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Economy. A set of culturally specific processes that members of a society use to provide themselves with material resources. Production, Distribution and Consumption. Mode of Production.
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Economy • A set of culturally specific processes that members of a society use to provide themselves with material resources.
Mode of Production • A specific, historically occurring set of social relations though which labour is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, organization and knowledge.
Means of Production • The tools, skills, organization, and knowledge used to extract energy from nature.
Relations of Production • The social relations determining people’s access to the given means of production.
Eric Wolf • 1) Kin-Ordered Mode of Production • 2) Tributary Mode of Production • 3) Capitalist Mode of Production
Kin-ordered mode of production • In a kin-ordered mode of production, labour and resources are acquired primarily on the basis of reciprocity between people who are related by descent and marriage.
Reciprocity • Reciprocity is the exchange of goods and services of equal value, involving an obligation both to give and to receive.
Direct link between a society’s subsistence strategy and its social and political organization • For example, in societies ordered by a kin mode of production, social stratification is egalitarian, with no social classes or major economic differences between the different groups.
Tributary Mode of Production • A mode of production occurring in societies with some degree of social stratification, where resources and labour are extracted from many producers by political domination.
Zemindars • Chiefs of leading villages who held hereditary patrimonial rights to receive tribute form certain areas.
English East India Company • Chartered by the government to pursue economic conquest in distant seas.
Immediate consequences of British occupation: • Ousted local governor • Stole 5 million pounds sterling from the state treasure of Bengal • Took over the rights of local merchant class • Set up a monopoly over export and import trade • Gained direct control over 10,000 weavers who were forced to deal exclusively with the East India Company • The East India Company became the official civil administration of Bengal • Introduction of two forms of property: landlordism and individual peasant proprietorship
Under new forms of property: • Land became the property of registered tribute payers, who had to pay the taxes stipulated in return for private rights of ownership and inheritance.
Taxes: • Fixed permanently, not affected by changes in price of produce or value of crops grown. • Payment had to be made to government whether or not crop was successful.
Zemindars • Instead of having rights over people’s labour: transformed into property owners. • Required to turn over to the British administration nine-tenths of the tribute received from their peasants, retaining one-tenth for themselves. • New class of 3,000 landlords with right to sell, mortgage, and inherit land. • Could raise rent at leisure, and evict tenants.
Right to exact tribute = converted into rights to private property
Increased tax burden ruined thousands of Bengali cultivators and artisans. • Reduction in agricultural incomes by 50%, undermining the agrarian economy and the self-governing village structure.
Tribute • Covered cost of warfare and continuous British occupation.
Land and tax reform • Used to reorient Indian agriculture toward the production of profitable commodities, e.g. raw cotton and opium.
Until end of 18th century, Indian textiles were a very important export product. • England began the process of industrialization, manufacturing textiles in large scale = Need to place commodities in international market.
Indian textiles were banned from British markets, at the same time that India was required to admit entry of English manufactures duty free. • Consequence = destruction of specialized Indian textile production, contributing to the de-industrialization of India.
Capitalist mode-of-production • A)The means of production are property privately owned by the capitalist class;
Exercise for party of 5: • Read section called “Institutionalized Sharing” in your textbook (pages 246-7) and compare and contrast Cree and capitalist attitudes toward sharing and individual accumulation.