Henry Bernstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 3586096 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Henry Bernstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | Henry |
| FAMILY NAME | Bernstein |
| SIGNATURE | BERNSTEIN H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of London |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1366 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1963 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Classes of labour
JPS at 50
Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change
Development processes are never neutral. They impact various groups and classes of people differently. A high food price may benefit some rich peasants who produce and sell food surplus, but it may disadvantage landless laborers. A project on irrigation may benefit those who own the land, but not the landless tenants. Nowadays, official documents by governments and development agencies tend to lump different groups of people into vague categories…
The ‘peasant problem’ in the Russian revolution(s), 1905–1929
This highly selective paper covers some key aspects but certainly not all of the ‘peasant problem’ in Russia on the cusp of the twentieth century, in the revolution of 1905–1907, the revolution of October 1917 and the civil war that followed, and during the Soviet 1920s until collectivization. Among its concerns is why the Bolsheviks found it so difficult to ‘resolve’ that problem in the 1920s to the moment of Stalin's collectivization from late …
Unpacking ‘authoritarian populism’ and rural politics
This paper provides an overview of work published under the auspices of ERPI, which remains somewhat elusive as a coherent intellectual and political project. I comment on several matters including lack of distinction between the 'agrarian' and the 'rural', issues of (spatial) scale and temporality and of identifying agrarian and rural classes, the costs as well as possible benefits of embracing the ambiguities of populism, and instances of 'resi…
Introduction
Given continuing debate about the plantation system, this introduction examines some of the theoretical issues surrounding the recruitment, reproduction, and dissolution of its workforce, and in particular the free/unfree character of its social relations of production. It begins by confronting two interrelated revisionist interpretations of production relations on the plantation: on the one hand neoclassical economic theory, and on the other the…
Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia
Marx and the Earth. An anti-critique
John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett are leading contributors, both individually and jointly, to current debates about an ecological materialism, led by the influential volumes Marx and nature (Bur
Forum
Ben WhiteThe idea for this discussion originated in a wooden cabin in the Dutch polders in the late summer of 2015. Harriet Friedmann responded enthusiastically to my observation that the Internati
The 'peasant problem' in the Russian revolution(s), 1905-1929
This highly selective paper covers some key aspects but certainly not all of the 'peasant problem' in Russia on the cusp of the twentieth century, in the revolution of 1905-1907, the revolution of October 1917 and the civil war that followed, and during the Soviet 1920s until collectivization. Among its concerns is why the Bolsheviks found it so difficult to 'resolve' that problem in the 1920s to the moment of Stalin's collectivization from late …
Rural wage employment in developing countries
JPS review symposium on Land’s End
Land’s End is about the attempt made by indigenous highlanders to join the march of progress promised in modernization narratives, only to encounter the polarizing effects of the capitalist relatio
Agrarian political economy and modern world capitalism
This paper provides a selective survey of food regimes and food regime analysis since the seminal article by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael in 1989, and further traced through their subsequent (individual) work. It identifies eight key elements or dimensions of food regime analysis, namely the international state system; international divisions of labour and patterns of trade; the 'rules' and discursive (ideological) legitimations of diff…
Agrarian Political Economy
Soberania alimentar
Este trabalho busca identificar e avaliar alguns dos principais elementos que 'delimitam' a questão da Soberania Alimentar: (i) um ataque global à agricultura industrial e suas consequências ecológicas, no atual momento da globalização; (ii) a defesa de um (do) "modo camponês" como base de um sistema alimentar sustentável e socialmente justo; e (iii) um programa para concretizar esse objetivo mundial-histórico. Embora acolha o primeiro desses ele…
African Peasants and Revolution’ revisited
This short essay begins by revisiting John Saul's landmark article in the first issue of the Review of African Political Economy in 1974, which was, inevitably, very much of its historical moment. The author suggests that Saul used an ideal-typical conception of ‘peasants’ combined with a particular view of ‘incomplete’ capitalism established by colonial rule in Africa and continuing since political independence. He then proposes, in highly selec…
Food sovereignty via the 'peasant way
This paper attempts to identify and assess some of the key elements that 'frame' food sovereignty (FS): (1) a comprehensive attack on corporate industrialised agriculture, and its ecological consequences, in the current moment of globalisation, (2) advocacy of a (the) 'peasant way' as the basis of a sustainable and socially just food system, and (3) a programme to realise that world-historical goal. While sharing some of the concerns of (1), I am…
Doing committed social research
This is an edited version of a keynote address to a postgraduate student conference held in 2012 at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University on the theme of ‘Global New Social Activism’. It suggests and considers some of the dangers of committed social research that fails to meet the disciplines of Gramsci's ‘pessimism of the intellect’. Those dangers include ‘verificationism’, spontaneism/voluntarism, and inadequate analysis of both the objective an…
Farewells to the peasantry?' and its relevance to recent South African debates
Farewells to the peasantry?' and its relevance to recent South African debates Henry Bernstein (bio) In this brief contribution I address, and summarise, more recent work that follows up on the article 'Farewells to the peasantry?' in Transformation 52 (2003), and sketch its relevance to South Africa. The article concerned longstanding debate of the social conditions of existence and dynamics of 'peasants'/'peasantry': whether 'the peasantry' con…
A dinâmica de classe do desenvolvimento agrário na era da globalização
Este artigo examina, primeiro, a transformação da lavoura para a agricultura, como resultado do advento do capitalismo industrial, e de sua posição dominante na escala mundial desde o século XIX; e uma segunda mudança, a partir da década de 1970, ocasionada pelo advento e pelos rumos da globalização contemporânea. O artigo, então, passa a defender que o debate sobre a (derradeira?) 'morte do campesinato', na era da globalização, é equivocado e an…
Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change
Henry Bernstein argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. Providing an accessible introduction to agrarian political economy, he shows clearly how the argument for "bringing class back in" provides an alternative to inherited conceptions of the agrarian question. He also ably illustrates what is at stake in different ways of thinking about class dynamics and the effects of agrarian change in today…
'The Peasantry' in Global Capitalism
In his Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm declared that 'For 80 percent of humanity, the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the 1950s...'. He was referring to peasants: 'the most dramatic change of the second half of this century, and the one which cuts us forever from the world of the past, is the death of the peasantry' ('which had formed the majority of the human race throughout recorded history'). Did Marx predict this? And if so, what did he mean by …
Third World Lives of Struggle
Two overviews and twenty-nine first-person accounts of the everyday lives of peasants, workers, labor migrants, and marginals from a variety of Third World countries; ten are drawn from Africa, particularly from Mozambique.
Agrarian questions of capital and labour
A brief history of commercial capitalism
Readers should not be misled by the title nor the brevity of the text (some 128 pages, with 45 pages of endnotes). In effect, this short book represents another instalment in Jairus Banaji's remark
Food sovereignty via the 'peasant way
This paper attempts to identify and assess some of the key elements that 'frame' food sovereignty (FS): (1) a comprehensive attack on corporate industrialised agriculture, and its ecological consequences, in the current moment of globalisation, (2) advocacy of a (the) 'peasant way' as the basis of a sustainable and socially just food system, and (3) a programme to realise that world-historical goal. While sharing some of the concerns of (1), I am…
Is There an Agrarian Question in the 21st Century
This paper first explores the lineages and applications of the "classic" agrarian question, including its fateful adaptation in the early Soviet Union, as the agrarian question of capital. It then argues that the agrarian question of capital has been superseded in the current period of globalization. There are no longer classes of predatory pre-capitalist landed property of any major weight, nor is it useful to regard today's small farmers as "pe…
African peasantries
The paper seeks to contribute to a framework for the investigation of the specific historical conditions and contemporary manifestations of the agrarian question in sub-Saharan Africa. The latter is distinguished, inter alia, by the timing and modes of incorporation of African social formations in the international economy, and by the forms of intervention of the colonial and post-colonial states in the absence of features classically associated …
Agrarian political economy and modern world capitalism
This paper provides a selective survey of food regimes and food regime analysis since the seminal article by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael in 1989, and further traced through their subsequent (individual) work. It identifies eight key elements or dimensions of food regime analysis, namely the international state system; international divisions of labour and patterns of trade; the 'rules' and discursive (ideological) legitimations of diff…
Notes on capital and peasantry
Bernstein examines the diverse ways in which capital and the colonial state incorporated rural producers into the production and consumption of commodities as the means of securing their own subsistence. Regulations, services and the monopoly of crop producers have been used to require an often recalcitrant peasantry to organize production to meet the requirements of international capital and the local state for particular commodities, for tradin…
Agrarian questions then and now
1996). Agrarian questions then and now. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 24, Agrarian Questions Essays in Appreciation of T.J. Byres, pp. 22-59
Modernization theory and the sociological study of development∗
The focus of this article is methodological and macro‐sociological. Its purpose is to disentangle some of the issues which arise in the sociology of development, and to question the assumptions and implications of a particular mode of conceptualization based on the notions of modernity and modernization which has provided the characteristic theoretical framework of the sociology of development. The principal assumptions of modernization theory as…
Capitalism and petty-bourgeois production
The article first provides an exposition of an argument, proposed in an important recent paper by Peter Gibson and Michael Neocosmos, concerning the generation of petty commodity production by the essential relations of the capitalist mode of production. Second, it locates their position in relation to others that have dominated debates about the nature, forms and 'functions' of petty commodity production within contemporary capitalism. Third, it…
The political economy of the maizefilière
Agricultural 'modernisation' and the era of structural adjustment
The World Bank's account of crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and its prescribed solutions via structural adjustment policies represent a particular imperialist intervention in a conjuncture of global reaction. The article seeks to contribute to a socialist perspective on the acute contradictions of 'actually existing capitalism' in Africa, first by discussing the ideology, practices and effects of agricultural 'modernisation' which the World Bank (am…
Forum
Ben WhiteThe idea for this discussion originated in a wooden cabin in the Dutch polders in the late summer of 2015. Harriet Friedmann responded enthusiastically to my observation that the Internati
A brief history of commercial capitalism
Readers should not be misled by the title nor the brevity of the text (some 128 pages, with 45 pages of endnotes). In effect, this short book represents another instalment in Jairus Banaji's remark
Social change in the South African countryside? Land and production, poverty and power
The article examines land and production, poverty and power, as coordinates of the agrarian question in South Africa, and uses them to sketch the context of the apartheid legacy, to interrogate the discourses of land and agricultural policy reform, and to investigate the paradox of the apparent marginality of reform in the ANC Government's agenda alongside a widespread and dynamic politics of land and farming. In particular, it confronts stereoty…
South Africa's agrarian question
1996). South Africa's agrarian question: Extreme and exceptional? The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 23, The Agrarian Question in South Africa, pp. 1-52
Notes on state and peasantry
This paper is complementary to the author's previous ‘Notes on Capital and Peasantry’ (Review 10). In that article, the role of the state in promoting the commoditisation of peasant agriculture was alluded to, a theme which is pursued further here. This is done through a number of provisional hypotheses which ‘map out’ three connected areas of contradictions: contradictions in the circuits of peasant economy, in the apparatuses and practices of t…
The 'peasant problem' in the Russian revolution(s), 1905-1929
This highly selective paper covers some key aspects but certainly not all of the 'peasant problem' in Russia on the cusp of the twentieth century, in the revolution of 1905-1907, the revolution of October 1917 and the civil war that followed, and during the Soviet 1920s until collectivization. Among its concerns is why the Bolsheviks found it so difficult to 'resolve' that problem in the 1920s to the moment of Stalin's collectivization from late …
Studying development/development studies
Unpacking ‘authoritarian populism’ and rural politics
This paper provides an overview of work published under the auspices of ERPI, which remains somewhat elusive as a coherent intellectual and political project. I comment on several matters including lack of distinction between the 'agrarian' and the 'rural', issues of (spatial) scale and temporality and of identifying agrarian and rural classes, the costs as well as possible benefits of embracing the ambiguities of populism, and instances of 'resi…
Land Reform in Southern Africa in World-Historical Perspective
This paper attempts to place issues of land reform in South Africa and Zimbabwe in a ‘world-historical’ perspective. ‘World-historical’ is used in two senses. The first is that given by the ‘classic’ agrarian question and its tradition, concerning the role of agrarian transformation in the transition to capitalism, and especially industrial capitalism, in general general. The second applies to the trajectories, and mutations, of the ‘classic’ agr…
Introduction
1992). Introduction: Proletarianisation and deproletarianisation on the colonial plantation. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 1-40
African Enclosures? The Social Dynamics of Wetlands in Drylands
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How White Agriculture (Re)Positioned Itself for a 'New South Africa
Plantations and modes of exploitation
Persistent Poverty. Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World by George L. Beckford. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. xxvii + 303, Index; £3.45 (hardback) and £1.40 (paperback
Ghana's drug economy
Ghana's drug economy is relatively recent. Cannabis cultivation and trade, for domestic consumption and export, appears to have expanded significantly only since the 1960s. The transit/re‐export of cocaine and heroin is a phenomenon of the 1980s, with the usual ‘spillover’ effect, and extension of their consumption to a wider social range of users than is commonly believed. The cannabis economy no doubt provides important sources of income for si…
African Peasants and Revolution’ revisited
This short essay begins by revisiting John Saul's landmark article in the first issue of the Review of African Political Economy in 1974, which was, inevitably, very much of its historical moment. The author suggests that Saul used an ideal-typical conception of ‘peasants’ combined with a particular view of ‘incomplete’ capitalism established by colonial rule in Africa and continuing since political independence. He then proposes, in highly selec…
J. Clerk Maxwell on the History of the Kinetic Theory of Gases, 1871
Modernization theory and the sociological study of development∗
The focus of this article is methodological and macro‐sociological. Its purpose is to disentangle some of the issues which arise in the sociology of development, and to question the assumptions and implications of a particular mode of conceptualization based on the notions of modernity and modernization which has provided the characteristic theoretical framework of the sociology of development. The principal assumptions of modernization theory as…
Breakdowns of modernization
Readings in Social Evolution and Development. S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.) London, Pergamon Press. 1969. Pp. x+456. £2.75 (hard‐cover), £2 (flexi‐cover). The Sociology of Economic Development. A Reader. Gayl D. Ness (ed.) New York and London, Harper and Row. 1970. Pp. xii+612; £5.50. Modernization by Design. Social Change in the Twentieth Century. By Chandler Morse, Douglas E. Ashford, Frederick T. Bent, William H. Friedland, John W. Lewis, David B. Wa…
Plantations and modes of exploitation
Persistent Poverty. Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World by George L. Beckford. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. xxvii + 303, Index; £3.45 (hardback) and £1.40 (paperback
Societal Development
Underdevelopment and the law of value
The article provides a brief but useful summary of Kay's book, fully acknowledging the importance of its contribution to the current debate. Bernstein does not agree, though, with Kay's emphasis on the category of merchant capital as central to the development of underdevelopment, as he does not think that it explains the changes in the conditions and relations of production in the Third World. He also criticises Kay for omitting any discussion o…
Notes on capital and peasantry
Bernstein examines the diverse ways in which capital and the colonial state incorporated rural producers into the production and consumption of commodities as the means of securing their own subsistence. Regulations, services and the monopoly of crop producers have been used to require an often recalcitrant peasantry to organize production to meet the requirements of international capital and the local state for particular commodities, for tradin…
The Object of African History
The establishment of a journal specifically concerned with method in African history is to be welcomed. However, the early issues of History in Africa have demonstrated that the content of the term ‘method’ is itself at stake. The great majority of contributions to date have seized on a narrow and limiting conception of method as the development of techniques of collecting and evaluating data . The necessity of such techniques is not in question,…
The Object of African History
It is now possible to apply the concept of problematic to a critique of African history, in the first place to illustrate how the constitution of its object has been the site of certain ideological confrontations. Our analysis derives from the materialist problematic and therefore lays no claim to any spurious neutrality. On the other hand, neither is it ‘ideological’ in the sense of expressing personal or subjective preferences. The ability of h…
African peasantries
The paper seeks to contribute to a framework for the investigation of the specific historical conditions and contemporary manifestations of the agrarian question in sub-Saharan Africa. The latter is distinguished, inter alia, by the timing and modes of incorporation of African social formations in the international economy, and by the forms of intervention of the colonial and post-colonial states in the absence of features classically associated …
Notes on state and peasantry
This paper is complementary to the author's previous ‘Notes on Capital and Peasantry’ (Review 10). In that article, the role of the state in promoting the commoditisation of peasant agriculture was alluded to, a theme which is pursued further here. This is done through a number of provisional hypotheses which ‘map out’ three connected areas of contradictions: contradictions in the circuits of peasant economy, in the apparatuses and practices of t…
Pessimism of the Intellect, Pessimism of the Will? A Response to Gunder Frank
A Luta Continua! Recent Literature on Mozambique
Applied Anthropology
Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa
Introduction - Henry Bernstein and Bonnie K Campbell 'Clinging to the Chiefs' - Judy Kimble Some Contradictions of Colonial Rule in Basutoland, c 1890-1930 Neo-Colonialism, Capitalism, and the State in Nigeria - Bjorn Beckman Politics, Method, and Evidence in the 'Kenya Debate' - Gavin Kitching Some Problems in the Political Economy of 'African Socialism' - Peter Gibbon and Michael Neocosmos Economie Politique de la Guinee (1958-1981) - Alain Cou…
Geographers among the Peasants
Mode of Production
Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa
Introduction - Henry Bernstein and Bonnie K Campbell 'Clinging to the Chiefs' - Judy Kimble Some Contradictions of Colonial Rule in Basutoland, c 1890-1930 Neo-Colonialism, Capitalism, and the State in Nigeria - Bjorn Beckman Politics, Method, and Evidence in the 'Kenya Debate' - Gavin Kitching Some Problems in the Political Economy of 'African Socialism' - Peter Gibbon and Michael Neocosmos Economie Politique de la Guinee (1958-1981) - Alain Cou…
Labour and Capitalist Development in Africa
EACH OF THE THREE BOOKS under review deals with aspects of capitalist development in Africa. Two are edited works combining the perspectives of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists working in different parts of the continent, while the third is a specialized historical study of South Africa. The Workers of African Trade, edited by historians Paul Lovejoy and Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, contains twelve case studies…
Capitalism and petty-bourgeois production
The article first provides an exposition of an argument, proposed in an important recent paper by Peter Gibson and Michael Neocosmos, concerning the generation of petty commodity production by the essential relations of the capitalist mode of production. Second, it locates their position in relation to others that have dominated debates about the nature, forms and 'functions' of petty commodity production within contemporary capitalism. Third, it…
Agricultural 'modernisation' and the era of structural adjustment
The World Bank's account of crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and its prescribed solutions via structural adjustment policies represent a particular imperialist intervention in a conjuncture of global reaction. The article seeks to contribute to a socialist perspective on the acute contradictions of 'actually existing capitalism' in Africa, first by discussing the ideology, practices and effects of agricultural 'modernisation' which the World Bank (am…
Food Insecurity and the Social Division of Labour in Tanzania, 1919–85
Journal Article Food Insecurity and the Social Division of Labour in Tanzania, 1919–85 Get access Food Insecurity and the Social Division of Labour in Tanzania, 1919–85, by Deborah Fahy Bryceson. Macmillan, London, in association with St Antony's College, Oxford, 1990. xvii+285 pp. £35 hardback. ISBN 0 333 51938 8. HENRY BERNSTEIN HENRY BERNSTEIN University of Manchester Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Afr…
Twenty years of the JPS
Introduction
1992). Introduction: Proletarianisation and deproletarianisation on the colonial plantation. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 19, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasants in Colonial Asia, pp. 1-40
Agrarian questions then and now
1996). Agrarian questions then and now. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Vol. 24, Agrarian Questions Essays in Appreciation of T.J. Byres, pp. 22-59
Political science (49 works) · Sociology (33 works) · Economics (32 works) · Law (29 works) · Political economy (26 works) · Geography (24 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Agriculture (20 works) · History (20 works)