ABSTRACT
The semi-proletarian thesis, formulated by Marxist scholars in the 1970s, posits that semi-proletarian conditions, in which rural households earn income from both farming and labor migration, are in the best interest of capital because the non-wage agricultural income subsidizes part of the costs of labor reproduction. The thesis has been applied to both South Africa and China. In light of the new developments in the two countries, this paper argues that the key issue of semi-proletarianization today is less about how rural economies subsidize capital and more about whether peasant and migrant families can hold onto land rights in an era of heightened precarity, widespread land grabbing and rampant capitalist expansion. As such, we propose to reorient the focus of the thesis from the subsidy function of rural land for capital to its importance in livelihood security for semi-proletarian workers.
