ABSTRACT
The main objective of peasant alternatives is to defend and promote the interests of a particular peasantry and establish the conditions for the survival, reproduction and prosperity of poor rural households as peasants. The first theme to address when attempting to study, understand and assess peasant alternatives to neoliberalism is the characteristics of the peasantry as a class. Capitalist expansion triggers processes of de-peasantization and proletarianization, but the incomplete proletarianization that is typical of the Global South often leads a sector of the peasantry to struggle for re-peasantization by getting involved in struggles to regain access to land. Because they control their means of production, peasants are in a position to choose what, when and how to produce. Compared to other labourers, they are more in control of their labour power and the labour process. Collective struggles for land have often been about continued access and control of natural resources that access to land and control of a territory implies.
