Rural Societies

65 Pages·1971·6.316 MB·English

by  S. H. Franklin (auth.)

STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
In the past quarter of a century European society, and Europe's
relations with the rest of the world, have been radically
transformed.
Some of these changes came in the wake of the Second World
War; others-and in particular the division of Europe
followed as a result of the Cold War. In addition, throughout
the period other forces, and especially technological change,
have been at work to produce a major recasting of the fabric of
European society and Europe's role in the world. Many of these
changes, together with their attendant problems, have trans
cended the political and economic divisions of the continent.
The purpose of this series is to examine some of the major
economic, social and political developments of the past twenty
five years in Europe as a whole-both East and West-con
sidering the problems and opportunities facing Europe and its
citizens today.
STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
General Editors: RoY PRYCE and CHRISTOPHER THORNE
Published titles
AGRICULTURE HUGH D. CLOUT
s.
RURAL SOCIETIES H. FRANKLIN
YOUTH AND SOCIETY F. G. FRIEDMANN
EDUCATION joHN VAIZEY
In Jrreparation
EUROPE AND THE THIRD WORLD
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
THE STRUCTURE OF INDUSTRIES
THE URBAN EXPLOSION
POPULATION MOVEMENTS
ECONOMIC PLANNING
THE MASS MEDIA
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY
WOMEN IN SOCIETY
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
PATTERNS OF CO-OPERATION AND INTEGRATION
THE Q.UEST FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH
RURAL SOCIETIES
s.
H. FRANKLIN
Department ojGeography, Victoria University
of Wellington, New Zealand
••• for if the Continent knows little, by experience,
of cultivation on a large scale and by large capital,
the generality of English writers are no better
acquainted practically with peasant proprietors and
have almost always the most erroneous ideas of their
social condition and mode of life.
J. S. MILL
MACMILLAN EDUCATION
ISBN 978-0-333-12701-8 ISBN 978-1-349-01236-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01236-7
© S. H. Franklin 1971
Reprint of the original edition 1971
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission.
First published 1971 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New Tork Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 12701 3
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CONTENTS
List of Tables 6
1 Introduction 7
2 Rural Society: Pre-war and Post-war 8
3 The Peasantry 12
The modernisation of the family farm. Marginal
farms and marginal farmers. Part-time farmers.
Migrants. The peasant family. Women.
4 The Hired Labour Force 37
5 Capitalist Farmers and Metayers 41
6 The Collectivised Peasantry 45
7 Peasants, Politics and the New Industrial State 51
Further Reading 57
Further Study 61
Index 63
LIST OF TABLES
1 Total expenditure of Yugoslav peasant households,
1966 14
2 Peasant household expenditure 15
3 Household expenditure upon food, France 16
4 Labour input of four Federal German farms, 1959 16
5 Socio-economic character of Federal German
agricultural labour force, 1965-6 17
6 Family labour force, Federal Germany, 1949 to
1965-6 19
7 Total household consumption, France, 1965 19
8 Incomes of 204 part-time, marginal and full-time
farming families, North Baden, 1963 25
9 Hired labour force, France: estimated rate of
decline, 1954-62, and age structure, 1968 38
10 Fixed-wage workers and day labourers in certain
Italian regions, 1964 39
11 Socio-economic structure of French farming 43
12 Individual holdings, German Democratic Republic 47
13 Age and sex structure of agricultural labour force,
Hungary, 1964, and Czechoslovakia, 1967 48
1. INTRODUCTION
Rural society in Europe today displays many contradictory
features. Many of its characteristics are obviously derived from
the past. Some are vestigial, but others are fundamental and
hence capable oflittle modification. The labour commitment of
the peasant family chif d'entreprise falls into this latter category.
Other features are highly contemporary - the feminisation of
the labour force, for instance. Much that is new is urban or
industrial in origin; but that does not make rural life a pale
imitation of what goes on in the city. Agriculture is still not a
species of factory existence. In no part of Europe, it would be
safe to generalise, does rural life any longer closely resemble the
conditions to be found in the rural areas of pre-war Europe.
But in some regions change has not progressed sufficiently to
prevent one from perceiving what those conditions were like.
In other regions the break with the past appears to be almost
complete.
All the rural economies of Europe, whatever phase of
development they may have entered, are now to a greater or
lesser degree integrated with the industrial and national
economies, economies which are capable of providing an
unprecedented degree of personal and economic security to the
majority of the population. The whole context of rural existence
and the very conditions of the rural dwellers have been radically
altered by this change. Irreversible trends are under way that
point to a complete rupture with the past. But the very forces
which engender the break promote a counter-movement to
ensure that it is neither final nor complete. For rural society,
and especially peasant society, supposedly harbours some of the
traditional values of a European civilisation threatened by
economic expansion and structural change.
One of the major tasks of the neo-capitalist and the socialist
state is to reduce the disparities between social categories.
Another is to minimise the differential effects of economic
7
growth, particularly when they manifest themselves as regional
differences - 'to obliterate the distinction between town and
country'. In contemporary society some of the rural categories,
especially some sections of the peasantry, rank near the bottom
of the socio-economic scale. In many rural areas the advantages
of economic growth and economic integration never quite
outroatch the disadvantages. Thus the state whose powers have
grown so greatly as a result of the requirements of industrial
society finds itself, somewhat to everyone's surprise, entangled
with rural affairs. As the economic significance of agriculture
in the modern state diminishes, paradoxically the social
significance of its work-force increases.1 An old society and an
old economy-peasant society and the peasant economy-are in
the last stages of disruption. For centuries the peasantry have
been integral to European economic and social life. They have
continued to make a significant contribution right into the
present decade. They cannot be dispensed with in any short or
simple fashion.
2. RURAL SOCIETY: PRE-WAR AND POST-WAR
Rural societies are very complex things, much more intricate
than most town dwellers are aware. If it is true that industrialis
ation produces a greater degree of uniformity in society, then it is
difficult at present to see this process at work within the
countryside. The long-term trend may be towards a rather
simpler and more uniform sort of structure such as one finds in
the rural areas of New Zealand or in parts of rural America,
but in Europe during the past two decades the farm com
munity as well as the non-farm community has experienced a
remarkable diversification of its socio-economic structure.
The peasantry, the capitalist farmers and the hired labourers
were the basic elements of pre-war rural society. State farms did
exist but were unimportant. Related to these ·basic and
numerically overwhelming classes were the non-farm elements
sometimes resident in the villages but more often in the nearby
towns. They comprised local craftsmen, priests, schoolmasters,
1 See the essay in this series by Hugh D. Clout on Agriculture.
8
notaries, representatives of the state, small businessmen and
landowners. Much of the drama of rural life, and much of the
regional variety ofr ural existence, was derived (and still is) from
the particular nature of the relationship between the peasantry
and the non~ farm elements: their relative political and economic
strengths and affiliations and the immixture of roles among the
bourgeoisie. 2 Where tenancy was common - throughout much
of Eastern and especially Southern Europe, and also in the
West, notably in parts of France- it was frequently the non
farm classes who were the landowners. Various forms of
tenancy made for further differentiation among the peasantry
Some tenancy conditions like the me.<;;:;adria in central Italy
were highly productive; others, like the compartecipazione in the
Italian South, could only be described as pernicious. Conse
quently some sections of the tenant class ranked high in the
social stratification, whilst others, in terms of living standards
and status, were as badly off as the families oft he hired labourer
class.
Throughout all of Southern and Eastern Europe a sub
stantial class of small and dwarf peasant holdings barely
supported an undernourished, poverty-stricken and oppressed
group ofp eople. In Western Europe oppression had disappeared
with the last remnants of feudalism so that deprivation rather
than poverty was the rule. Collectively this was known as
Europe's farm problem. There were, it is true,. regions like
Flanders, parts of Holland, Germany and France and countries
like Denmark and Sweden where the living standards of the
peasantry were for the period satisfactory, even advanced. But
even in a country like Holland the conditions of some farmers
and especially the farm labourers were so distressing that
1 In group discussions carried out among farmers in south-west
France and concerned with the future of the farming classes, the
second major topic of interest - syndical action and co-operation
came first - was their relations with non-farm groups: grands
propriltaires, intermldiaires, citadins,Jonctionnaires, ouvriers, administration.
The third topic was concerned with the sense of inferiority and
insecurity experienced by the farmers to which these relations with
the non-farm groups contributed. G. Lanneau, 'Aspects de Ia
mutation psycho-sociologique des paysans fran~ais', Sociologia
Ruralis, x 2 (1970) 120-42.
9