The micro-organisation of backwardness in Central Sardinia

It is argued here that unlike theories which view underdevelopment from the 'world system' perspective, Rosa Luxemburg's critical elaboration of the concept of primitive accumulation is a key contribution to the understanding of dependency and backwardness at the local level. Luxemburg outlines three phases in the destruction of pre-capitalist formations by capitalism: the separation of the producer from the traditional bonds and hierarchies; introduction of a commodity economy and the separation of handicraft from agriculture; the separation of the producer from the means of production. In contrast to Luxemburg, it is argued that this final phase has not often been fully achieved and that it has been replaced by a partial/temporal separation of peasant producers from their means of production. Luxemburg's approach nevertheless shows how economistic interpretations which deal neither with the transformation of the class structure nor the internal political structure of dependent societies can be overcome. The case material here, which confirms much of Luxemburg's three phase schema stems from a community study conducted by one of the authors in Sardinia

Backwardness · Capitalism · Commodity · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Market economy · Neoclassical economics · Peasant · Political science · Politics · Underdevelopment · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · World Systems and Global Transformations

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