If we accept the premise that exploitative tenancy, credit, and employment relations are fundamental to the enduring patterns of low human wellbeing in much of rural Asia, Africa, and the Americas, then changing those relations is the critical factor for improving human development in the coming 50 years. But if we also recognize the current reality that elites in these regions have shown a willingness to use ferocious violence in defense of these relations, then we are faced with a very challenging question. How can the most powerless and oppressed people in an agrarian society gain position and resources that will allow them to enact change in the face of elite and state defenders of the status quo?
Progressive advocates of international justice sometimes underestimate the critical role played in many developing countries of brutal violence and murder in maintaining existing relations of exploitation by elites. The histories of India, Thailand, Brazil, and many other middle- and low-income countries with extensive agrarian economies provide numerous examples of massacre of peasants, workers, and under-employed rural people by military or private militias. Especially egregious was the campaign of the Thai military-security apparatus against the Farmers Federation of Thailand between 1973 and 1976. The FFF was a non-communist indigenous movement of farmers in rural areas in the north and east of Thailand that had succeeded in creating a grassroots movement demanding enforcement of previously enacted tenancy reforms. Through an orchestrated campaign of terror, at least 30 leaders of the FFT were assassinated in their villages and in Chiang Mai — a campaign of murder that essentially destroyed the FFT movement. (Tyrell Haberkorn has documented this campaign in several important publications; “An unfinished past: Assassination and the 1974 Land Rent Control Act in Northern Thailand.” Critical Asian Studies 2009. 41 (1): 3-35; and “Getting Away with Murder in Thailand: State Violence and Impunity in Phatthalung.” In State violence in East Asia, 2013, edited by N. Ganesan and Sung Chull Kim.) Massacres in rural India against Dalit workers and instigated by elite landlords show the same dynamic (link).
So how can the riddle of exploitation and violence be solved?
In a reasonably democratic system one answer is through electoral mobilization supporting programs and candidates pledged to relevant reforms of credit, tenancy, and employment. Rural populations in states like India, Thailand, and Brazil constitute a majority, so if legislative processes and their implementation could be trusted, then this may be a feasible avenue. However, the states in these countries and others throughout the developing world are strongly biased towards elite interests (as the Thai FFT example in the 1970s confirms). So confidence in purely electoral mobilization and demands seems insufficient.
Another possibility— also suggested by Thailand — is mass mobilization of farmers, workers, and others demanding change that leads to large demonstrations and civil disobedience. The Red Shirt movement in Thailand is a good example of this strategy. However, as social movement sociologists have demonstrated, large mobilizations like this require resources to coordinate, motivate, and facilitate effective protest. And eventually these movements seem either to run out of steam or run up against the “violent repression” problem all over again. States have demonstrated their willingness to use deadly force to end large demonstrations in cities like Bangkok and Beijing when they persist long enough to threaten real costs for the regime.
A third possibility is that illustrated by the experience of the Indian state of Kerala. The Kerala history combines the first two strategies and adds a third—the development of a well-organized political party with strong grassroots presence that is committed to property reform and to achieving electoral success. Farmers’ unions, labor unions, and women’s organizations had established strong presence in Kerala even before statehood, and they provided a basis for a Left political movement that was able to gain office over long periods of time in the state. Governance by Left coalitions proved sufficient to enhance and enforce land reforms that constituted the spine of the Kerala transformation.
This suggests that Kerala escaped the contradiction between exploitation and elite violence by establishing a powerful “third force” in society, capable of constraining and reducing the power of traditional elites without triggering massive outbreaks of rural violence. the government of Kerala kept its promises, maintained trust with rural society, and enacted social programs that led to remarkable progress in the level of human wellbeing in all parts of Kerala society.
Other parts of Asia also pursued a “Left” strategy. One was China, whose complicated history since 1949 is well known, including the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Another was Indonesia, when the well-established Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was thought to have attempted a military coup in 1965. Then-General Suharto initiated a campaign of repression against suspected PKI adherents leading to the killing of between 500,000 and one million Indonesians. It was the worst use of mass murder Asia witnessed in the twentieth century. US foreign policy and President Lyndon Johnson turned a blind eye to the massacres even as they were underway.
So we are back to where we started. Is there a future for the agrarian poor throughout the developing world that preserves the three “nots”: not permanent status quo of exploitation, not massacre of poor people demanding their rights, and not violent revolution?
