ABSTRACT

The structure of the rural labour-force, and thus that of agrarian classes, was the direct product of this model of accumulation, a structure which is still essentially maintained today, for although ownership patterns have been radically altered since 1979, the production system itself has yet to be transformed. As Table 2 indicates, some five per cent of the rural population are proprieters and their families, in the sense of employing year-round wage labour and a minimum commercial holding that permits accumulation. These are basically 'middle farmers' for the rural bourgeoisie as such was no more than one per cent of the total. The classical division between 'rural proletarians' and 'peasants' is not a very meaningful one in Nicaragua because as 'pure' classes they are not dominant. The permanent labour force is roughly 20 per cent of the total, while independent peasants and their family labour are another 25 per cent. The remaining 50 per cent (the division between the two activities in Table 2 is in proportion to their labour time) are semi-proletarians, seasonal workers at harvest time and sub-subsitence peasants the rest of the year. Whether these are essentially peasants who sell their labour power at harvest to achieve subsistence or essentially rural proletarians who survive the rest of the year on microfundia is a subject of considerable academic debate and is of practical relevance for the design of the agrarian reform. This debate also had political implications for the revolutionary struggle before 1979, between those who argued for a prolonged peasant war, and those who stressed labour organisation. The balance of opinion is now in favour of the basically proletarian nature of these workers (derived from their origins as well as their behaviour) although as we shall see, since 1979 there has occurred a process by which, as a result of the agrarian reform itself, they are becoming stabilised as either peasants or proletarians [Baumeister, 1984].