ABSTRACT
Threshing groups were inherently unequal in composition as they required at least one owner of a thresher. Not surprisingly, none of the threshing groups in the village included more than one equipment owner, nor did any contain households with fewer than some workers. Some households with small farms and an "excess" of labor power form alliances, preferably but not necessarily with kin who have larger farms and hence access to relatively inexpensive feed, fertilizer, credit, and other inputs. According to Marx, capitalist class relations and class dominance are expressed in the very organization of the production and labor processes, a line of analysis well developed by Marxist scholars in the West. Although ownership may be an overly formal criterion for class unless it is linked to control and knowledge, control and knowledge without formal ownership is also a problematic diagnostic.
