Annotated list of popular movement literature

Agrarian movements

Joel S Migdal: Peasant politics and revolution, Princeton University Press 1974

Basic book on agrarian movements in the shift to a market society. Basic thesis: that it is the richer who can handle the market and the poorer who try to keep the self-sufficient village and who therefore stand up in revolutionary movements. Also shows what is needed for such movements to succeed.

Nathan J Brown: Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt, Yale University Press 1990

A partial refutation of the above. Claims that the villages always stood united against the outside world. Also shows the classic defense: individual terror against government and market representatives, and how effective this actually was -- killing of bailiffs actually generally led to government taking more into account the interests of the peasantry. Brown also references the discussion of moral economics (see under ancient popular movements above, the article on Scott) and empirically proves the market liberals wrong when they claim that moral economics is a myth.

David Goodman & Michael Redclift: Refashioning nature. Routledge 1991

On the background against which peasant movements work: the transformation of nature into commercial goods. How the industry has increasingly succumbed agriculture since the beginning of the 1870s, and where the shocks have been set. First the marketing, then inputs and some third world crops, now the genes -- which determine the character of peasant movements from time to time.

Solon Barraclough: An end to hunger? UNRISD/Zed 1991

Describes all types of agrarian conflicts in the South and divides them geographically in relation to which agricultural systems prevail: The bimodal system (large commercial agriculture + small farms) where the struggle is between them for land reform, the traditional village system where the struggle is between the village and the Roman ownership / the state, or the middle-tier: the clientelistic small farmer system where the conflicts intersect. Also shows how the market, the environmental crisis, etc. are affected in the three systems. The book is particularly valuable because it shows why strong popular movements are needed for something substantial to be achieved.

Annette Aurélie Desmarais: La Vía Campesina. Pluto Press 2007

Isn’t exactly the book about Vía Campesina, we’ll have to wait for that for a while. But here are many of the discussions within the organization, told by someone who has been there. She also does not shy away from pointing out ambiguities, conflicts and weaknesses, which the movement can afford.

North

Derek Urwin: From ploughshare to ballot box, Universitetsforlaget 1980

The primer on Europe's peasant movements 1870-1945 and the reasons why they took different forms in different places. Touches on the background of the rural social structure in various countries -- mix of farms and estates, stability of villages, strength of commercialization, etc. Also describes the difficulties farmers had in trading, and co-operation in response.

Erica Simon; Réveil national et culture populaire en Scandinavie, Presses Universitaires de France 1960

About the giant self-education project of the Nordic farmers, the folk high school, and its roots in Grundvigian religious revival and populism, or with the folk high school’s slogan: “folklighet” (popularity, populism). Focus on alliances (with national bourgeoisie, in the Scandinavian movement) and conflicts (against the same bourgeoisie, but above all against the traditionally ruling official class in the Nordics). It is clear that the folk high school was combative in Norway and Denmark but more gentle in Sweden where farmers already had a mortgage in the state power.

Maurice Agulhon: The republic in the village, Cambridge University Press 1982

The story of how large parts of the French countryside became republican, despite the adversities of the revolution. Mainly it was about the ruling class, i.e. the landowners, successively depriving the villagers of the rights they were used to and driving them over to the opposition.

Paul Bew: Land and the national question in Ireland 1858-1882, Gill and Macmillan 1978

A book by a professor for other professors and experts in Irish history, you only think when you try to get through all the impenetrable allusions. But after a few chapters when it starts to deal with popular movement politics in the smallholder and independence movement, one is almost grateful for the fussiness; rarely has one seen a writer so familiar with the often trivial and personal conflicts that can block action in such contexts. And so the initiative comes from the rank and file and all opposition is blown away, in this case from the Meagher farming family in Kilburry, Tipperary, who invent a new way to make it so expensive for the landlord to collect his rent that he agrees to a reduction. But certainly the history of popular movements would benefit from a more popular representation.

Flemming Just (ed): Cooperatives and farmers' unions in Western Europe, South Jutland Press 1990

Shows how the farmers have used both cooperative and trade union mobilization to act economically and politically, how the cooperative suffers from the same problems as capitalism in general (the rich earn the most) and how it therefore comes into conflict with the farmers’ trade union aspirations.

Georges Ferré: 1907 - La guerre du vin, Loubatières 1997

About when Southern France's vintners went on strike over whether industrially produced drinks made of sugar and essences should be called wine. And not only that: dragged all the municipalities of southern France into the strike so that no taxes could be paid to the state. A battle the farmers won, and led to them going on to invent the principle Appellation d’Origine Controlée, i.e. that only cheese made in Parma should be called Parmesan, i.e. a kind of copyright owned collectively by an entire village.

Robert Moeller (ed): Peasants and lords in modern Germany, Allen & Unwin 1986

Describes how the North German landlords, the Junkers, with their paternalistic movement for tariff protection (with crumbs for the peasants) colored and created the program of Nazism already in the 1890s (strong leaders, extermination of Slavs and Jews, wars of conquest, national responsibility for production). The farmers never created anything of their own -- with the exception of Bavaria where small farmers created an egalitarian movement with a Christian foundation and never let themselves be deceived by Hitler.

Lawrence Goodwyn: The populist moment, Oxford University Press 1978

About America’s cooperative farming movement in the 1880s-90s, which, according to the author, was the last attempt to recreate America’s original democratic society. Describes why it failed because the “shadow movement” took over the power of the movement, because it was base-organized in only a few states and in most places was satisfied with a political party where shadow movements always have the upper hand.

Patrick H. Mooney & Theo J. Majka: Farmers' and farm workers' movements, Maxwell Macmillan 1995

About what happened after the populists were defeated. Endless attempts by America’s small farmers to form new organizations to assert themselves, against the market, against the chemical companies, etc., whereby they, among other things, invented the telephone chain, but which all fail sooner or later.

M.C. Cleary: Peasants, politicians and producers, Cambridge University Press 1989

On France’s delayed Peasant Movement. Before 1914: dependence on patron-client relationships with the state or rich landowners, 1918-1940: party-politicized and powerless peasant organizations, After 1945: finally independence, when both state and landowners were discredited! Particularly interesting because it shows a kind of French Grundtvigianism that organized independence, with a focus on both solidarity and efficiency.

Chaia Heller: Food, farms & solidarity, Duke University Press 2013

Depicts the emergence of Confédération Paysanne in France as a small farmers’ opposition movement against both large farmers who chose efficiency over solidarity, and the agribusiness they are part of. The focus of the story is on the fight against GMOs, waged because these benefit large farms at the expense of smaller ones - even if they also benefit junk food, as Conf calls it.

South

Vandana Shiva: The violence of the green revolution, Zed Books 1991

About the green revolution and how it destroys both environmentally and socially. Contents: The science and politics of the Green Revolution, The destruction of genetic diversity, Intensive irrigation and water conflicts, Political and cultural costs, Biotechnology as an intensification of conflict. Contains not least a description of the peasant movement in Punjab that tried to assert the interests of the ruined peasants and how the Indian government fought it by starting a religious war.

John P. Powelson & Richard Stock: The peasant betrayed, Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain 1987

On the states’ response to peasant land reform movements: state land reforms that put power in the hands of the state bureaucracy. About how these actively contributed to the food crisis, through harassment of the farmers. The book goes through country after country and almost everywhere finds the same pattern. Unfortunately, it tends to see the farmers as victims more than as actors with their own power.

Demetrios Christodoulou: The unpromised land, Zed 1990

A proper overview of who the actors in the agricultural conflicts are -- users of various kinds, owners and outsiders -- and what their goals are. Accurate categorizations of different farming types and farming regimes. Finally, a review of various peasant movements during the 20th century also follows to exemplify.

Jeffrey Paige: Agrarian Revolution, The Free Press 1975

The classic about the “older” peasant movements from about 1900-1970. A systematization of different kinds of peasant movements depending on the “agricultural regime”, i.e. the dependence of the upper and lower classes on money and land respectively. If both depend on land (hacienda system) we get a movement for land reform. If both depend on money (plantation) we get a labor movement. If the upper class depends on land but the peasants on money (commercialized sharecropping), we get a communist movement for power over the state. If the upper class depends on money but the farmer on land (ordinary family farming), we get peasant cooperation. Paige’s simple breakdown has of course been shown to be an oversimplification, but even such are useful.

John Womack: Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, Alfred Knopf 1969

Exciting as a novel about the peasant movement that was able to successfully put land reform on the global agenda and actually win despite Vietnam War methods against them. If you only read one book about a people’s movement, this is the one to read. Stopping, however, just before we get to see how the reformist bourgeoisie succeeds in co-opting it, one can only guess.

Dana Markiewicz: The Mexican revolution and the limits of agrarian reform, Lynne Rienner 1993

About the co-opting.

Alan Horton: Agrarian reform and the international consensus, in Howard Handelman (ed): The politics of agrarian change in Asia and Latin America, Indiana University Press 1981

Describes in more detail how the co-opting took place, not only in Mexico but also globally. The essence was that land reform was increasingly formulated in technical terms, how better technology could produce more food, after which the question of democracy and equality disappeared from the agenda.

Jean Chesneaux: Peasant revolts in China 1840-1949. Thames and Hudson 1973

The Chinese Revolution in context plus how it was organized socially. Contents: The tradition: peasant revolts and secret societies. The uprisings in the middle of the 19th century, e.g. Taiping. Peasants' Revolt and the Collapse of the Empire. Traditional Peasant Rebellion Pattern. 20th century: the farmers' associations as a response to the growing power of the landlords. The 1930s: the Soviet movement as an alliance between peasant associations, secret societies and the communist-organized armies. Yenan as the headquarters where the traditions merged. The takeover where they separated again.

D.N.Dhanagare: Peasant movements in India, Oxford University Press 1983

Peasant movement history 1920-1950. Mainly showing the appeal of the Gandhian movement to the commercialized and fairly rich peasants, they were the ones who had something to refuse the English state: taxes. The poor peasants were mostly at the mercy of Indian landowners and were therefore less useful. But the Gandhian movement nevertheless set in motion a process in which everyone was ultimately drawn in, leading to land reform in India and to a global “marriage” between national movements and peasant movements.

Benedikt Kerkvliet: The Huk rebellion. University of California Press 1977

About the peasant uprising in the Philippines after World War II. Focus on how the peasants’ primary interest was to gain control of the land while some urban revolutionaries “used” the peasant movement to gain control of the state apparatus. This worked perfectly as long as the state oppressed both equally, but when it met the farmers’ demands, they no longer saw any interest in continuing to quarrel and returned to business.

Stephen Bunker: Peasants against the state, University of Chicago Press 1987

A detailed account of how the coffee farmers of Bugisu in easternmost Uganda fought for their cooperative - to gradually gain control of coffee exports and to curtail the arbitrary power of first the British colonial authorities and then the native bureaucracies. Bunker neither hides the internal quarrels between coteries and family factions nor ambiguous career-motivated petty betrayals, and at the same time gives an insight into how the African kleptocracy regimes became a natural consequence of the increasing impoverishment caused by the deteriorating terms of trade for African products imposed by the colonial powers.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: Oppressed but not defeated, UNRISD 1987

About Bolivia's Indian movement and its development out of the peasant movement, as an opposition movement against the paternalistic rule of the Creole middle class in the peasant organizations.

Marc Becker: Indians and leftists in the making of Ecuador’s modern indigenous movements, Duke University Press 2008

On the background of the Indian movement in a peasant movement for land reform. Becker especially deals with the strong position of Indian small farmers in the political opposition in general in Ecuador from the beginning of the 20th century – for example, at least one Indian farmer leader was involved in forming the Communist Party in the early 20th century, and from the very beginning “Indian” was included in self-understanding and thematization.

Tom Brass (ed): New farmer’s movements in India, Frank Cass 1995

About the new movements that primarily aim to ensure that farmers receive reasonable payment for their products. But as e.g. Gail Omvedt shows in her contribution that the new peasant movements are also at the forefront of both environmental and women's movement organization in India. Also characteristic of them is that they refuse to build up bureaucratic structures -- they consist of mass meetings and campaigns run by the farmers’ children with the farmers as participants.

Gail Omvedt: Reinventing revolution, Sharpe 1993

A popular movement history of India after 1960 with emphasis on peasant movements or rather rural movements. Depicts their emergence, short-term challenge (along with women’s movements, environmental movements and dalit movements which are to some extent peasant movements as well) of the government in 1989 and the subsequent war of attrition against the growing Hindu fundamentalism of the urban middle class.

Neil Harvey: The Chiapas Rebellion, Duke University Press 1998

The standard work on the Zapatistas and their background in liberation theology and struggle for the realization of Mexico’s land reform even in the backward and remote Chiapas. Also clearly shows how the EZLN emerged as the “police” of the villages in defense against the gangster methods of the ranchers and the state-bearing party. However, underemphasizes the global importance of the Zapatistas as the 90s’ main standard-bearers against the market dictatorship. The book opens with a chapter on civil rights, stating that such can only be enjoyed by collectives prepared to fight for them.