ABSTRACT
The Agrarian Transition model can serve as a starting point for understanding the process of transformation in rural Egypt. The agrarian transition in Egypt, in something approaching its classic form, has not happened—it has been "blocked" by the continued importance of the household economy of the petty commodity producers—but the capitalist mode of production is nonetheless present in rural Egypt. The model of the agrarian transition is challenging but oversimplified, in particular in its assumption that rural society will be bifurcated into capitalists and proletarians. Labor control is also handled in the first instance through the household. The basic and traditional division of labor in rural Egypt is that based on age and sex, and this is organized through the household. Karl Marx's Capital is an extended analysis of the labor process under the conditions of capitalism as he observed them in mid-19th century Europe.
