the struggles concerned,
rather than their 'representation'
at a higher and
distinct level of 'political' activity. The 'old' working classes were constituted
as social categories
to be represented
and thus,
precisely
by politicians,
are
through the state. What the students of the 'New Social Movements'
looking for is a 'decentred' world in which 'the political imaginary' ceases to
be based on a 'totalising' vision of society and therefore has a more radically
democratising
potential (Laclau, 1985, pp. 38-39).
There is an interesting thrust towards a new kind of universalism
in the
literature on 'the New Social Movements',
even as it challenges Eurocentrism
and unilinear, teleological
visions of the movement
of world historical time.
In their 'decentredness',
Western Feminism,
the Green Movement
and so
forth are seen as cognate, in a very general sense, with the struggles of the
barrios and other 'popular' movements
in Third World contexts, differences
in class composition
It is not, indeed, constitutive
of their
notwithstanding.

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should have a 'progressive' political

unity that the New Social Movements
content. What constitutes
'progress' can perhaps only be the subject of
political argument in the world of discourses. But Laclau permits himself the
luxury of arguing for an objective 'potential' for advance towards 'freer, more
democratic and egalitarian' societies subject to the forms of articulation...
set up among the different democratic demands' (Laclau, 1985, p. 33). (An
articulation of discourses would be Le Pen's
example of the 'unprogressive'
in contemporary
to
some
Communist
voters
appeal
France.) All that seems
to remain from this task of deconstruction
is the notion that the New Social
constitute a unity in so far as they are for a more open and
Movements
democratic society and are more democratic in their own organisation.
here: one cause of protest is that the
There seem to be some contradictions
state is doing nothing to provide parts of society with needed services, or, in
to civilise
the western context, is retreating from its social responsibility
capitalism. This is one way in which the problems with which social move?
ments are grappling in different parts of the world may be quite different and
there are obviously many others, as none of the theorists of the New Social
would perhaps really contest. What, however, emerges from the
Movements
in general is
to
identify the 'newness' of the New Social Movements
attempt
the claim that they manifest disillusionment
with, and relative independence
of, political parties and the political process in the traditional sense.
To much of the Left this sort of thing is not hugely congenial. It implies
rejection of the Leninist theory of the role of the party and the theory
of proletarian revolution itself. It does not really look as if the New Social
But it is the classical
are going to make a social revolution.
Movements
of social revolution which is brought into question by the New
conception
in so far as they are anti-statist and orientated towards
Social Movements,
of human dignity and identity by the assertion of sociothe recuperation
cultural roads to freedom against the 'massifying' thrust of contemporary
society (Evers, 1985). These are not issues anyone can afford to ignore.
a bad
lack a 'national vision', is this necessarily
If peasant movements
and
between
'millenarian'
we
conventional
dichotomies
Can
retain
thing?
'correct'
forms
for
without
movements
defining politically
grounds
'political'
Should we not
in terms of 'objective'
class position?
of consciousness
con'progressively'
accept that the creation of 'mass society'?however
an essentially
ceived in terms of material social justice?is
problematic
undertaking?
The New Social Movements perspective therefore contains both a theoret?
ical argument about how we should understand social movements?which
a
'old' as well as 'new' movements?and
may be relevant to understanding
to
time
of
It
is
test
the
about
goals
'progressive' politics.
prescriptive message
these understandings
against some empirical material.3
CONTEMPORARY

SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS

IN MICHOACAN

Historically the Mexican state of Michoacan presents the paradox of having

nurtured some of the most 'radical' and 'conservative' tendencies in Mexican
history. Its sons include the leaders of the Insurgency, Fathers Hidalgo and

AGRARIAN

SOCIAL

MOVEMENTS

263

Morelos, the most Jacobin of 19th century liberals, Melchor Ocampo, and
Its
20th century radicals like Francisco
Miigica and Lazaro Cardenas.
has served as a centre for the diffusion of
university, a colonial foundation,
socially critical ideas throughout its long history. At the same time, parts of
Michoacan
are celebrated as the bastions of the most fanatical and conserva?
The state produced
for the
armed volunteers
tive Catholicism.
12,000
state in the period
rebellion of the Cristeros against the post-revolutionary
on in Michoa?
1926-1929
(Meyer, 1976, p. 85). The Cristiada smouldered
elsewhere
and many
can for some time after it had been extinguished
with
the cause
new
themselves
Cristero sympathisers,
recruits, aligned
plus
of sinarquism in the 1940s.
remains a relatively poor, predominantly
Today the state of Michoacan
have, as they put it, 'the
region, much of whose population
agricultural
custom of migrating to the United States'. It has experienced
significant agri?
and it does have one very significant urban industrial
business penetration
the steel works and deep water harbour of Ciudad Lazaro
development:
Created by the national state and foreign capital as a regional
Cardenas.
stimulus to the
'growth pole', Lazaro Cardenas has given little economic
in
it
as
a
for
has
acted
magnet
larger region
practice, although
migration from
of
the
urban
and
well
as
and
vast 'informal'
as
a
rural,
many parts
country,
Lazaro Cardenas
economy has emerged alongside the planned development.
has certainly served as an enclave of 'proletarian' politics, in the form of trade
union militancy of an anti-corporatist
kind (Bizberg and Barraza, 1980;
in
the
steel works were associated with a
and
Strikes
Zapata
Bizberg, 1984).
within
economic
situation
the
deteriorating
enterprise (and the presence of
young but qualified workers recruited from older urban centres). Economic
and the strikers received material
demands fused with 'political' orientations
mobilised around their own demands
support from the colonias populares,
for urban services (Nava, 1987, pp. 49-52).
from the perspective
Such situations
raise two fundamental
questions
offered by theorists of the New Social Movements.4
Firstly, to what extent is
of 'consciousness'
the kind of solidarity and development
displayed in such
of practical struggle by different 'social sectors' (which are not
contexts
necessarily constituted
by totally discrete sets of people) likely to lead to the
growth and diffusion of an over-riding
'proletarian' form of consciousness
of a classical kind? Secondly, to what extent
and social political orientation
in
can such coalitions evade the processes
of cooptation
and incorporation
which are themselves
the long term, processes
divisive? At one level, the
nature of the modern Mexican state places a premium on pursuit of objec?
and tends to promote the demands
tives through 'independent'
organisations
at another level, it favours the pursuit of
for 'democratisation'.
However,
concrete objectives through the channels of patronage within the structure of
the regime and turns 'autonomy' into a tactic of action, in so far as material
demands are to be satisfied through the action ofthe state itself. To the extent
that 'class politics' pursued through trade unionism is a demand for the state
to civilise capitalism (via the effective political representation
ofthe 'working
no
than
its
leads
further
social
op. cit.,
logic
democracy
class'),
(Gamble,
It may also lead, depending on circumstances,
to populism, or
pp 121-122).

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simply to defeat. Revolutionary

change from within capitalism seems to
demand a fundamental
and to the
challenge to models of 'development'
themselves.
problems of state power and political representation
In the course of peripheral capitalist development,
the countryside
has
been a source of challenges of this type. There are two contemporary
rural
in Michoacan
which fit in particularly nicely with the New
developments
theme. One is religious, a community
Social Movements
founded by the
Parish Priest 'Papa Nabor' in the early 1970s, and called 'The New Jerusalem': it is dedicated to the cult of a living Virgin (Nava, op. cit., pp. 33-34).
scandals surround this organisation,
Numerous
which does not welcome
But it remains a fact that the community
has
ethnographic
investigations.
become a major pilgrimage centre for thousands of people from the south of
Michoacan and from other states. Millenarian dreams are therefore alive and
well. The second development
responds to the other side of Michoacan
and
is an organisation
called the Union de
schizophrenic
political history
Comuneros-Emiliano
to the pursuit of land
Dedicated
Zapata (UCEZ).
reform, the UCEZ is centred around the 'Indigenous Agrarian Communities'
of the Meseta Tarasca zone of Michoacan. It has, however, also attracted and
welcomed
landless mestizos, and its activities have led to the recreation of
in places where an Indian population
Communities'
'Indigenous
long
appeared extinct. It has sought to create wide alliances with other forms of
popular struggle, including the militant Section 271 ofthe Sindicato Mineroin Lazaro Cardenas
Metalurgico
(Nava, op. cit., p. 52). The UCEZ is
in
serious
its
of
trying to recreate Indigenous Communities
extremely
project
in both their communal
and their indigenous
is
aspects: its ideology
of a uniform national
'communalist'
and it is insistent on the undesirability
culture. But what makes it possible for the UCEZ to actually secure land for
its adherents is, of course, that it exists in the Mexico of the Institutional
Revolution:
the legal framework for agrarian reform is still enshrined in
national legislation, even if the Mexican state has become extremely adept at
frustrating its exploitation. It is also clear that the UCEZ enjoyed the political
of the former state governor,
son of
Cuauhtemoc
Cardenas,
patronage
Lazaro Cardenas, who promoted it to serve his own demagogic ends and
it does remain an organisation which has
political ambitions. Nevertheless,
yet to be coopted by the national state, and its programme is explicitly anticapitalist: it sees the long-term objective ofthe struggle as being the recapture
in the interests of
of land and forest resources from the regional bourgeoisie
in
relations
undermining capitalist
general.
The UCEZ programme is 'new' in the sense that it has been developed as a
specific reaction to the social problems of late capitalism, in the light of the
manifest failure of previous agrarian reform to deliver solutions
to the
of
and
social
Its
orientation
is not
indigenista
justice.
problems
poverty
and it is not a romantic or 'backward-looking'
movement:
exclusionary
everyone concerned is aware that they are trying to recreate their lives on the
social relationships
and a reconstructed
basis of reconstructed
culture by
of
economic
UCEZ
has in
the
resources,
obtaining possession
something
common with less 'politicised'
livelihood
orientated popular social move?
ments (Redclift, 1987, pp. 166-170).
Also, the leadership have no illusions

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work. This is, of

about the difficulties inherent in making these communities
course, the problem.
It is one thing to unite people around the struggle for land, but more
the
difficult to create enclaves of social justice as 'red bases' for conquering
is a
larger social and political system. The political economy of Michoacan
complex unity, in which the poor are not exactly 'marginalised' in a structural
into labour markets and labour processes
sense, since they are incorporated
which are all integrated into the larger capitalist system. A good deal of rural
the capture ofthe
has been based on neo-latifundism,
capitalist development
from outside the
best lands in the land reform sector by entrepreneurs
of
Both landless rural households
and the households
agrarian communities.
land reform beneficiaries
are inserted into complex networks of rural-urban
in which economic
on
survival is premised
and international
migration
As the current crisis is revealing, the regional economy
is
diversification.
on a myriad forms of 'informal' economic
heavily dependent
enterprise?
and the cocaine trade, through to outranging from currency speculation
urban enterprises
and various kinds of artisan
working for metropolitan
which
served
markets,
including some in the United
production
specialised
What
must be stressed is that all
States (Ramirez,
1986a; Zepeda,
1987).
are heavily interdigithese circuits of both capital and labour reproduction
this has resulted in the extreme social disarticulatated and interdependent:
tion of peasant communities.
There is also the problem of the role of state
a
one might think that in the present crisis, with
as
'disarticulator':
patronage
the drastic reduction in state expenditure,
such relations would collapse and
that their collapse would in turn provoke an anti-statist reaction of frustrated
but this may only be partly true. The tentacles of the state and
expectations,
now run very deep into every aspect of
its agencies of popular representation
Mexican
life. Since state agencies
function in 'informal' ways as well as
according to their official norms, they add further levels of complexity to the
of social disarticulation.
It is hard to see how one could recreate
processes
which could function autonomously.
communities
However, this may not be the real strategy of the UCEZ. It has not been a
autonomous
It has used the legal
completely
organisation
politically.
ends?rather
than relying
apparatus of land reform to secure its immediate
on spontaneous
land seizures alone?although
these have occurred, particu?
larly where it was possible to challenge the legal title ofthe holder ofthe land.
social
in contemporary
movements
enough,
'indigenous'
Interestingly
Mexico generally seem to favour alliances with other social sectors, thereby
in comparison
with those which
maximising gains and reducing repression
have remained more isolated (Canabal, 1987). It might be better to describe
the UCEZ as a regional movement striving to create itself a regional political
base in order to obtain leverage on the national state. Its strategy is one of
in order to raise consciousness
mobilisation
and promote
radical mass
politicisation.

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The UCEZ is heir to a long tradition of building regional agrarian move?

ments in Michoacan and I now turn to the lessons which might be drawn from
in the region. My
the longer term history of agrarian social movements
I
out
here
is
to
two
central
want
to stress the sea
purpose
bring
points. Firstly,
about
the
final
formation
of
an
effective
national state
change brought
by
of Lazaro Cardenas, a
machinery in the 1930s: under the administration
was finally consummated
which changed the
process of'mass incorporation'
conditions
for all future social conflict. The intractable problem faced by
modern social movements is that the state itself becomes the primary locus of
class conflict, making it extremely difficult to avoid the politics of incorpora?
tion and cooptation. Both political and social change have terminated the era
of 'classical' agrarian revolution
and history suggests that intransigent
which
avoid
with other classes and
agrarian movements,
entanglements
to
are
doomed
defeat.
the
forces,
political
Secondly,
history of Michoacan
demonstrates
the continuity, through different historical periods, of forces of
opposition to the state, centred, in this case, on religion.
Michoacan has the reputation of having been relatively 'quiet' during the
Armed Revolution of 1910-1920.
This is a rather misleading evaluation. It is
true that, like most of the centre-north,
there was less spontaneous
agrarian
unrest in this period than in some other regions: Michoacan
was a place
where other regions' armies fought their battles. The results were brutal and
devastating and this forms part of the historical matrix of subsequent events.
Michoacan had not, however, been at all peaceful in the 19th century: it was
the scene of violent conflict during the Insurgency, struggles which wiped out
whole communities
and involved the massacre of those representatives
ofthe
local landlord and merchant class who lacked the prudence to flee. Violence
erupted again during the Civil Wars provoked by the Liberal Reform later in
the century.
Eruptions of extensive social conflict coincided with three phenomena, one
conjunctural, the other two structural. The conjunctural factor was a perceived
weakening of the state and ruling class' capacity to apply coercive violence.
The structural factors were, first, the processes of agricultural commercialisation and second, resistance to the state itself. Different parts of Michoacan
were affected by these processes at different times and in somewhat different
ways, but one can map a good deal of agrarian conflict onto zones where these
pressures were making themselves felt in different periods: quiet zones in a
particular period are generally those where the problem was resolved in an
earlier round by the extinction/destruction
ofthe communities concerned or
into the new forms of agrarian class relationships.
their encapsulation
The
was not invariably about the expansion of
agrarian problem in Michoacan
large landed estates at the expense of village communities: in some areas, there
were no large estates and it was a matter of control of village land passing
piecemeal to outsiders and the majority of the community becoming landless
The second
(Garcia Mora, 1981, pp. 67-70; Ramirez, 1986b,pp.
126-127).
to the encroachments
structural factor?resistance
of the state itself?was

AGRARIAN

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either fiscal or administrative.

Nineteenth
a
century Michoacan
produced
which were not agrarian in nature, and
good many rural social movements
mobilised local populations
across class lines, i.e. serrano movements in Alan
sense
Knight's
(Knight, 1980, p. 27,1986).
These rural social movements
were very heterogeneous.
What lends them
unity is not a common set of demands, problems or forms of consciousness,
but the conjunctural
moment (Hamnett,
1986, p. 202), which produced the
simultaneous
eruption of disparate forms of protest, and the optical illusion
of an extensive and unitary mass uprising. In the light of the contemporary
of the UCEZ,
I will pull one particular element out of this
significance
complex and variegated pattern: the Indian community.
There is no doubt from the historical evidence that Indian communities
forms of consciousness.
Mexico's
'Indians'
possessed
quite distinctive
their own forms of 'ethnicity' and preserved
notions of their
possessed
individual
identities
era (Lockhart,
pre-hispanic
deep into the colonial
1982). They also reworked their notion of identity and power in the light of a
fusion of indigenous
and Hispanic cosmologies.
They became 'good Chris?
tians', but they were Christians in their own terms and in their own way, a way
that constitutes
an endless reflection
on the principles
of power and the
There were countervailing
in the
tendencies
meaning of their situation.
evolution of relations of domination:
on the one hand, pragmatic considera?
tions forced the Indians to defend themselves
through the courts and they
were thereby forced to accept and interiorise
some of the principles
of
even as they contested
it. On the other hand, they
domination,
Hispanic
sources of power, by invoking the magic of
sought their own autonomous
ancient powers and identities against the current dispensation.
What lay at
the heart of all this was the community itself as the basis for identity within an
ethno-stratified
society.
Forces of dissolution did, however, develop within the community itself. In
the later 19th century, triumphant Liberal regimes set about the process of
disentailing community land, with a view to creating a 'modern' society on the
American model, a society which would be culturally homogeneous
and have
no room for estamental social categories or the hierarchic principle. Indian
in Michoacan
communities
resisted disentailment
as violently as one can
an army equipped with
when, armed only with a pitchfork, one confronts
firearms. In the 1870s, there were a number of attempts to form 'Agrarian
Communities'
of different villages on the basis of
uniting the populations
control of community
land from encroaching
haciendas
recapturing
(San?
chez, 1981, p. 34). However, it is clear that resistance was compromised
by
the existence of internal class divisions within the villages (Garcia Mora, op.
A minority of the Indian population
welcomed
disentail?
cit., pp. 48-49).
ment and community
leaders who took charge of the formal procedures
of
tended to abuse them and become caciques (Sanchez, op. cit:,
disentailment,
Knight, 1986, p. 113). As the state grew stronger under the Porfiriato, armed
resistance gave way to attempts to pursue the defence of the communities
through the courts again. But these were now futile, since there was no
as such being
possibility, under the new legislative order, of the community
recognised as a legal person.

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There were further outbreaks of violence and direct action, but the main
thrust of the community agrarian movement in the early phases of the revolu?
tion was to pursue the struggle through petitioning the central state. Many of
of the old Indian village elite,
the leaders in this phase were representatives
often highly educated people, whose social position was being eroded by the
political ascent of mestizo tradesmen and the creatures of Porfirian 'political
action was in no
chiefs' and landlords. Even such peaceful, constitutional
of
of assassination
sense a 'soft option', as evidenced
by the catalogue
agrarian leaders in this period.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a new type of regional agrarian movement
Francisco
emerged under the patronage of radical state governors?first
of
these
new
The
Cardenas.
then
Lazaro
and
agrarian programme
Mugica
to
land
went
communities,
'indigenous'
restoring
beyond
organisations
and
of land to mestizo peons on haciendas
favouring the redistribution
thereby implying the break-up of the system of great estates. The new
organisations also adopted the rhetoric ofthe international labour movement
of
with larger social issues?the
themselves
and preoccupied
position
women, and in particular, the promotion of 'rationalist' or 'socialist' educa?
the Liga de Comunidades
tion. The first such movement,
y Sindicatos
Primo Tapia (Friedrich,
led by the Naranjeiio
Agraristas de Michoacan,
1977), was already in some disarray, linked to internal divisions before Tapia
The divisions were partly related to Tapia's use of his
was assassinated.
were also
local
settle
to
scores, but both they and his assassination
position
related to his attempt to forge alliances with other regional movements
outside the framework of the 'official' system: Tapia was killed on the orders
of President Calles, not local landlord interests (Hernandez,
1982, p. 21;
Still more significant is the history of the
Garcia Mora, op. cit., pp. 66-67).
organisation Lazaro Cardenas patronised during his term as state governor
del
Michoacana
Revolucionaria
from 1928 to 1932, the Confederacion
Trabajo (CRMDT).
The CRMDT attempted to organise workers as well as peasants, but since
Michoacan
scarcely had an urban proletariat, workers were to be found
was
estates. Its leadership
primarily in the mines and on agricultural
middle class professionals,
dominated
tradesmen,
by urban intellectuals,
artisans and a few small landowners. The local Communists initially spurned
Peasants were distinctly under-represented
it, but subsequently
cooperated.
in the leadership (Hernandez,
op. cit., p. 36). The CRMDT faced a situation
in which the social power of the landlord class and the Church was still
through legal
largely intact. The actual reform process was conducted
as it then stood. But the only
channels, in accordance with the constitution
way to pursue this strategy was by capturing local and federal political offices
from agents of the local elite. The CRMDT therefore functioned primarily as
an instrument for consolidating
political power, by any means, including
violence. One of the necessary costs of achieving success was that Cardenas
case was
village bosses: a paradigmatic
ruthlessly self-serving
promoted
Ernesto Prado of the Canada de los Once Pueblos, whose agrarismo was
merely a pretext for achieving the material benefits of the status of a broker

AGRARIAN
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269

and higher levels of political representation

community
(Ramirez,
1986b, p. 129).
A number of pathologies
afflicted the movement because of the manner of
a
its development.
ofthe movement did
Firstly,
majority ofthe 'rank-and-file'
not share the wider ideological
orientation of the radicals at the top, many of
whom had little real understanding
of rural people's lives. Secondly,
the
primacy assigned to political control alienated people through its practical
effects. Agrarian reform became associated with the violence of caciques and
much of that violence was connected
with settling vendettas and grabbing
land: many of the early land reform communities
existed in name only since
the caciques and their clients appropriated
the land for themselves.
Thirdly,
it became clear that Cardenas had sponsored
the movement to serve his own
demonstrate
that he was a serious claimant to national
political ends?to
power because he could muster a regional mass following (Zepeda,
1985).
to secure
By relying on Cardenas and the machinery of the state government
their objectives, the movement lost its autonomy.
Cardenas's successor as governor embarked on a campaign of subversion
and repression
of the CRMDT.
But worse, when Cardenas became presi?
the
dent, he over-rode the protests of the local leadership and incorporated
CRMDT's peasants in the National Peasant Confederation
and the workers
in the Mexican Labour Confederation,
both organisations
of state cooptation
and political control. There was little 'grass roots' resistance to this process:
were orientated only to the move?
the majority ofthe CRMDT's membership
aims and they were also embattled within their regional
ment's immediate
social context by aggressive forces of reaction. Thus, although it certainly
a range of very distinct 'subject positions'
embodied
associated
with the
of
it
was
the
identities
its
rank-and-file,
ultimately
perceived (and
segmental
realities of power which set the limits on this movement's
'deobjective)
centredness'.
The only way out of this historical impasse was through a statist
reform from above, an observation
which might be
process of modernising
valid for many other times and places.
It is important to stress that some of the forces of 'reaction' in Michoacan
were themselves
'popular' and to question whether 'reaction' is an adequate
definition of their position. The Catholic Church in Michoacan
was?in the
at work
conservative,
main?strongly
though elements of 'social Catholicism'
in some parts of the state went beyond the doctrine of the 'Third Way' and
identified themselves
with genuinely popular social demands (Meyer, 1976,
p. 9; Tapia, 1986). But the Cristiada was no clerical or landlord plot: most
landlords and clergy were horrified by the unexpected
violence of the move?
it. The Cristiada drew on various
ment and quite incapable of controlling
different sections of the rural underclasses?mestizo
peons, small holders,
some communal
Indians?and
it also drew on the forces of proletarianisa?
tion: ammunition
was run out to the Cristero forces by factory girls from
Mexico City. The fact that the agrarian reformers had become state clients
who were mobilised to fight the Cristeros, partly accounts for the animosity
which developed
between them: Cristeros often sought out and killed village
agraristas, hanging them with a bag of earth round their necks: 'You want

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land?here
it is!' (Craig, 1983, p. 73). On the other hand, the Cristero forces
also included a number of former agrarista leaders, whose attitude to social
reform was one of criticising its current practice?as
bossism and agrarismo
(Meyer, 1981, pp. 254-269).
Jean Meyer has interpreted the Cristiada as a reaction to the state forma?
tion process, a reaction to the creation of a Leviathan which imposed its alien
will on a recalcitrant civil society. I think that this is an element of an explana?
tion, despite the fact that the state against which the Cristeros fought was
of Mexico in the 1920s
certainly no Leviathan as yet. The 'government'
manifested
itself primarily as an agency of violent expropriation.
In the
of
armed
to
of
the
whole
communities
fled
the
hills
revolution,
period
refuge
when they saw troopers approaching.
Few rural Mexicans in this period
identified themselves with either 'the State' or 'the Nation' (De la Peiia, 1986,
by the Cristiada reflects three
p. 34). In my view, the reaction represented
basic factors: Mexican Liberalism's failure to subordinate
Church to State,
the reinforcing
effects of socio-economic,
and political
revolutionary
violence on the transcendant
of
as
a system of
ideological
power
religion
of the national state itself as an instrument of
meaning and the perception
alien social classes, a perception
which was not wholly 'incorrect'. The
Cristiada broke out when Calles decided to close the Churches, an action
relations, but one which
provoked by a conjunctural crisis in Church-State
was made almost inevitable by the fact that the State could not complete its
conquest of civil society whilst the Church presented itself as a rival social
and a virtual 'spiritual reconquest' of
power. As a result of deft manoeuvering
its mass base at the end of the 19th century, Mexican Catholicism
has
its
social
secular
cit.,
power against
preserved
ideologies
(Tapia, op.
The rapid capitalist expansion of the Porfirian era created a
pp. 137-140).
social crisis which benefited
the Church, in the context of the ensuing
violence in which none of the social issues were
sustained revolutionary
really being resolved.
It is important to note that, in addition to 'politicised' violence, Michoacan
also suffered a particular form of banditry on an endemic scale in the period
The bandit forces were recruited in just the same way as 'revolu?
1914-1926.
tionary' peasant movements: marginalised peasants from the hills joined the
group and then went back to their villages (Olivera de Bonfil, 1981, p. 106).
But if its organisational
quality was that of a 'social movement' rather than
'professional'
banditry, it had no political or social programme
beyond
violence, rape and robbery applied to the humble as well as the rich. This
phenomenon
might be seen as the product of social humiliation coupled with
frustration at the unbroken power of the old Porfirian elite of the region: in a
cruel and unjust world, where everything has become meaningless
and all
promises prove false, becoming the hombre valiente defiant of all morality is
one way of asserting a claim to being something. However, this was not the
mainstream,
long term reaction: for most, it was a matter of clinging to a
principle of order: in an increasingly shattered and inhuman world, religion
was strengthened
as the fulcrum of sustaining a social identity and as a prin?
of
order. This harmed the 'progressive'
transcendant
ciple
agrarian cause
because it was also, particularly in Michoacan,
a rigorously anti-clerical

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in this
of the agrarian movement
cause. At the same time, the development
particular historical setting, created a degree of alienation through its ruthless
and essentially authoritarian
struggle for the levers of power.
Cardenista agrarian radicalism in Michoacan
was not based on an organic
link with the masses to whom it offered political representation:
its develop?
ment was strongly correlated with the wave of international
migration which
in the forcible repatriation
of millions of Mexicans
from the
culminated
north. The vast majority of Cardenista community
activists were nortenos.
of
Migration was a major stimulus to the adoption of new political ideologies
or socialist bent, and also of hostility to religion. It is
an anarcho-sindicalist
important to stress that the massive and 'authentic' peasant movement led by
Emiliano Zapata in the state of Morelos in an earlier phase of the revolution,
fought under the twin banners of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Benito Juarez,
of Morelos
had fought the Liberal
despite the fact that the communities
for the beginnings
of disentailment
of communal
responsible
governments
land and the final act in the history of their dispossession.
Both the apparent
with the Faith should be seen as
'political' affiliation and the identification
in terms of distinctive
of
freedom
and
fashioned
justice
peasant
images
in
of
the
'truth'
as
embodied
these
symbols, appropriated
understandings
their own symbols and not those of a national society. The same would be
true of the kinds of understandings
which motivated
the comuneros
of
Michoacan
to rise in revolt in the period of spontaneous
agrarian struggles.
The apparent continuity between the 1920s and 1930s, and earlier periods
of agrarian conflict is partly an illusion: the roots of many of the conflicts lay
took represented
deep in the past, but the forms which their politicisation
significant breaks, both with the past and with the forms of consciousness
of the 'mass base' being 'represented'
characteristic
politically by the leader?
ship.
In reality, neither appeals to universalising
class politics nor 'national'
buttered
sentiment
many parsnips among a majority of rural people in
before the period of the Cardenas presidency.
Michoacan
Lack of con?
fidence in the pretensions
of the national state and revolutionary
politicians
were reinforced by the actual experience of social reform to date. Even if one
was lucky enough to receive land, and was not being brutalised by a village
cacique, one was left to cultivate it without any practical help from one's
political patrons. The local economy had been devastated by the revolution
and the Cristiada, and these were times of enormous lack of confidence in the
future: this was one of the reasons for the mounting tide of emigration to the
USA, along with brute violence.
The Cardenas regime created a financial and technical infrastructure
for
the land reform sector. During his election campaign Cardenas travelled over
to penetrate
miles and was the first President
what upper class
16,000
Mexicans at that time called 'the hinterland' of rural communities
in search of
votes. He was, people tell me, generally accompanied
by a man with a satchel
full of billetes on these peregrinations,
but one should not under-estimate
the
impact his personal presence made, even on those who continued to reject
his ideas. Cardenas continued face-to-face
contact with the masses through?
out his presidency. Through his personal role and more importantly, through

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his radical restructuring of the state machine as an organ of mass incorpora?

tion, Carcjenas established the first truly effective national state in Mexico's
history. Through the extension of agrarian reform, the successful implantation of a state education system and the cooptation of all agencies of popular
control over Mexican
struggle, the Cardenas
regime finally conquered
society, and the revolutionary
cycle ofthe past 100 years was closed.
It was a sufficient, but far from complete triumph. The Cardenista did not
abolish the social power of private capital and possessed no real autonomy,
based on its control of the recently
simply a limited room for manoeuvre
to the new dispensation
tranquilised masses (Hamilton,
1982). Resistance
continued, partly because land reform did not solve rural socio-economic
possibly even exacerproblems, but in many cases, including Michoacan,
bated them.
Of particular significance
was the support amassed by the sinarquista
of the centre-north. Formally founded in
movement in the rural communities
in 1937, the Union Nacional Sinarquista
reached the
Leon, Guanajuato
thereafter its coherence was
apogee of its power in the period 1940-1941:
reduced by the conflict between its public poUtical leadership and the secret
known as La Base, the latter being the means by which the
organisation
Church intervened in the direction of the movement (Aguilar et al., 1981,
Pressured into a more overt anti-government
stance by its
pp. 163-166).
in 1944.
internal problems,
the UNS provoked
direct official repression
it
continued
as
a
a
clandestine
cellular
organisation,
Although
adopting
structure where any individual knew only his immediate contacts and could
not betray the larger movement,
the UNS subsequently
fragmented, losing
half its members by the end ofthe decade.
However, it was a close run thing. The threat posed by sinarquism was
probably one of the chief factors which motivated the Mexican state to sign
the Bracero agreements with the United States, and the ensuing epoch of
contract labour in the north played a significant role in taking the steam out of
the movement (Cross and Sandos, 1981, pp. 41-42),
as did massive ruralurban migration to the metropolis, whose industrial economy was then in a
phase of expansion. (Much of this internal migration was also structured by
political patronage motivated by political considerations.)
Specific episodes
of intra-communal
to me in the course of fieldwork,
violence, recounted
was not vanquished
suggest that the spectre represented
by sinarquism
of
the
its
Even today it is the
even
relative
decline.
during
years
entirely,
which
UNS's modern successor, the PDM {Partido Democrata Mexicano),
once again represents the quintessentially
face of the Right in
'campesino'
one of its areas of greatest strength nationally (Nava, op. cit.,
Michoacan,
p.35).
CONCLUSION:

A DECENTRED

CONQUEST

OF THE STATE?

Mexico today is very different to Mexico in 1950. The legitimacy of the ruling
party is at its lowest ebb for decades and the entire social system, which the
celebrated Mexican political 'system' was constructed to manage, is now very
On the other hand, the state's 'penetration1 of its
radically transformed.
society is vastly more profound now than in earlier periods. Mexican civil

AGRARIAN

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and
segmental. The maintenance
society may, in reality, remain somewhat
of
and
economic
structures
of
centralised
national, political
development
which
and agencies of intermediation
power of necessity rests on processes
and
of
between
social
sectors
the
a
continuing process
negotiation
manage
state, and between local and central power (De la Pena, op. cit., pp. 47-48).
Intermediation
dilutes and segments conflict. The vast network of patronage
relations which ultimately cements the edifice together does not fragment
social power in a way that seems likely to further the possibility of 'radical
in the New Social Movements
sense: it fragments popular
democratisation'
power. There may be multiple loci of power and multiple points of resistance,
seems to be the other side of the
but, to date at any rate, their proliferation
coin to the growing power of centralised forces.
like 'commodification',
Despite its flirtations with apparent objectivities
the 'post-Marxist'
world of discourses seems to lead in the same direction as
earlier revisions of western Marxism, in particular Gramsci: towards volunmass
tarism. But it is no longer the voluntarism of the 'consciousness-raising'
of
but
the
decentred
social
movements
which
demand
party,
pluralism
'open?
view of society', which is the key to future
ness' and an 'indeterminate
progress (Laclau, 1985, p. 39). This in a world in which one of the main
of middle class participants
factors in the radicalisation
in the European
has been the discovery
Green and Anti-Nuclear
movements
of how reand
domain
of
the
of
the
are
structures
beyond
pressive,
public scrutiny,
in
in
social and governmental
this
a
world
which
are
states
power,
capitalist
in destroying
labour movements
so heavily
which, however
investing
bureaucratic
and ossified they have become, still serve as potential agencies
of popular power which might at least contest the terms of domination.
'Counter-discourses'
but so is repressive
may be proliferating,
power. A
movement like the UCEZ in Michoacan
has clearly learned lessons from the
past and is attempting to orientate itself towards a broad coalition which will
provide an effective base from which to contest the direction of Mexico's
It sees its role precisely
as one of 'articulating'
different
development.
discourses
and 'subject positions'.
of avoiding
all
There is no question
with politicians or the state: it is rather a matter of attempting
entanglements
to manage such relations
in a way which struggles
against cooptation.
and structural constraints to be overHowever, the objective contradictions
come in realising such a project remain formidable.
Some on the Left admire the alternative paradigm offered by the 'intransi?
movement
in Peru, whilst ignoring the
gence' of the Sendero Luminoso
essentially authoritarian nature of its practice: created by a group of provin?
faced with irreversible
loss of social position in the face of
cial intellectuals
of national economic
the penetration
and political agencies, the culture of
which constitutes
Sendero's
could be seen as a trans?
absolutes
ideology
formation of an essentially hierarchic provincial elite mentality (Degregori,
1985a, 1985b). The movement's
appeal to the young and to women, and
is another example
more transitory strengh in serrano peasant communities,
of discourses,
of the contingencies
involved in the articulation
although it
a logic which seems perfectly explicable
in terms of social facts.
possesses
But an example like Sendero?so
in many ways of Mexican
reminiscent

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in the content of the two movements'

sinarquism despite the differences
the
harder
road being pursued by the UCEZ (and
that
ideologies?suggests
elements of the Left other than Sendero in Peru) is the only viable one. The
New Social Movements are no real substitute for the difficult task of building
of
democratic mass parties which can effect a fundamental
transformation
the structures of social power.
NOTES
1. It is important to stress that this too is in no sense a unique property of Marxist approaches.
The social categories underlying politics do not necessarily have to be socio-economic: they
merely have to be irreducible. Ethnicity is frequentiy used in this way in the post-colonial
world, producing debates about whether particularconflicts 'really'represent ethnic conflicts
or class conflicts. Such debates reduce to the same logical structure of argument whatever
position one adopts.
2. For my own view of the nature of Semo's 'long cycle', see Gledhill (198 7). On the importance
of understandingthe subjective side of class identities in analysing'class struggle'in the 18th
and 19th centuries, see for example, the comments made by Brian Hamnett on Mexican
miners (Hamnett, 1986, p. 25).
3. Personal field research to which reference is made in the subsequent two sections was
financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.
4. Kowarick's contribution to Slater's volume deals with similar phenomena in Brazil
(Kowarick, 1985).
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