SREF: 206862School of Oriental and African Studies,

Department of Law and Social Sciences,MSc Development Studies

A Comparative Analysis of Paths to Industrialisation: The Functionality of Agrarian Transition -

Japan then and Ethiopia now

Jonah NM Wedekind

Image Source: http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/heruy.htm

This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Development Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). London, 15 September 2011.

1

SREF: 206862

2

SREF: 206862

Declaration

I undertake that all material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other persons(s). I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination.

London, 15 September 2011

Word Count: 10,023

3

SREF: 206862

Contents

Title: A Comparative Analysis of Paths to Industrialisation: The Functionality of Agrarian Transition - Japan then and Ethiopia now

Research Question: Historically, has the Japanese (and East Asian) agrarian transition model been applicable to Ethiopia's attempts at industrialization; is the past model relevant for Ethiopia in the present and successful agrarian transition possible in the future?

Table of Contents:

Abstract.....................................................................................................................................p. 5

Introduction...............................................................................................................................p.6

Chapter 1.0 Critical Literature Review: Use and Abuse of Historical Models of Agrarian Transition............................................................................................................p.8

1.1 Misuse and Misreading of History: World Development Report 2008...............p.9

1.2 Squaring the Circle: Neo-Classical-Neo-Populism Selective Reading of History p.12

1.3 Neo-Populist Cases for Land Reform..................................................................p.13

Chapter 2.0 Comparative Analysis: The Functionality of Agrarian Transition........................p.20

2.1 Justification of Relevance for Comparison: Japan and Ethiopia.........................p.23

Chapter 3.0 Japan's Agrarian Transition Model.....................................................................p.27

Chapter 4.0 Ethiopia's Agrarian Transition Attempts.............................................................p.30

4.1 Contemporary 'Functionality' and 'Problematic' of an Agrarian Transition in Ethiopia...................................................................................................................p.32

Conclusion.................................................................................................................................p.36

Bibliography..............................................................................................................................p.384

SREF: 206862Abstract

Neo-classical and neo-populist policy advocacies for agriculture-based rural diversification have

resigned to a neglect of the potential synergies between agriculture and industry in late

developing countries. Theoretically driven by a comparative analysis of successful capitalist

agrarian transition, this paper compares the successful agrarian transition of Japan (after the

Meiji-restoration) and East Asia with the attempted agrarian transition of contemporary

Ethiopia. Indeed, there are indications that Ethiopia was and is emulating Japan's and East Asia's

past successful agrarian transition. Presently, Ethiopia's agrarian question remains unresolved

and industrialisation has thus far been delayed. This raises doubts about the 'functionality' of a

successful replication of past agrarian transitions models in the present, given the 'problematic'

of globalisation. This comparative analysis goes to the heart of the Bernstein-Byres debate; It

argues that functionality for agrarian transition is co-determined by the external uneven and

combined nature of capitalist development and the internal social stratification which ensues.

The analysis finds that strict replication of the Japanese and East Asian success models is

rendered unlikely, given the vast differences of the time-and-space contexts. This is most

evident in Ethiopia's very recent shift away from the strategy of Agriculture Development-led

Industrialisation (ADLI) to an increasingly fashionable and criticised strategy of Agriculture

Investment-led Export-oriented development (AILED). However, drawing lessons from Japan

and East Asia remain vital, as do synergies between agriculture and industry, in search for a

successful Ethiopian-path to industrialisation under current conditions of capitalist

globalisation.

5

SREF: 206862Introduction

The successful transformation of the agrarian sector and the contribution of its smallholders to

industrialisation in Japan (post-Meiji) and the former East Asian colonies Taiwan and South

Korea (post-1945) continues to inspire theoretical discourses within agrarian political economy

and practical policy approaches for late developing countries (LDC's). In most contemporary

LDC's and apart from leading emerging market economies like Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia,

China, and South Africa (BRIICS) any fundamental agrarian contribution to industrialisation in

the manner of Japan and East Asia (J&EA) is unrepeated under neo-liberal globalisation. Here,

Ethiopia fits the context. Since the imperial Abyssinian Empire and again under today's second

(capitalist) Ethiopian republic, attempts at industrialisation have especially focused on the

emulation of Japans (1868-1945) successful smallholder-based agrarian transition1. However,

fundamental agrarian transition (and industrialisation) in Ethiopia has thus far been delayed.

This poses the question: is J&EA's successful agrarian transition model applicable to Ethiopia's

contemporary attempts at industrialisation? And does the current 'problematic' of globalisation

disclose the 'functionality' of a similar path of agrarian transition, or inhibit industrialisation?

Within agrarian political economy, mainstream neo-classical and neo-populist approaches

generally do not ask such questions. Arguably, their often combined paradigms make selective

use of successful historical experiences where these conveniently fortify the legitimacy of their

policy discourse. This abstraction of history is accompanied by a disregard of the question

whether intersectoral linkages and synergies between agriculture and industry, which were

crucial in J&EA's experience, remain relevant for a successful agrarian transition under

globalisation today. Thus, while the neo-classical-neo-populist paradigm proposes blanket

advocacies for agriculture-based rural diversification, it does not seriously consider agricultural

stimulation of industrialisation. It is often forgotten, that capitalist industrialisation has been

1 The East Asian model was of course relevant only to the second, capitalist Ethiopian republic, constitutionally established in 1994, after the 1991 peasant revolution which overthrew the first, socialist Ethiopian republic (1974-1991).

6

SREF: 206862the means by which massive rural poverty has been eradicated in the past (Byres 2004: 41).

The mainstream discourse is concerned with 'rural equity first', 'rural efficiency first' and

'making markets work' for smallholders in LDC's. As we shall see with regards to Ethiopia,

however, it is questionable whether rural equity leads to increased efficiency (or vice versa) of

smallholder productivity, the creation of economic rural diversification, and poverty reduction.

Within heterodox agrarian political economy the question whether contemporary agrarian

transition is possible (based on synergies between agriculture and industry) given the problems

LDC's face under capitalist globalisation, is still seriously considered or at least debated. Here, it

is informative to undertake a comparative analysis between a past model of successful agrarian

transition and a present attempt at agrarian transition, based on the experience of the former.

Therefore, this paper looks specifically at the social relations which formed during capitalist

development in the countryside and contributed to or inhibited capitalist industrialisation.

Thereby a case is made to extend this framework to the contemporary context.

Ethiopia's contemporary approach of increasing smallholder productivity to feed

industrialisation indicates that emulation of J&EA's smallholder-based agrarian transition is

attempted in practice today. However, for one, it diverges from the Japanese and East Asian

experience. For another, the outcome remains unclear. The recent experience of Agriculture

Development-led Industrialisation (ADLI) undertaken by the Ethiopian government has been

problematic. Internally, rural equity and externally capitalist competition have hindered

smallholder peasantries to significantly increase agricultural surplus. Accordingly, stimulation of

industry and thus industrial growth have been slow. It is questionable whether the recent

attempt at, what can be called, Agriculture Investment-led Export-oriented development

(AILED) can complement ADLI - and ultimately make Ethiopia's agrarian transition a success.

While placing a new tractor next to the old oxen may be an economically dynamic approach to a

contemporary agrarian transition, it is questionable if this is socially and politically sustainable.

7

SREF: 2068621.0. Critical Literature Review: Use and Abuse of Historical Models of Agrarian Transition

What follows is a critical engagement with the mainstream agrarian political economy discourse

of neo-classical-neo-populism and its treatment of uneven capitalist development and the

question of the functionality of agrarian transitions in the past and the present. Alternatively, a

heterodox political economy approach is considered which comparatively traces diverging

histories of the development of capitalism and critically considers the contemporary

functionality of agrarian transition/industrialisation under the uneven and combined

developmental pressures of capitalist globalisation2. These debates inform the adoption of a

theoretical framework for comparative analysis and justify the case study choice of Japan (and

its former colonies South Korea and Taiwan) then (meaning their histories of agrarian transition,

from initiation to completion), and Ethiopia now (meaning Ethiopias history of abortive

agrarian transition) in order to consider the possibility/problematic of agrarian

transition/industrialisation in Ethiopia in the present (under globalisation), based on the

informative value of successful transition-models of the past.

Before a critical literature review of the neo-classical World Development Report 2008

(WDR2008) by the World Bank (WB) and the neo-populist case for land redistribution by Griffin,

Khan, and Ickowitz (GKI), we should consider the following; The critical literature review will be

extensive, as it informs our theoretical debate. The theoretical debate will therefore not feature

any deeper treatment of the intellectual ancestors of the different strands of agrarian political

economy which continue to have their influence within neo-classical (Smith), neo-populist

(Chayanov), and historical materialist (Preobrazhensky) and related historical sociology

approaches to the uneven and combined development of capitalism, agrarian transition and

industrialisation3. Rather, emphasis is laid on those who build on them. By employing a

2 Globalisation, here, defined as the current phase of the restructuring of capital and its conditions of accumulation, manifested in new forms of the international centralisation and concentration, as well as mobility (and financialisation), of capital (Bernstein 2007a: 1).

3 For this, see Patnaik 1979; Martinez-Alier 1997; Bernstein 2009; 2002; Byres 20048

SREF: 206862heterodox approach, here, theory is based largely on the work and debates of Byres and

Bernstein (on the functionality of agrarian transition/industrialisation).

1.1. Misuse and Misreading of History: World Development Report 2008

The WDR2008 Agriculture for Development currently manifests the most influential policy

discourse in agrarian political economy. The report advocates a state-facilitated, yet market-led

productivity revolution in smallholder agriculture by means of attracting rural investments

through agricultural household liberalisation and increased global commodity market

integration, in order to stimulate parallel economic rural diversification and social outmigration

into other rural-based, non-agricultural economic sectors.4 Broadly, these policies are to serve

as the basis of 'transforming' poor, 'agrarian-based' economies while balancing-out rural

inequalities and decreasing poverty. Heterodox critiques have scrutinized the bi-polar nature

the WB's new Green Revolution approach (see Oya 2010: 85). In one breath it praises

'agriculture for development' and advocates 'moving beyond the farm' as key to diversifying

agrarian-based economies, but omits any consideration of the question of the functionality of

industrialisation and lacks any deeper investigation into inter-sectoral linkages between

agriculture and industry in contemporary LDC's (Kay 2009; Woodhouse 2009). Nonetheless, the

WB argues that its policies are empirically grounded in the successful experiences of Britain,

Western Europe, USA, and interesting for our case Japan and East Asia5 where agricultural

surplus production and subsequent agrarian taxation enabled industrial revolutions. Consistent

4 With rural diversification the WDR2008 envisions the diversification of agriculture (growing new crops, switching to higher-value products like horticulture, livestock, aquaculture) and the growth of a rural non-farm economy (export-oriented town and village based services). In theory, redistributive land reform, agrarian household liberalisation, and vertical integration of smallholders into global commodity chains/markets will attract rural investment and provide new farming-technologies which in return increase smallholder efficiency/productivity/output. Successful farmers and rural entrepreneurs could then invest their surplus/capital into rural vicinities to stimulate diversification. The new non-farm economy, moreover, should serve to ensure rural equity by employing/absorbing out-competed smallholders and surplus labourers, who would otherwise become landless or urbanise.

5 East Asia, here and henceforth, refers to Taiwan and South Korea. 9

SREF: 206862with the neo-classical analysis found in the report The East Asian Miracle (see WB 1993: 8-23),

the WDR2008 maintains that history shows that the catch-up development of post-War Japan

and East Asia was based on deriving a comparative advantage through increased economic

liberalisation, integration and improved agricultural productivity. The WB's very own critical

insights from these successful experiences (WB 2007: 26) then, legitimise continued, albeit

watered-down advocacy of further liberalisation of agricultural households to contemporary

LDC's as a means for rural diversification, balancing-out inequalities and poverty reduction

(ibid.: 35, 142, 226). Here, for one, one should question if past successful models of

industrialisation are actually indicative or applicable for advocacy of rural diversification in the

present. For another, one may assume that such contradictory advocacies by the WB (1993;

2007) are based on a misuse of successful experiences, derived from a misreading of history.

However, as economic historians argue, the agrarian transformation and industrialisation

models of J&EA, although informed by previous successful economic policies of 18 th century

Britain and 19th century USA, were not strictly orthodox emulations of these (Chang 2003). Also

different to each other, J&EA's policies were, to be historically accurate, predominantly based

on state-led, protectionist, calibrated and sequential approaches of agrarian structural

transformation, industrialisation and economic growth prior to gradual economic liberalisation

(Chang 2009: 478; Selwyn 2009; Wade 2004; Amsden 1989;).

The WDR2008 acknowledges that lessons from the past may not always apply to the future

and new challenges may invalidate old models and that therefore agendas need to be context

specific, reflecting both the broad country type and local conditions (WB 2007: 228-229).

However, the agenda proposed in the WDR2008 itself is limited to three generalised, Rostovian-

type categorical groups (agrarian-based, transforming and urbanized countries) and is narrowly

focused on successful experiences where land reform conveniently functioned to increase

smallholder agricultural productivity (Woodhouse 2009) as it did in J&EA. This shows a lack of

consideration for the socio-economic differences within and between different rural livelihoods

10

SREF: 206862at different times, in different places (Oya 2011). In agrarian political economy it is

differentiation which is analytically of importance in order to question the functionality of

agrarian transition under uneven and combined development or to explore the new

problematic in contemporary conditions of globalisation (Bernstein 2007b: 51). With regards to

further discussion, one should note that undifferentiated advocacies of redistributive land

reform and smallholder agriculture based on past successful models are problematic for

replication in the present. As we shall see, (not only) within the WB's neo-classical paradigm it is

the case that

Japan's post-war industrial reconstruction and its success, and especially the spectacular

industrialization of Taiwan and (South) Korea, have led to celebrations of the 'small farmer'

path of agrarian transition they are held to exemplify. Facile generalizations and

recommendation of their experience, however, ignores its special historical condition,

including highly (yield) productive irrigated rice cultivation, the investment in and close

regulation of agriculture by the Japanese colonial state, and the transfer of agricultural

surplus to 'feed' (literally and metaphorically) industrial accumulation, first in Japan from the

late nineteenth century and after 1945 in its former colonies (Bernstein 1994: 44-45).

Nonetheless, we bear in mind that

despite distinctive country-specific issues, agricultural policy challenges that confront

countries at earlier stages of economic development, today and in the past, are remarkably

similar across countries. This means that there is much that countries can learn from others

experiences, both historical and contemporary (Chang 2009: 479).

While the problematic of agrarian transition is an universal and inherent phase of rural catch-up

development, the functionality of it is always subject to differentiation across spaceand

time. This is most noteworthy when comparing past and present models of rural development.

11

SREF: 2068621.2. Squaring the Circle: Neo-Classical-Neo-Populism

We move on to introduce and critique recent popular neo-classical and neo-populist literature

on, and their approaches to, contemporary rural development. Critiques of the WDR2008 have

been numerous (see Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol.9 No.2) and will not be elaborated here.

With regards to the question of contemporary functionality of agrarian

transition/industrialisation in Ethiopia and comparisons to or lessons to be learned from J&EA,

the report has relatively little to offer. Despite claiming to represent a major shift in policy

thinking about agriculture, the report is not a decisive break from previous neo-classical

agrarian policies which have been relatively unfruitful for LDC's in practice in the past (Kay 2009:

125; Bryceson 2009; Chang 2009). This is curious since the WB's strategy to reduce inequality

and poverty remains its source of legitimacy for its neo-liberal policies (McMichael 2009: 235).

Admittedly, the WDR2008 acknowledges that the powers of agriculture for development

remain fallow (WB 2007: 7). Nonetheless, rather than critically address the discriminatory

external dynamic of WB, IMF, and WTO enforced openings of agrarian-markets in LDC's and the

parallel subsidised protection of agricultural households in DC's (McMichael 2009; Weis 2007),

rather than critically identify factors that inhibit internal flows of labour, capital, and agrarian

products between rural/agrarian and urban/industrial sectors of LDC economies (Woodhouse

2009; Kay 2009), the WB holds that land concentrationcontributes to the asset squeeze on

smallholders and landless households for which policies that excessively tax and underinvest

in agriculture are to blame, reflecting a political economy in which urban interests have the

upper hand (WB 2007: 85, 7). Such arguments smack neo-populist notions of urban/landlord-

biased policies which are supposedly endemic to the politics and socio-economic processes of

many agriculture-based countries. Neo-populists have long argued that urban/landlord-

biased policies inhibit the redistribution of land, discriminate against smallholders (held to be

more productive than large-landholders) and therefore fail to balance rural inequalities,

increase smallholder efficiency and productivity, achieve economic growth and diversification,

and decrease poverty (Griffin 1976; Lipton 1977). This means that there is, within the

12

SREF: 206862WDR2008, a specifically unacknowledged yet rhetorically/politically discernible incorporation of

the neo-populist discourse into the neo-classical WB paradigm. Indeed, the WB's ready

responsiveness to some NGO and neo-populist views on agriculture (Oya 2011: 148) reflects

an attempt to square the circle of a pro-(market) capitalist stance with a pro-small-farmer bias

(Oya 2009: 232). It is worth noting that the same holds true vice versa too; thus recent neo-

populist espousals of market-friendly, state-facilitated, pro-poor/smallholder redistributive land

reform and so on (in Griffin et al. 2003) essentially collapses their discourse into a neo-classical

WB position (Khan 2004) hence, neo-classical-neo-populism (Byres 2004: 17-18). Many

recent popular and NGO publications on changing agrarian dynamics in Ethiopia would fall into

this category (see Francesconi 2009; Cotula et al. 2009; The Oakland Institute 2011).

1.3. Selective Reading of History: Neo-Populist Cases for Land Reform

Moving on towards a critical treatment of neo-populism, one must be careful to distinguish the

'neo-classical' from the 'neo-populist' (Griffin et al. 2004). Indeed, for the WB the emphasis on

redistributive land reform and smallholder farming (in the interest of rural equity and pro-poor

growth) seems secondary. It functions, politically and ideologically, to legitimise the WB's

primary market-oriented (new) policy framework which remains truly (old) neo-classical (Byres

2003a; 2006). Accordingly, it (first) lays the foundations for efficient use of property rights by

establishing a level-playing-field in poor rural areas. And (second) thus enables further

liberalisation of agrarian households and integration of smallholders into globalised,

competitive 'willing buyerwilling seller' markets to unleash the full potential of smallholder-

entrepreneurs or, to call it by its name, free-market capitalism. Neo-populists however reject

conventional land privatisation as opposed to the commercialisation and protection of

customary tenure property rights systems. And they reject, not necessarily the integration of

smallholders into, but their initial subjection to free-markets. Arguably, one cannotsimply

give land to the peasants and then abandon them, and expect that all will be well, given that

13

SREF: 206862distorted markets inevitably will deprive one or more groups of people of their right to use a

productive asset (Griffin et al. 2003: 8, 18). Smallholder existence, efficiency and equity will

prevail only if agrarian markets were (firstly) not urban-biased, i.e. predisposed to policy failures

which discriminate against smallholders and (secondly) not landlord-biased, i.e. liable to create

monopsony conditions in competitive land, labour and capital markets ('one buyermany

sellers'). Necessary preconditions for successful land reform are accordingly the removal of the

urban/landlord-bias and the implementation of a strong state which can depress land

(transaction) prices, confiscate concentrated or unproductive land and redistribute rural assets

equally (to/between smallholders). The state should weaken social and institutional controls

that artificially channel resources away from agriculture (into industry) or obstruct rural public

investments for material and human development of the rural poor (rural diversification).

Subsequentlygiven that the agenda can be implemented in practiceeconomic growth needs

to be employment-intensive and income-equalising so that land reform and growth will

reinforce one another. GKI acknowledge that such an agenda is a painful nettle to grasp, but it

is unavoidable if there is to be any hope of success (ibid.: 45). Their primary concern is to

mitigate the uneven and uprooting social ills (inequality, poverty, labour exploitation and in-

formalisation, insecure tenure and landlessness) which accompany a development strategy

that neglects agriculture and the rural areas (ibid.:7). Their secondary concern is the emphasis

on a state-facilitated but nonetheless market-efficient (and hence neo-classical) rural

development strategy. Absent in GKI's approach is any deeper consideration of inter-sectoral

linkages between agriculture and industry (Karshenas 2004) or agricultural stimulation of

capitalist industrialisation (Byres 2004: 41).

GKIs publications on land reform have undergone theoretical and empirical critiques elsewhere

(see Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 4 No. 1-2). Limited by space, the following will remain a

brief treatment of their work which bears in mind our research question and case study. First

we take issue with the neo-populist conception of equitable development under capitalism.

14

SREF: 206862Second we treat the historical/empirical models which GKI use to support their case. The

increasingly popular neo-populist approach lays emphasis on decreasing land concentration and

rural-urban migration through rural redistribution and diversification. This points to genuine

(and important) concerns with the working poor6 and surplus labour7, or 'footloose labour'

(Breman 1996) waiting to be incorporated into the labour process in urban and rural

livelihoods of contemporary LDC's, but currently swelling to numbers of an excessive burden

that cannot be included now or in the future, in economy or society (Breman 2003: 136). GKI

attempt to offer a solution to this; the 'agrarian question of labour' as Bernstein calls it (2004;

2007b). Their approach reacts to meagre industrialisation and parallel absorption of surplus

labour in many contemporary LDC's. It primarily seeks to mitigate social ills associated with

(capitalist) development within the reality of the competitive world market by placing equity

next to efficiency or, in conventional terms, by making markets work for the poor. This however

is a core contradiction rooted in an analytical disregard of the development of capitalism (Byres

2004, Bernstein 2004, Sender and Smith 1986). The reality is that capitalist penetration of

competitive rural markets is inherently unequalising. The development of capitalism through

primitive accumulation,8 including its 'archetypal forms' such as land redistribution, constitutes

social relations which have a tendency to class differentiation among peasants (poor, middle,

rich peasants) (Byres 2005: 85). Moreover, GKI do not consider the political complexity of

patron-client-networks and social stratification involved in the reconfiguration of the state, the

removal of urban/landlord-biased policies, the confiscation of concentrated land and

transactions costs of land reform and the establishment of secure property rights (Khan 2004).

Even if an equitable land reform were implemented, the ensuing outcome of a permanent

process of churning of small parcels of land between...backward peasant farms that were only 6 Indications of the crisis of labour (worldwide): share of working poor living below US$ 2 a day is estimated

around 39%, i.e. 1.2 billion (ILO 2011).7 We use the terms 'footloose labour' and 'surplus humanity' interchangeably to refer to the heterodox

terminology of 'surplus labour', or the ILO-terminology of 'underemployment'. GKI use the latter two.8 Primitive accumulation here defined as the transfer of assets, most notably land, by non-market means, from

non-capitalists to potentially capitalist classes, and usually with state compliance or mediation: by force majeure, whether via theft, eviction, or purchase at a nominal price (Byres 2005: 83-84).

15

SREF: 206862marginally different from each other in terms of productivity would simply happen somewhat

more efficiently (ibid.: 96-99). Eventually however, this churning at the margins, driven by the

market will compel smallholders to economic differentiation as they become integrated into

different local, regional and global (up-stream and down-stream) commodity markets which

subject them to market competition and increasingly penetrate (commercialise, commodify and

capitalise on) their socio-economic relations and livelihoods. Thus redistributive land reform, if

successful, mightlay the basis for capitalism from below; might create structures within which

processes of differentiation flourished and a class of capitalist farmers emerged (Byres 2004:

30). If one accepts this, then the 'equal' and 'efficient' smallholder (or 'middle' peasantry), at

the core of the vision of agrarian populism, is itself one outcome of the processes of

differentiation in capitalism (Bernstein 2007b: 43). Thus, essentially the neo-populist vision

generates a development doctrine, which like the WB, advocates policies that attempt to re-

and-reconstruct rural social order in order to mitigate and manage the social ills, including the

swelling swathes of an urban 'surplus humanity' (see Davis 2006), which inherently grew and

will grow in the course of 'immanent' capitalist development (see Cowen and Shenton 1996).

GKI provide historical evidence of successful models and failed cases of redistributive land

reform. We briefly assess these, bearing in mind, that

permeating current debate of land reformare 'models' inspired by their particular

experience in their times and places. The potency in such models consists in how they are

generalised and applied, explicitly or implicitly; whether such applications facilitates or

hinders analysis of the dynamics of other times and other places, including what may be

changing before your very eyes today (Bernstein 2007b: 28).

GKI's most prominently employ empirical models in their work, where land redistribution was

successful. These are Japan, Taiwan and South Korea (Griffin et al. 2003: 27-31). An unsuccessful

16

SREF: 206862example they point out is Ethiopia (ibid.: 16-17, 26, 39). While the Ethiopian case is not treated

at length, we can infer more information from Griffin's previous work on Ethiopia (Griffin and

Hay 1985; Griffin 1992). Let us consider the successful cases first: The redistributive land

reforms in Japan (1946-1950), South Korea (1945-1954), and Taiwan (1949-1953) were initiated

(in the latter two cases by the U.S.-military government) on the basis of 'land to the tiller', not

on market-principles. The strong, dirigiste states either redistributed previously state-owned or

Japanese-occupied land and purchased, forced the sale of or confiscated concentrated land.

Land was then equally redistributed among tenants and landless households at a low price or

on credit. Once reform was completed J&EA had egalitarian agrarian systems of cultivator-

owned smallholder farming. GKI argue that the land reforms were successful (in the neo-

populist sense). Accordingly, reforms contributed directly to increased smallholder productivity,

accelerated agricultural growth and reduced poverty because state policies were not subject to

an urban-bias or dependent on landholders (Griffin et al. 2003: 31-33). However, it is

questionable whether GKI can make a direct correlation between equity and efficiency, in other

words, argue that land redistribution facilitated agricultural growth, without considering

intersectoral resource linkages and flows between agriculture and industry. One must consider

that and question how the agricultural growth of J&EA in recent decades was sustained through

agricultural-subsidies, derived from non-agricultural sectors of their economies, especially

industry (Karshenas 2004). It is possible, that policies which GKI label as urban-bias actually

made possible the creation of the buoyant non-agricultural economy, and manufacturing

industries that can afford the massive subsidies in question in the first place (ibid.: 173-174).

Therefore a look at Japan's first (post-Meiji restoration) land reform (1888-1937) is actually

more indicative to contemporary developing countries than the second (post-War) land reform

(1946-1950) because in the post-Meiji period taxation and surplus extraction of agriculture

contributed to create an industry which in turn could subsidise agriculture. Moreover, in the

case of Taiwan the dirigiste state so tightly directed prices and resource flows, that smallholder

decision making was hardly independent, as GKI would suggest (Byres 2004). Therefore, not

17

SREF: 206862only does GKI's selective reading of history (firstly) cast doubt over the correlation between

equitable land reform and agricultural growth, it also (secondly) contests the assumed superior

productivity of small-scale farming over large-scale farming. Karshenas (2004: 174) argues, if,

indeed, the postulated inverse relationship between land productivity and size of holding turns

out not to existthen, in the extreme, redistribution might even be followed by a fall in total

agricultural output, worse yet redistributive land reform[s], which are not well designed and

do damage to economic growth, can condemn such countries to perpetual poverty. Let us

assess the last two points with regards to Ethiopia.

Redistributive land reform, likewise in the name of 'land to the tiller', followed a

fundamental social revolution in Ethiopia (1974). The radical land reforms (1975), initiated by

the Derg-regime were part-and-parcel of replacing a feudal aristocracy which rested on landlord

tenancy. Land was nationalised, wage labour abandoned, private farms confiscated and Peasant

Associations oversaw the radical collectivisation of land. Land was redistributed to the landless

and previous smallholders-tenants at an upper-limit size of 10 ha, sufficient for family

subsistence. Three main production systems emerged in Ethiopia: peasant farming (2 ha

average, 90% of cultivated land), co-operative farms (high divergence in ha, 0.2-0.4% of

cultivated land), state-farms (5,000 ha average, 0.4-0.5% of cultivated land)9. Although reliant

data was lacking to calculate exactly to what extent land reform benefited Ethiopia's rural poor,

Griffin (1992: 3-4) held that it not only changed cultivation patterns but contributed favourably

to abolish landlord rent and tax10, improve standards of living of the rural-poor (of 65% of

Ethiopia's population)11, and create an egalitarian rural sector12. However it was stressed, that

benefits of the land reform...represent merely a short breathing space in which to reverse the 9 Data inferred from Griffin (1992: 25-34); AK Ghose (1985).10 Landlords had previously appropriated, a maximum estimate, of 30% of net rural output (Griffin 1992: 3)11 Griffin (ibid.: 4) estimated, that at a maximum the rise in income per head of the average poor peasant may

have been...50 to 55 per cent. 12 Estimated in Gini coefficient, the land redistribution of Ethiopia (0.47) was amongst the perhaps most

comprehensive ever implemented, at a level with Japan (0.38), Taiwan (0.47) and South Korea (0.30) (Griffin et al. 2003: 26).

18

SREF: 206862process of underdevelopment (Griffin & Hay 1985: 61). Thus while reforms in agrarian relations

fulfilled the basic (neo-populist) conditions for agricultural growth, these seemed insufficient for

a buoyant sector. Indeed, agriculture's growth [was] less than satisfactory and after land

redistribution agricultural growth in fact declined13 (ibid.: 37; Ghose 1985). The main reasons for

this were, according to Griffin (1992), regional concentration and market fragmentation due to

an input-bias toward latifundio-type state-farms (which absorbed most investment into

agriculture but performed badly) and an import substitution-bias toward capital intensive

industrialisation which burdened peasant farmers and ignored the superior potential for capital

accumulation held by co-operatives. However, this is a bold claim to make considering that up

to 90% of production was undertaken by (relatively undifferentiated) smallholders. Given that

growth was stagnant in all three forms of production, we can assume that it is uninformative to

test the inverse-relationship based on farm-scale and output during the Derg-period (Dessalegn

2008) as Griffin does (1992: 32-34). In their criticism of GKI's attachment to smallholder

agriculture Sender and Johnston (2004) mention that the abolishment of wage-labour

frustrated agricultural growth in Ethiopia. Instead they call for employment-intensive contract

farms in sub-Saharan African as weapons for mass production and poverty reduction.

Nonetheless, here it is perhaps more informative to analyse agrarian social relations of

production rather than agricultural factors of production (Bernstein 2007b: 48). Thus, one can

argue that under the Derg egalitarian land redistribution was detrimental to efficient

smallholder marketable surplus production, or capital accumulation and hence agricultural

growth. Redistributive land reform, although granting usufruct-rights to smallholder and

drastically reducing landlessness, inhibited the emergence of, what Byres (1996) calls,

'capitalism from below' where enterprising peasants, or 'capitalist roaders' could separate from

the peasantry and emerge as rich peasants, kulaks or rural bourgeoisie (Dessalegn 1984: 60). In

other words, since the uniform right to land was static, i.e. used by the peasant but owned by

the state, no major peasant differentiation (nor landlessness) could occur. Rural society was 'de-

13 From 1972/73 to 1975/76 overall cereal production decreased by 31% (IFPRI 2011: 9).19

SREF: 206862stratified'. In equity and lack of smallholder efficiency, then, lay the reasons for stagnant

agricultural growth;

The impact of Ethiopia's agrarian reformhas beenthe creation of small cultivators,

undifferentiated, therefore uncompetitive, insecure in terms of meeting their basic needs,

and unable to be involved in initiatives towards improvement and modernisation of their

farms[and]in the general exchange process, in accumulation in innovative endeavour

(ibid.: 61-62).

Moreover, the lack of agricultural growth aggravated famine (1984), forced the resettlement,

villagisation and collectivisation of millions of peasants and stirred an ethnic-coalition of a

peasant rebellion which overthrew the Derg in 1991 (Young 1997). The fact that GKI (2003: 26,

39) hold forced villagisation and collectivisation and discrimination against agriculture

accountable for failure of redistributive land reform in Ethiopia is therefore contradictory and

testimony to their analytical abstraction from rural social relations and politics on the ground.

Dyed-in-the-wool seems GKI's blind-faith that egalitarian redistributive land reform stimulates

agricultural growth, when in practice, as Karshenas (2004: 174) shows with reference to Taiwan

and Japan, there can be no guarantee that this will be so. We thus turn to an alternative

approach of comparative analysis of agrarian transitions.

2.0 Comparative Analysis: The Functionality of Agrarian Transition

Let us restate the research question; Is Japan's and East Asia's successful agrarian transition

model applicable to Ethiopia's contemporary attempts at industrialisation? And does the

current problematic of globalisation disclose the functionality of a similar path of agrarian

transition, or inhibit industrialisation? Overarching our research question is the agrarian

question. It is categorised into AQ1) social struggles over power and politics in countries (still)

20

SREF: 206862dominated by poor, rural society; AQ2) different formations of the development of capitalism in

the countrysides and its effect on agricultural development/production there; and AQ3)

agriculture's linkages and contributions to capitalist industrialisation/accumulation (see Byres

1986; Bernstein 1996). The central feature of our research question is focused on the agrarian

transition concerned with the resolution of the agrarian question. An agrarian transition is

successful once agriculture (whether fully capitalist or not) contributed to the development of

capitalist industry as the dominant sector of the economy (ibid.), in the process of which the

size of rural/agricultural peasantries diminished and that of urban/ industrial workers increased

significantly (Byres 2003b). An agrarian transition is abortive, or delayed, when capitalist

industrialisation is still in its infancy and agriculture remains dominant (ibid.). In Capitalism from

Above and Capitalism from Below, Byres (1996) identifies six notable historical examples of

diverging agrarian transition: in England (where capitalism first emerged and industrialisation

advanced14), Prussia and the USA15, France, Japan, and Taiwan/South Korea16. These models, or

paths, reveal that historical experiences of agrarian transitions are diverse; that the

development of 'capitalism from above' or 'capitalism from below' has different starting points

and different outcomes. These paths could potentially act as reference points for comparative

analysis of agrarian transition elsewhere in the past and where the possibility exists of

resolving, or attempting to resolve the agrarian question in the present (Byres 1996: 26-27). To

undertake such a comparison, here, we adopt Byres (1986; 1996) framework for comparative

analysis of successful capitalist agrarian transition. For both cases, J&EA and Ethiopia, we

analyse

(a) their pre-capitalist agrarian structures; (b) the class character of transition and the social

forms of agricultural production it generated; (c) how agricultural productivity increased

(investment in farming); and (d) how [if] agricultural development contributed to

14 See Brenner (1977); Byres (1996); Wood (2009).15 on which Byres (1996) focuses in depth. 16 Taiwan/South Korea are taken as one path.

21

SREF: 206862industrialization (intersectoral links), which is the criterion of successful transition (Bernstein

1994: 44).

This framework will drive the comparative study of Japan's agrarian transition in the past and

Ethiopia's present attempts to resolve the agrarian question by emulating the transition-path of

the former. However, we must consider the following:

First, within political economy (including neo-classical-neo-populism) agrarian questions in

contemporary developing countries are analysed in a constricted and analytically

impoverishing way because contemporary prospects for agrarian transition are considered on

the basis of very few, often 'narrow and stereotyped' success models from the past (Byres 1995:

509). Therefore, to avoid analytical closures before we commit ourselves to comparison and

preclude whether or not variants of a particular path are being followed, or may be followed,

we need to be sure that we do not proceed from a caricature (Byres 1986: 19).

Second, the historical applicability of successful agrarian transition 'then' to attempts 'now',

across time and space is contested. Even though historically capitalist industrialisation was the

means by which the peasantry diminished and poverty was eradicated (Byres 2004), in the

present phase of capitalist globalisation we face the 'problematic' of the elimination of any

prospects of agrarian transition as a route to comprehensive industrialisation in contemporary

poor countries (Bernstein 1996: 50). This does not mean that industrialisation is not possible

but questions whether the transition to capitalism in agriculture (AQ2) and agrarian transition

via agriculture's contribution to capitalist industrialisation (AQ3) still functions in the classical

sense under contemporary conditions of globalisation. This is because of the uneven and

combined development of capitalism, now intensified by globalisation (ibid.). For one,

globalisation pressures LDC's to attempt to industrialise by developing their home market but

confronts them with a competitive world market dominated by industrially advanced countries.

For another, capitalism is so dominant a mode of production on a world scale that, even if it

does not penetrate, it combines with the pre-capitalist social formation of rural livelihoods in

22

SREF: 206862LDC's and links its commodity producers (willingly or unwillingly) directly into the world market.

This uneven and combined expansion of the circuits of global capital transcends the links

between agriculture and industry. Thus, the functionality of industrialisation in the present is

not dependent on agricultural contributions from the home market but (unevenly) conditioned

by circuits of international capital. Perhaps a developmental state could mediate between the

home market and the world market and thus facilitate industrialisation but under neo-liberal

globalisation prospects seem bleak (Bernstein 2006; 2007b).

The second point is debatable. Do (different) paths to agrarian transition remain viable

in the contemporary context, as Byres (2002) argues? To assess this in our case-study,

Byres comparative investigationneeds to be complemented by the location of agrarian

transition in the context of uneven and combined development on a world scale and its

timing, which brings another angle of vision to bear on issues of then and now (Bernstein

1996: 41-42).

Beyond the comparative analysis of J&EA and Ethiopia, we need to look at their social formation

in its (a) location within capitalist world economy and its effects, (b) patterns of agrarian

structure and change, (c) forms and degrees of industrialisation (ibid.: 51). To look at the

'functionality' and the 'problematic' of agrarian transition under uneven and combined

development in contemporary Ethiopia by means of comparing it to the historical experience of

Japan, really puts the 'BernsteinByres debate' to a test. The following makes a case for the

relevance of comparing Japan and Ethiopia17.

2.1 Justification of Relevance for Comparison: Japan and Ethiopia

The relevance of comparing Japan and Ethiopia is a means to test the functionality of an 17 South Korea and Taiwan will not be included in this comparison as this would complicate the analytical focus on

transition differentiation. 23

SREF: 206862agrarian transition today on the basis of a transition path in the past. By doing so we squeeze-

out more information about whether 'the problematic' of globalisation really (a) marginalises

the stress on capitalist development in the countryside, (b) erodes the dynamic linkages

between agriculture and industry, and (c) makes the industrialisation process dysfunctional, i.e.

dismisses the agrarian question. To avoid that comparative analysis proceeds from caricature,

let us justify the specific choice of Japan and Ethiopia.

First, historically both shared a common impetus to modernise and initiate industrial take-off

(Bahru 2002; Levine 2001). The development of capitalism in home markets of early

industrialisers in the 16th and 17th centuries, had by mid-19th century expanded through

imperialism into a dynamic capitalist world market which was rapidly penetrating and

transforming pre-capitalist agrarian areas (Hobsbawm 1962). The British colonisation of India

and the Opium Wars in China (1838-1842) and the direct confrontation with European

imperialist powers 1850s-1860s, led in Japan to a call for 'national defence' by reformist

intellectuals and an understanding by the ruling classes (before and after the Meiji-restoration)

that the transition to capitalism and the need to industrialise was inevitable as a means to

remain sovereign and emulate imperialist development (Allinson and Anievas 2010). Similarly,

Ethiopias impetus for defensive modernisation was ignited by the first Italian attempt at

colonisation 1883 (fought-off at the 'Battle of Adwa' 1896) and the colonialist ventures of

Britain and France in East Africa. In response the intellectual advisers of Emperor Menilik II

advocated the emulation of the Japanese development model for economic progress (Bahru

2002; Clapham 2006). Only the second colonial intermezzo (1935-1941) externally necessitated

Emperor Selassie I to attempt capitalist development (ibid.) and internally forced the feudal

monarchy to address the pre-capitalist agrarian question (Iliffe 1983; Sender and Smith 1986).

Thus, Japan and Ethiopia shared a similar experience of integration into the capitalist world

market, free from colonialism but externally pressured to address the agrarian question and

industrialise. However, internally the social structures of Japan and Ethiopia were conditioned

divergently, due to the uneven and combined development of capitalism.

24

SREF: 206862Second, in the 19th and 20th centuries the ruling classes of pre-and-post Meiji Japan and Ethiopia

before-and-after revolution, both states sought to learn from and emulate foreign models of

modernisation (Levine 2001). Moreover, it is notable that

those who link a thesis about parallels between Ethiopia and Japan to the fevered

imagination of a comparative sociologist might pause before this fact: earlier in their present

century, writers in both countries expressed acute awareness of their mutual affinities. (ibid.:

1)

There is empirical diplomatic evidence for this. In 1931 Ethiopia's foreign minister Heruy visited

Japan to learn about its progressive development. In return in 1934 a Japanese diplomatic

mission under Tsuchida Yutaka set sail to Ethiopia. Their relations were less commercial, more

focused on learning from each other and aligning against European imperialism. Ethiopia's

monarchical-constitution (1930) was even modelled on the Meiji-constitution (1889) (Clarke

2004; 2007). Nonetheless, the history of uneven and combined development would have it so,

that Japan's agrarian transition was successful (discussed in Chapter 3.0), while Ethiopia's

agrarian transition is (as yet) delayed (discussed in Chapter 4.0).

Third, both nations shared a similar pre-capitalist feudal mode of production (Levine 2001). In

Tokugawa Japan and Selassie's Ethiopia centralized authority (of the absolutist state) was linked

to regional landholders and military classes who controlled land and extracted surplus tributes

from the labour of peasants on their land. The development of capitalism under landlord-

tenancy, however, effected diverging social changes. As aforementioned (Chapter 1.3) the Meiji-

restoration in Japan was followed by two redistributive land reforms. Likewise, the 1974

revolution in Ethiopia was followed by radical land reform. In the post-Meiji/WWII era in Japan

and in the post-Imperial era in Ethiopia, tenancy and wage labour were abolished by a strong

state. Thus in both cases smallholders with a restricted tendency towards differentiation

(Byres 1986: 47) thence tilled the land.

25

SREF: 206862Fourth, Ethiopia's contemporary political elites remain focused on the Japanese (and East Asian)

success-model of agrarian transition and industrialisation (Fourie 2011). The structural

transformation programme, Agriculture Development-led Industrialisation (ADLI), draws on the

experiences of J&EA's smallholder-path to industrialisation and makes smallholder-agriculture

the motor of industrialisation (Getnet 2009). Indeed, the Ethiopian government (EPRDF) is

assisted closely by Japanese development economists who argue that Japans experience of

agricultural contribution to, and development of, industry are both consistent with the policy

context of Ethiopia (Ohno 2009: 4). Moreover, Ethiopia's recent industrial development (to the

extent that it proceeds) bears similarity to the experience of successful industrial development

patterns in Japan and Taiwan (Sonobe et al 2006).

These are clear indications that a comparison is justifiable. Nonetheless, most comparative

literature on Japan and Ethiopia lacks deeper analysis of their respective social structures and

critical time-and-space periodisation and contextualisation of their (successful or delayed)

agrarian transition processes. Therefore it is necessary to compare the differential development

of capitalism in both countries and analyse the social stratification which ensued and facilitated

(or delayed) successful agrarian transition. In this manner we can seriously assess the

'problematic' and the 'functionality' of agrarian transition in contemporary LDC's like Ethiopia.

This can have profound implications for development practice, if one agrees that

[s]trategies and practices from past cases are only part of the puzzle; the other part depends

to a large degree on the social (class) structures prevailing in any given society on the eve of

their catch-up attemptnecessary policies for late development, induced from the past, are

not, therefore, sufficient. And what are sufficient are the institutional innovations that, by

definition, cannot be predicted in advance. If this argument is accepted, then development

policy enters an altogether new and much less coherent realm of understanding and action,

which is probably why such arguments are steadfastly ignored by most of those engaged in the

development industry (Selwyn 2011: 444)26

SREF: 206862

Therefore any assessment of 'functionality' and 'problematic' of agrarian transition based on

comparative analysis must remain nuanced and embedded within an understanding of external

conjuncture and internal social structure. This is all the more reason not to close book on the

BernsteinByres debate.

3.0 Japan's Agrarian Transition Model

The pre-capitalist structure of Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) was a mode of production that on

one hand dynamically developed and commercialised Japan's home market but on the other

lead to social stratification, laying the internal foundations for feudal demise and capitalism's

rise. Here, Allinson and Anievas (2010: 477-479) accounts are insightful: The Tokugawa

shogunate (Japan's ruling family) asserted its political power and economic apparatus by means

of hierarchical links to, and funding of, intermediate daimyo (absentee landholders). Residing in

urban areas the daimyo in turn relied on provincial samurai (military class) to control their land.

The samurai extracted surpluses in form of tributes (like rice) from the peasants who cultivated,

worked on, and lived off the land. This feudal system was institutionally upheld on the basis

that tributes were then transferred upward from peasant, to samurai, to daimyo, to shogunate.

By the mid-19th century the system had accelerated uneven economic development and parallel

social stratification, stirring social crisis. The economically exploited peasantry rebelled (Bix

1992) and the samurai, who had becamome marginalised from control over land and means of

production transformed into a revolutionary bureaucratic-class that became inclined to

promote a capitalist mode of production through state reformation (Trimberger 1977). This

social crisis was further intensified by the external threat of European capitalist imperialism,

which made Japan's relative backwardness to colonial powers acute and the need for industrial

progress apparent. Unable to respond to the combination of internal samurai-struggle for

ascendancy and external capitalist threat, the old ruling class (shogunate) and landowners

27

SREF: 206862(daimyo) were overthrown and the old mode of production subsequently reformed under the

Meiji-restoration (1868) (Allinson and Anievas 2010).

The need to industrialise was a pressing issue for the Meiji-leaders. Indeed, the need for speed

to catch-up was of essence if agriculture was to contribute to industry and avoid colonisation

(ibid.). To set the conditions for capital accumulation from agriculture, the strong Meiji state

implemented land and tax reforms and commercially yielded tenancy powers to landlords (Dore

1959a). These landlords resided on the land they rented-out to farmers and personally oversaw

peasant agricultural production, without themselves becoming capitalist farmers or employing

wage-labour (Dore 1959b). Landlord attempts at capitalist farming with wage-labour mostly

failed (Byres 2003b). This subjected the large class of smallholders to excessive rent-taxation

and generated high surpluses, subsequently shifted into industry. As Byres (1986) notes, the

coercive nature of 'non-absentee landlords' inhibited any social differentiation of smallholders

in the countryside and hampered, within agriculture, the development of 'capitalism from

below'. Meiji Japan's agrarian transition thus ironically functioned in the manner of a non-

capitalist transition which enabled the general development of capitalism to proceed a

uniquely effective yet exploitative and proletarianising experience of state-led primitive

accumulation indeed (ibid.: 46; Byres 2005). The biased-interventions of Meiji's coercive state

and landlord class increased agricultural output, stimulated industrialisation and agrarian

transition succeeded via 'capitalism from above'.

One indication for successful agrarian transition is population employment-changes in

agriculture and industry over time. In 1872, Japans workforce in agriculture was 85 per cent,

and in industry 6 per cent. As Agrarian transition proceeded until 1942, the workforce in

agriculture decreased to 43 per cent, and in industry increased to 34 per cent (Byres 2003b:

179-181). Initially, the particular rapid pace of Japan's transition to capitalism was indeed a

conscious decision taken by Meiji leaders (Allinson and Anievas 2010: 483) in order to

28

SREF: 206862industrialise in the capitalist world economy at a time when Qing China and British India were

subjected to drastic decline[s] in state capacity and popular welfare that seemed to follow in

lockstep withthe forced 'openings' to modernity and the making of the Third World,

accompanied by famines of holocaust-like proportions (Davis 2002: 9). It was tragically

fortunate for Japan that under British colonialism China and India succumbed to geopolitical

buffer-zones, shielding Japan's agrarian transition from colonialist interference.

In the post-WWII period, the U.S.-military government pushed for a second

redistributive land reform (1945). This did indeed (as neo-populists like to point out)

reinvigorate state-led agricultural contributions to industry, alleviated landlord-exploitation of

the peasantry and finally allowed 'capitalism from below' to develop in the countryside.

However, the social roots and institutional innovations of agrarian transition (landlord-bias,

industry-bias and tenancy-squeeze) are found in the pre-WWII era (Byres 1986). To reiterate,

Karshenas (2004) makes the case that by the time of Japan's second land reform, the stagnant

agricultural sector had to be sustained by subsidies derived from industrial surpluses. Therefore,

as afore-argued, Japan's pre-WWII industrialisation period is perhaps more indicative to

contemporary LDC's than the post-WWII period when engaging in comparative studies.

Furthermore, a deeper analysis of the development of capitalism, consequent social

stratification, and successful agrarian transition of Japan reveals that

...the Japanese landlord class was, nevertheless, most unusual, if not unique. Without such a

landlord class, with both its positive and negative features, a transition similar to the Japanese

is inconceivable. No such landlord class exists in any contemporary poor country. (Byres

1968: 50).

This emphasises the point that agrarian transitions are subject to differentiation and indicates

that a comparison is likely to raise questions regarding the contemporary viability to emulate

the Japanese path in practice. Let us bear this in mind for the following treatment of Ethiopia.

29

SREF: 2068624.0 Ethiopia's Agrarian Transition Attempts

The pre-capitalist structure of Ethiopia is not easily generalised into one tenure system.

Different feudal modes of production took different forms in different areas (Smidt 2005). Here,

we limit our treatment to North (rist system) and South (gult system) as is common practice

(Dessalegn 1984). In the Northern provinces, the rist mode of production and governance was

kinship based. Regional nobility granted smallholder peasants usufruct-rights to land in return

for tributes to the state. Traditionally, the rist was communal in character, landlessness and

tenancy were scarce; the rist was effective in allocating land to people and people to land

(ibid.: 18). This was so, until in the mid-20 th century, Haile Selassie's increasingly centralised

system of monarchical governance, imposed higher taxes on peasants in the North and thus

frustrated the development of capitalism, both 'from above' or 'from below'. This stirred

disputes amongst tenants over land rights (ibid.) and arguably sowed the seeds for the

rebellious fervour of Tigray's notorious peasantry, which would later wage revolution against

the anti-capitalist Derg-regime 1975-1991 (Young 1997).

Agrarian relations in the South prevailed on the basis of the gult tenure system, worked or

owned by peasants, chiefs and clergy. In the mid-20th century 'capitalism from above' developed

in the South, albeit slowly and through vicious forms of, what we can call, imperialist primitive

accumulation (Wedekind 2011). The imperial state appropriated common peasant lands by

means of neftannya forces (armed landlords), who excessively squeezed the peasants that were

now tenants on the very land they once owned. This was not private property in the capitalist

sense. Neftannya landlords were obliged to transfer tributes upwards to state authorities

(Dessalegn 1984). The slow transition to capitalism in the South was accelerated when state

farms and private investors competed for cash crop land in the South. What followed, was that

the introductionof pretty commodity production and the gradual development of

domestic and international markets further modified the prevailing pattern of feudal

30

SREF: 206862patron-client relationsand the conversion of gabbar into rent-paying tenants, and later

into wage-earners, marked the start of the gradual transition from a feudal mode of

production to agrarian capitalism (Fernyhough 2010: 296).

In the South, the uneven and combined development of imperialist primitive accumulation

effected insecurity of tenure and subsistence and proletarianisation of the peasantry

(Pausewang 2009), thus increasing the numbers of footloose labourers in urban and rural areas

who could not sell their labour to an underdeveloped industry. Landlessness stirred rural

reactions in form of banditry and peasant resistance (Fernyhough 2010).

Predominantly capitalist, by 1960-74, the urban capitalist/industrial sector lacked contributions

from agricultural output, which was stagnant (Griffin 1992). The fact, that manufacturing firms

were predominantly run by foreign capitalists (Markakis and Nega 2006) highlighted Ethiopia's

backwardness to other capitalist power in the post-colonial era of developmentalism. With an

agrarian crisis and infant industrial in stagnation, the Imperial attempt at agrarian transition,

based on inapplicable foreign models was a failure (Clapham 2006). Parts of the disaffected and

powerless urban petit-bourgeoisie and military classes waged revolution against Haile Selassie

(1974) and after a period of political struggle, the Derg-regime took control of the Ethiopian

state apparatus. In Chapter 1.3 we have already touched upon the Derg-regime's history of

redistributive land reform. Given that the Derg was an an anti-capitalist modernisation project,

based on the Soviet model (Clapham 2006) and given that agriculture and industrial

development remained stagnant after land reform, we can safely say that agrarian transition in

Ethiopia remained a failure.

To compare, the Japanese Meiji-restoration, which brought forth a unique landlord class that

effected rural capitalist accumulation and produced a successful, albeit labour-coercive,

agrarian transition. However, in Ethiopia a political elite developed from above which enforced

31

SREF: 206862a collectivised mode of production that tied the peasant to the land. This form of socialist

primitive accumulation inhibited any development of capitalism from above or below and

moreover failed to stimulate rural accumulation, agricultural growth and industrialisation

(Kebedde 1987). The Derg-regime was, partly due to a failed agrarian transition, overthrown by

rural peasant insurgencies in 1991 and replaced by the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary

Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1994 (Young 1997).

4.1 Contemporary 'functionality' and 'problematic' of an agrarian transition in Ethiopia

The leaders of the peasant revolution which overthrew the Derg in 1991 now hold political

power in Ethiopia under the dominant EPRDF party. The vestiges of the Derg were effectively

removed. What remains incorporated in the 1995 constitution is the egalitarian land law which

the Derg initially implemented. It states, that all land belongs to the state, but grants each

citizen a right to land. In sociological terms, land does not belong to the farmer, rather the

farmer belongs to the land (Smidt 2005: 273) and therefore all land belongs to the state. Land

is not private nor for sale. The state holds the option to lease land, for redistributive purposes,

to citizens who have a right to land and in case agrarian households come under pressure

through droughts, resource shortages, crop failure and conflict (ibid.). Indeed, the EPRDF has

made massively use of this right, not only to redistribute land where peasant differentiation or

resource shortfalls occurred but also to lease land to attract export-oriented agribusiness

investors (which we shall discuss below) (Dessalegn 2008; 2011). Smidt (2005) argues that the

existing land law is vested in customary communal land rights which were, and until recently

remain, highly egalitarian. This policy indicated that the EPRDF state initially favoured a rural-

biased development strategy, characterised by a populist concern that excessive landlessness

and urbanisation would ensue if land were privatised and peasants subjected to neo-liberal

market competition (Devereux et al 2005). Approximately 80 per cent of Ethiopia's labour force

remains engaged in rural smallholder agriculture. Until recently, in its attempt to keep the

32

SREF: 206862agrarian smallholders tied to the land as an undifferentiated homogenous groupin the neo-

populist sensethe strong Ethiopian state sought to avoid peasant differentiation from below

(Dessalegn 2008) and thus peasant autonomy from below (Pausewang 2009). Rather, the

developmentalist state attempts to drive the development of capitalism from above. Here, the

unique land law is moreover crucial to Ethiopia's policy approach of agriculture development-

led industrialisation (ADLI). ADLI aims to make the rural smallholder the motor for

industrialisation. In the 1990's and early 2000's ADLI was the primary development strategy to

reap the benefits of the back-and-forth resource flows and synergies between smallholder

agriculture and industry. The state heavily invested in technological inputs to upgrade

smallholder means of production (fertilisers, high-yield crops, etc.) with the aim to increase

productivity, accumulate capital, and shift surplus into the industrial sector. Indeed, there is

evidence that the ADLI development strategy is modelled to the successful Japanese and East

Asian experience of smallholder-led industrialisation (Ohno 2009). While some J&EA-emulated

industrial policies and collaborations (with J&EA business partners and economists) have lead to

a few handful successful industrial upgrades (Sonobe et al. 2006), these were not significantly

stimulated by agricultural surpluses (Dercon and Zeitlin 2009).

As afore-argued, rural equity does not necessarily lead to smallholder efficiency. Indeed, some

agricultural economists argue that high rural equity fails to stimulate rural market competition

and innovation and in fact causes the Ethiopian agricultural sector to stagnate (Devereux et al

2005). State-led inter-sectoral linkages between agriculture an industry in Ethiopia remain

meagre and need to promote other sectors of the economy (transport & manufacture) more

effectively in order stimulate the transformation process (Dercon and Zeitlin 2009). Under neo-

liberal globalisation, the strong EPRDF state has failed to make ADLI an effective motor for

growth and the agrarian transition seems to remain slow18 in a national context where

18 This is evident if we look at the indication for successful agrarian transition in terms of population employment-changes in agriculture and industry over time. 1) In 1980, 89.5 per cent of the work force was in agriculture and 2 per cent in industry. 2) Between 1992-97, 88.5 per cent of the work force was in agriculture and 2 per cent in industry. 3) In 2005, 80.2 per cent of the

33

SREF: 206862questions of land ownership become a Gordian knot of rivaling political and economic

interests. This is the case of Ethiopia where the challenge to transform the agricultural

sector and make it an engine of growth must take into account at every turn the very

political nature of land ownership in the country (Ginthinji and Mersha 2007: 310).

Dessalegn (2008: 349) argues that the EPRDF-state nonetheless seeks to remain a

developmental state and retain dirigiste autonomy in order to stimulate linkages between

agriculture and industry in the home market. However the legacy of half a century of state

directed rural development has been in large measure grinding poverty, famine and pandemics

and did not bring forth a distinct social element, or a particular class that first takes up a new

form of production, or tries out new innovations or invests in new opportunities to create a

diverse social landscape and competing classes as an indispensable condition for a successfully

agrarian transition from in Ethiopia. In other words the development of capitalism from above

in Ethiopia has (to date) failed to ignite an agrarian transition from below. While the internal

social structure is tied-up and hinders the full unleashing of the rural potential for growth,

capital circuits of neo-liberal globalisation are further affecting Ethiopias rural markets. With

regards to the comparative analysis, it seems clear that the Japanese and the Ethiopian social

structure after reform/revolution took on different shapes across space-and-time and allowed

for different forms of institutional set-ups to drive smallholder-led agrarian transition. And

consequently the outcomesthe social struggles over power and politics, the development of

rural capitalism, and the contribution of agriculture to industrialisationwere different too. A

defining feature of these differences is time. Indeed, Ethiopia is attempting to transforming its

agricultural sector in an different period of globalisation. While the development strategy of

ADLI in Ethiopia is problematic and has not produced results similar to that of its J&EA model,

recent global trends in rural investment in LDC's push for a new strategy to attempt the agrarian

work force was in agriculture and 7 per cent in industry. 4) In 2009, 80 per cent of the work force was in agriculture and 6.5 per cent in industry (WB Development Indicators, 2000; 2005; 2007; 2009). Thus, if there is any agrarian transition, given the approximate increase 4.5 per cent of work force in industry between 1992-97 and 2009, then it is slow.

34

SREF: 206862transition.

Since 2008 there has been an institutional shift in Ethiopia's development strategy (ADLI) to a

strategy of agriculture investment-led export-oriented development (AILED). This change was

recently underscored and facilitated by the institutional shift of agricultural resource/land

governance from the local to the federal level. The arguably slow transition which proceeded

with ADLI is part-and-parcel of the reasons for a strategy shift towards AILED (Lavers 2011). This

shift is significant as it aims to attract investment from foreign agribusiness in order to maximise

foreign exchange and job creation through large-scale contract farming (Oya 2012). By the end

of 2008 an estimated 3.5 million acres of leased, and supposedly unused, land have significantly

altered Ethiopia's rural landscape. Arguably so to the socio-ecological detriment of pastoralism,

communal smallholders and environmental biodiversity (Dessalegn 2011). While AILED may be

an approach which attempts to overcome the 'problematic' of globalisation, i.e. reap the

benefits of global capital investments to co-stimulate an agrarian transition with foreign capital,

it is indeed questionable if this approach is socially and politically sustainable (Dessalegn 2011).

What is interesting nonetheless, is that indicates that a strict emulation of the smallholder-led

agrarian transition model is not entirely abandoned. But foreign agricultural investments are

now sought to be integrated into and complement agricultureindustry linkages (Oya 2012).

For our comparative study, this further emphasises that

the 'agrarian question now' is very different from the 'agrarian question then', because of

globalisation... These changes, moreover, will most certainly be influence by global capital

in pursuit of its interests: in this instance, by what one might term global agrarian capital,

in the shape of agribusiness corporations. But those changes will not be uniform, will not

proceed independently of the agency of local capital but via the interaction of global

capital and local capitals ... Awareness of the historical experience of agrarian transition

in the pre-1945 experiencealerts us to the substantive variety in the past ...[and]...

illuminate trajectories being followed in the present (Byres 2002: 65). 35

SREF: 206862

Conclusion

As afore-quoted, Selwyn (2011: 444) argues that while development strategies induced from

the past are indeed part of the puzzle to generate viable development strategy in the present,

the successful outcome of these new development strategies depend (a) on the social structure

that historically developed within an LDC's society and (b) on the new institutional innovations

which the given social structure makes possible. With this is mind, it remains to be seen

whether Ethiopia can internally untie the gordian knot (Ginthinji and Mersha 2007) and

externally make use of global agrarian capital (Byres 2002) to complement its smallholder-

based agrarian transition. To what extent this new attempt to accelerate Ethiopia's agrarian

transition is associated with difficult social and political implications remains speculative. While

Ethiopia's agrarian market (still) retains its egalitarian structure under current condition of

globalisation, it does not seem to contribute to an agrarian transition (yet). Here, we cannot

disclose, as Bernstein does, the 'functionality' of an agrarian transition under the contemporary

'problematic' of globalisation, given the new institutional set-up of agriculture development-led

industrialisation and agriculture investment-led export-oriented development which attempts a

new path towards industrialisation. Without wanting to employ neo-populist rhetoric here, it is

questionable if the current development strategy which invites foreign agribusiness investments

and fosters smallholder-led agricultureindustry linkages, by placing the old oxen next to the

new tractor, is socially, politically and ecologically sustainable. Further research should pay

attention to Ethiopia's contemporary institutional shifts in development strategy and related

socio-ecological issues.

With regards to the comparative study of agrarian transition; this dissertation has shown that

the past Japanese (and East Asian) agrarian transition model has been emulated in Ethiopia's

attempts at industrialisation. However, in Ethiopia three attempts at agrarian transition (under

imperialism until 1974, socialism until 1991, and under developmentalism until recently) have

36

SREF: 206862merely produced slow (at times even failed) agrarian transition. Heavy reliance, therefore, on

the J&EA model of smallholder-led development would ignore the differences in internal social

structure and external flows of capital across space-and-time. Indeed, the slow agrarian

transition and the infiltration of global capital have pushed Ethiopia's EPRDF-state to undertake

an institutional shift towards a new development strategy. This strategy is not to abandon the

J&EA inspired model of smallholder agriculture development-led industrialisation, but to

complement the agrarian transition with a strategy of foreign investment-led export-oriented

development. Therefore, J&EA past model is merely indicative, not blue-print, for Ethiopia's

present attempts to accelerate its agrarian transition. Whether foreign agribusiness investments

will stimulate an acceleration of the agrarian transition in LDC's in the future is a question for

further research.

37

SREF: 206862Bibliography

Allinson, J. and Anievas, A. (2010) The Uneven and Combined Development of the Meiji Restoration: A passive revolutionary road to capitalist modernity. In: Morton, A.D. (ed.), Capital & Class. London: Sage, 469-490.

Amsden, A. (1989) Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zewde, B. (2002) Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of Twentieth Century. Oxford: James Currey

Bernstein, H. (1994) Agrarian Classes in Capitalist Development. In: Sklair, L. (ed.), Capitalism & Development. London: Routledge.

Bernstein, H. (1996) Agrarian Questions Then and Now. In: Bernstein, H. and Brass, T. (eds.), Agrarian Questions: Essays in Appreciation of T.J. Byres. London: Frank Cass, 22-59.

Bernstein, H. (2004) Changing Before Our Very Eyes: Agrarian Questions and the Politics of Land in Capitalism Today. Journal of Agrarian Change, 4 (1-2), 191-226.

Bernstein, H. (2006) From Transition to Globalization: Agrarian Questions of Capital and Labour. In: International Conference on Land, Poverty, Social Justice and Development, Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague, 9-14 January.

Bernstein, H. (2007a) Capital and Labour from Centre to Margins. In: Living on the Margins Conference, Stellenbosch, 26-28 March.

Bernstein, H. (2007b) Agrarian Questions of Capital and Labour: Some Theory about Land Reform (and a periodisation). In: Ntsebaza, L. and Hall, R. (eds.), The Land Question in South Africa: The Challenge of Tural Transformation and Redistribution, Cape Town: Human Research Council Press, 27-59.

Bix, H.P. (1992) Peasant Protest in Japan: 1884-1950. London: Yale University Press.

Breman, J. (1996) Footlose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brenner, R. (1977) The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism. New Left Review, 1 (104), 25-92.

Bryceson, D.F. (2009) Sub-Saharan Africa's Vanishing Peasantries and the Specter of a Global Food Crisis. Monthly Review, 62, (3).

Byres, T.J. (1986) The Agrarian Question, Forms of Capitalist Agrarian Transition and the State: An Essay 38

SREF: 206862with Reference to Asia. Social Scientist, 14 (11/12), 3-67.

Byres, T.J. (1996) Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below. London: Macmillan.

Byres, T.J. (2002) Paths of Capitalist Agrarian Transition in the Past and in the Contemporary World. In: Ramachandran, V.K. and Swaminathan, M. (eds.), Agrarian Studies: Essays on Agrarian Relations in Less-Developed Countries. Lonon: Zed Books, 54-83.

Byres, T. (2003a) Agriculture and D