Alexander Vasilevich Chayanov, the Russian agricultural economist published the essay ‘On the Theory of Non-Capitalist Economic Systems’ in 1924 and Peasant Farm Organization in 1925, both in Russian. This blog post presents a selective summary of the English translations of these two works, one of the aims being to comment on Chayanov’s method of doing economics. He wrote around 60 books and essays during his lifetime. This blog post, it must be noted, is not an exhaustive survey of the essay and the book.

I

Chayanov’s essay on non-capitalist economic systems questioned the dominant approach of economic theorising which is conducted in the framework of capitalism. One of the characteristic features of the capitalist system is the presence of wage labour. So, how does such a theoretical framework understand peasant economies, where wage labour is non-existent? This is Chayanov’s question. Since labour is entirely provided by the peasant family, there exists no labour market and therefore no concept of wage labour. Moreover, the peasant family undertakes agricultural production (and engages in simple manufacturing) with the family labour and the surplus (or net product) arising from production cannot be resolved into wages and profits. The notions of profitability present in a family run enterprise, according to Chayanov, is very different from a capitalist enterprise. Chayanov terms the returns from the enterprise as the net product.

The required consumption of each family member is set by custom and habit. Chayanov computes an ‘internal equilibrium for the well-being of the family’ which is given by the intersection of their well-being and drudgery functions (p. 5). The gross product can be increased if more land is cultivated and/or an increase in labour intensity; remember, that the number of workers are given for any peasant farm organization. (This can change, perhaps in the very long-run, if the birth rate of the family is greater than its death rate.) The net product is arrived at by deducting the necessary consumption of the family and necessary consumption of the capital equipment from the gross product. The increase in labour intensity has definite physical limits; according to Chayanov, the family as a farm unit will increase labour intensity (drudgery) until the point when the net product is sufficient to meet the consumption needs of the workers and their dependants (children, parents and grandparents). The family’s access to land will depend on the land price and their ability to buy/lease more land will be constrained by their net product.

After laying out the basic relationships prevalent in a peasant farm, Chayanov concludes the essay by listing the various economic systems (p. 25). The extreme forms are capitalism and communism. In between, he introduces the family economy, slave economy and the feudal system (comprising landlord economy and peasant economy). Chayanow wishes for multiple economic theories catering to the needs of different economic-systems, as his last sentence in the essay shows:

…we have no doubt that the future of economic theory lies not in constructing a single universal theory of economic life but in conceiving a number of theoretical systems that would be adequate to the range of present or past economic orders and would disclose the forms of their coexistence and evolution. (p. 28)

 II

In Chayanov’s 1925 work entitled Peasant Farm Organization, his team carries out a detailed analysis of the agricultural situation in various districts of Russia based on zemstvo statistics, state statistics, independent research and budget studies (p. 38). At the outset, Chayanov points out the ‘coexistence and evolution’ of the capitalist and non-capitalist forms. When the peasant as worker-entrepreneur is unable to make sufficient earnings (owing to a bad harvest, increased input cost or some other factor), he temporarily abandons his undertaking and becomes a wage-labour in order to avoid being unemployed (p. 40). A peasant farm, to reiterate, does not make use of hired labourers.

The peasant farm is an organization that makes use of family labour and receives a single labour income. And, the trade-off between physical effort and material results (already noted in the previous section) is re-emphasised (p. 41). Responding against criticisms against their employing the method of marginalist economics, Chayanov maintains that the trade-off between family member as consumer and as labourer (labour-consumer balance) determines the volume of family economic activity but he does ‘not at all consider it possible to deduce from this a whole system of the national economy’ (p. 46). His objective is not, in modern terms, macroeconomics. The concept of a family has its basis in ‘the purely biological concept of the married couple, living together with their descendants and the aged representatives of the older generation’ (p. 54). Moreover, the gross product of the labour farm includes income from ‘agriculture’ as well as ‘crafts and trades’ (p. 70).

Given the trade-off between manual work and well-being, ‘the annual intensity of labor declines under the influence of better pay, because to remain the same it is absolutely essential that the productivity of the year’s labor (and equally the standard of well-being) should grow in proportion to the increase in the pay of a unit of labour’ (p. 80). In conclusion, as Chayanov states:

Thus, any labor farm has a natural limit to its output, determined by the proportions between intensity of annual family labor and degree of satisfaction of its demands. (p. 82)

One of the problems of such a principle is the exclusion of the relationship between labour intensity and consumption needs of the labourers. For instance, when income increases, there might arise a heightened demand to consume more of luxury products. The consumption needs certainly have a lower limit or a floor, but it is not bounded from above. In other words, labour intensity and consumption needs are interrelated factors.

One final observation before we move to conclusions. Chayanov, with a view to aiding practical policy, was interested in finding the ‘optimal farm size’ because ‘the optimal combination gives the highest income, and any deviation from it gives the proprietor a reduced profit rate’ (p. 91). In part, and by large, the combination is based on the technical relations between inputs and outputs. Therefore, ‘[a]ny excess of production means available to labor or of land above the technically optimal level will be an excessive burden on the undertaking’ (p. 92). It is also on account of the technological relationship that  the ‘volume of agricultural activity is not a simple arithmetic derivative of the size of area used’ (p. 94). Some of these technological relationships can be better grasped by taking recourse to ‘the basic laws of contemporary agricultural science’ (see especially pp. 138-47 for a rich account of crop rotation, manuring, etc).

III

First, Chayanov is dissatisfied with economic theory studying capitalist systems alone. But, (neoclassical) microeconomics can perhaps explain certain features of the peasant farm, especially the trade-off between drudgery and well-being (the backward bending labour supply curve is a good example). Also, the search for the optimal farm size can also be conducted by certain microeconomic procedures. One does not need to accept the marginal productivity theory of distribution which is a central feature of microeconomics. To put it differently, the ‘science of choice’ can explain the trade-offs which Chayanov is talking about by making appropriate changes in the parameters.

Secondly, treating the farm output as being ‘determined by the proportions between intensity of annual family labor and degree of satisfaction of its demands,’ as noted earlier, assumes them to be independent of each other which need not be the case. But in his credit, Chayanov undertakes a very detailed analysis of the farm households which provides content to the maximization problem. Also, the tabular and visual representation of the data is remarkable.

Finally, the co-existence of different economic organizations like capitalist and peasant farms is characteristic of economies like India. Often, they are called a dual economy. Self-employment, as opposed to wage employment is a significant feature of the Indian labour force; so is informal versus formal employment. Understanding their innate dynamics as well as their interrelationships is of much use. They require a combination of good theory, data collection methods, statistical analysis and an understanding of the socio-economic history of the particular locality.

Wages is the payment made to a labourer for the number of hours worked – sowing seeds, rolling tobacco, developing computer software or providing medical care in a hospital. How are these wages determined? Are they determined in a similar manner as that of commodities? That is, are they determined based on some sort of demand and supply mechanism? Or, are they predominantly set by non-economic forces which are not easily quantifiable? This blog post looks at the dominant neoclassical or marginalist viewpoint and contrasts it with the theoretical approach of classical economics. In this light, the post examines certain characteristics of the Indian economy relating to labour and employment.

The basic principles of neoclassical economics tell us that the price and quantity demanded and supplied of a commodity are determined by the intersection of its demand and supply curves. This is the demand and supply approach to economics. When extended to labour, the intersection of the demand and supply curves of labour is supposed to determine the wages per hour (the price of labour) and the number of hours worked (the quantity of labour). Therefore, an increase in the demand for labour relative to its supply is expected to raise the wage rate and a relative increase in supply of labour (say, from an increase in the working population commonly termed the demographic dividend) leads to a fall in the wage rate.

Classical economics, a distinct theoretical framework in economics, has a very different view of wages. It largely considers wages as an exogenous variable; that is, wages are not determined by market forces – demand and supply of commodities or of labour. Of course, temporary changes can be brought about by market forces. In the theoretical world of classical economics, wages are determined primarily by socio-cultural factors such as trade union strength, the collective notion of minimum wages for different occupations and the society’s views on trust, risk, etc. In this theoretical world, which to me, seems closer to the reality, an improvement in social institutions lead to an increase in subsistence wages. Wages, in this framework, has a subsistence (relatively fixed) component and a surplus (relatively flexible) component. Hence, classical economics allows for an increase in wages, in its surplus component, when GDP is rising on account of higher labour productivity.

A conflict is present in the distribution of GDP between workers and capitalists. Neoclassical economics eliminates this conflict by recourse to marginal productivity theory. By employing logically fallacious concepts (especially of capital), a theory of distribution has been erected where both labour and ‘capital’ are ‘justly’ remunerated. In this framework, trade unions distort the market and causes injustice! According to classical economics, the presence of strong trade unions and fair labour laws ensure that workers get a fair share of productivity gains, which will otherwise entirely go as profits of the capitalists. The Global Wage Report 2012/13 published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) notes that in several countries wage rises have not matched the increase in employment and productivity (see especially p. 28).

There are enormous disparities in wage rates across the states in India, with Kerala paying relatively high wages. One reason for the high wages is the presence of strong trade unions. As per the Labour Bureau (as part of the Rural Labour Enquiry) report on ‘Wage Rates in Rural India’ for September 2012, the average daily wage rates for men for engaging in sowing in Gujarat is 132 rupees; in Kerala, it is 500 rupees; and in Tamil Nadu, it is 222.02 rupees. A carpenter in Gujarat is paid 233.33 rupees daily; in Kerala, he is paid 514.05 rupees and in Tamil Nadu, he is paid 388.6 rupees. The differences are starker with respect to unskilled labour: a male unskilled worker in Gujarat gets paid 109 rupees; in Kerala, he earns 411.32 rupees; and in Tamil Nadu, he earns 223.54 rupees. The corresponding wages for a female worker are: 101.71 rupees in Gujarat, 266 rupees in Kerala and 159. 76 rupees in Tamil Nadu. Note the gender-wage inequality in Kerala. Also, the economic condition in rural Kerala is significantly better than rural Tamil Nadu; therefore, the statistics will have to be interpreted with some restraint.

Subsistence wage, as a concept, has enormous theoretical and practical significance. In fact, the legislations pertaining to minimum wages in India ought to look at socio-cultural factors too, such as gender, caste, geographic location, kind of labour (formal vs. informal, rural vs. urban) and so on. The enforcement of minimum wages has been beset with difficulties as evident from a recent study (published in 2011) by Patrick Belser and Uma Rani; the proportion of salaried workers and the proportion of casual workers below the minimum wage at the national level is 25.3 and 50.6 per cent respectively. Discussions on and about subsistence wages, and by extension, on minimum wage legislations are much needed. Moreover, discussions surrounding subsistence wages can also result in more dignified definitions of poverty and minimum wages.

Although J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi (1773-1842) lived in Geneva and wrote on economics, history and public policy, his concerns about the role of political economy is valid even today, especially for India. Marx considered Sismondi to be the last classical economist. Sismondi engages with the economics of Adam Smith, David Ricardo and J B Say in his 1819 work New Principles of Political Economy: Of Wealth In Its Relation to Population. This work has been translated into English by Richard Hyse in 1991 (available at Google Books). According to Sismondi, the objective of Political Economy is to ensure that majority of the population live a happy life.

Indian realities

Sainath informs us that India has seen over a quarter of a million farmers’ suicides between 1995 and 2010. The total figure according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is 256,913. And, since 1998, at least 15,000 farmers have committed suicide very year. More unsettling is that fact that the total number of farmers have been declining significantly. In Andhra Pradesh, it is alleged that 90 farmers committed suicide, that too, in rain-fed areas, in the last few weeks.

The inflation of food articles has reached double digits. Food inflation doubly affects the actual cultivators. Since, the prices are fixed by the Government (minimum support prices), the price rise does not benefit the actual cultivators. Secondly, their ability to purchase their usual consumption basket also falls when price rise. It is in this context that M S Swaminathan’s reminders need to be understood. He rightly asserted: “If agriculture goes wrong, nothing else can go right for this country.”

Very recently, Dreze and Sen pointed out the nature of the asymmetrical growth that is driving India with a majority of the population living without access to basic amenities. They concluded their article in the Outlook by stating that one of the ways forward is to have a “radical broadening of public discussion in India to development-related matters—rather than keeping it confined to simple comparisons of the growth of the gnp, and naive admiration (implicit or explicit) of the high living standards of a relatively small part of the population. An exaggerated concentration on the lives of the minority of the better-off, fed strongly by media interest, gives an unreal picture of the rosiness of what is happening to Indians in general, and stifles public dialogue of other issues.” In other words, how much has the socio-economic condition of majority of the Indian populace (who happen to be farmers and weavers) improved?

Sismondi

In the hurry to build sophisticated DSGE models and while working out monetary and/or fiscal solutions to inflation and economic growth, it is often forgotten that actual human livelihood is at stake. How can Indian agriculture not be a necessary component of the curriculum in economics? Within economics, steep walls which cannot be crossed exist between agricultural economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, labour economics, development economics, etc. The so-called specialization in these fields (to be understood as literature which is not easily accessible or comprehensible to an economist from another field) has reached alarming levels. Sismondi says the following on the nature of economic inquiry:

However, I believe I should protest against the manner, so often superficial, so often false, in which a work on the social sciences is judged in the world. The problem which they offer to resolve is tangled in quite another way than those that arise from the natural sciences; at the same time it appeals to the heart as well as to reason. The observer is called upon to recognize unjust sufferings that come from man, and of which man is the victim. We cannot consider them coldly and pass them over, without seeking some remedy (Sismondi 1819: 13).

Maybe, the idea of modern science does not allow investigators to be moved by the ‘object’ under study. Nevertheless, as Sismondi reminds us, economic problems and their solutions affect people (who are not ‘objects’) in a significant manner. The state of Indian farmers and weavers is certainly to be given attention, especially in terms of livelihood building, through providing employment and incomes in a dignified manner.

The following lines from Sismondi echoes what Dreze and Sen recently pointed out as regards Indian growth:

If they find a tremendous accumulation of riches, an improved agriculture, a prosperous business community, manufactures which multiply without end all products of human industry, and a government that disposes of almost inexhaustible coffers, as in England, they call the nation opulent that has all these things, without stopping to inquire whether all those who work with their hands, all those who create this wealth, are not reduced to mere subsistence; whether every tenth member among them must not apply each year to the public welfare; and whether three-fifths of all individuals, in a nation that is called rich, are not exposed to more privation than an equal proportion of individuals in a nation called poor (Sismondi 1819: 22).

In India, the wealth creators, the farmers, are forced to live below even ‘subsistence levels’ as Sainath’s commentary on farmer suicides indicate. Even though we have 53 agricultural universities in India, their contribution to the farming population is circumspect. Three to four decades before, working on agricultural economics and debating issues related to agriculture was fashionable and ‘important’. Today, it is even more important but, perhaps, not very attractive. In fact, the Government admits that the farm sector has been neglected.

Admitting that the government is neglecting research in the farm sector, the agriculture ministry has sought more funds in the next Five Year Plan (2012-2017) for significant jump in food grain production.

But, focussing on aggregate food grain production is clearly insufficient. One needs to look at the ‘production conditions in Indian agriculture’. As Sismondi points out very clearly

Commercial wealth is augmented and distributed by exchange; and even the produce of the ground, so soon as it is gathered in, belongs likewise to commerce. Territorial wealth, on the other hand, is created by means of permanent contracts. With regard to it, the economist’s attention should first be directed to the progress of cultivation; next to the mode in which the produce of the harvest is distributed among those who contribute to its growth; and lastly, to the nature of those rights which belong to the proprietors of land, and to the effects resulting from an alienation of their property (Sismondi 1819: 133).

In 1974, Krishna Bharadwaj published a book Production Conditions in Indian Agriculture. In the same period, economists such as Amit Bhaduri, Ashok Rudra, Amartya Sen, K N Raj, C H Hanumantha Rao, Pranab Bardhan, etc wrote extensively on various aspects of Indian agriculture. The issues Sismondi pointed out were discussed and debated. Bharadwaj points out the significance of examining property relations, technology, local patterns of power, etc. Moreover, she notes that non-economic variables such as tradition, customs, caste and religion determine the economic position of a farmer and thereby determines their income and asset levels. The rise in food inflation has prompted many commentators to hold employment guarantee schemes (NREGA) responsible. If agriculture generated adequate incomes (to maintain a decent and dignified life) employment guarantee would not be necessary. In other words, employment on and off farm cannot be treated as independent of each other. Further, in India, markets are interlocked through both price and non-price links (with the Government playing an ambiguous role). These interlocked markets are exploitative as it denies the following freedoms to the agricultural farmer, who is very much an entrepreneur.

(1)   What to produce?

(2)   How much to produce?

(3)   For whom to produce?

(4)   When to sell the produce?

Conclusion

As Sismondi reminds us, we cannot ignore the majority of the Indian population who do not have access to the basic necessaries of life. Agriculture provides livelihood to more than half the Indian workforce. A farmer is an entrepreneur who produces food, the most basic of all commodities. Although, it might not be academically fashionably and profitable to study Indian agriculture but as Sismondi notes: “We cannot consider them coldly and pass them over, without seeking some remedy.”

Inflation has been portrayed as the biggest challenge faced by Indian policy makers and its Central Bank, Reserve Bank of India, in recent times. The Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and Professor of Economics at Cornell University, Kaushik Basu, recently presented his professional views on inflation – understanding and management, at the First Gautam Mathur Lecture on 18 May 2011. This is currently available for download as a working paper at the Ministry of Finance website. Various excerpts from this paper have made its way in some English newspapers and TV media. I will comment on this paper at length on a later date. Reading Basu’s paper makes me wonder whether monetary economists or other policy makers know what India is, who Indians are and what Indians actually do. In more abstract terms, do economists know the structure of the Indian economy? Do they know what motivates Indians? Is it primarily region, class, caste, religion, gender, education, self-interest, compassion, sympathy, fame, status? Although, to be fair to Kaushik Basu, he asks the RBI not to experiment and not to put up a façade of knowledge (which he frequently does). Without having a clear understanding of, what the 18^th century economist James Steuart calls, “the spirit of a people”, it is impossible to formulate effective policies. Moreover, the focus on employment generation has completely given way to inflation stabilisation, using sophisticated econometric techniques. Therefore, this blog post revisits James Steuart’s views on how “the spirit of a people” influences economic engineering. In the Indian context, the consequences of monetary intervention might not be those which are depicted in conventional models of inflation.

Sir James Steuart (1713-1780) published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy in 1767 which was and has been overshadowed by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations published in 1776. Steuart acknowledged the importance of devising context-specific economic policies. However, we must realise that context-specific economic policy is not antithetical to general economic theories. In other words, proposing economic theories and models of a general nature is not inherently a problem; but, when applied blindly, they cause havoc, which is often supressed in very clever ways. Steuart writes:

“Every operation of government should be calculated for the good of the people. . .that in order to make a people happy, they must be governed according to the spirit which prevails among them” (p. 21).

An ignorance or lack of understanding of this “spirit” can have disastrous consequences. We see some of them in the worsening urban-rural inequality, falling of inflation-adjusted per capita incomes in interior villages [EPW, 2011], agricultural distress and forced migration [P Sainath, The Hindu, 2011]. One of reasons why such skewed policies are implemented is because of the rationale provided by “pure economic theory”, which Basu seems to praise for its scientific rigor and [semblance of] truth. To be clear, “pure economic theory” is something which Steuart was against because it assumed a certain “spirit” and claimed to be universal thereby neglecting important specificities and characteristics pertaining to individual economies.

For Steuart, “the spirit of a people is formed upon a set of received opinions relative to three objects; morals, government and manners: these once generally adopted by any society, confirmed by long and constant habit, and never called in question, form the basis of all laws, regulate the form of every government, and determine what is commonly called the customs of a country” (p. 22). That is, education, religion, region, caste, gender, etc would significantly affect the “spirit” of India. Also, important characteristics such as the percentage of Indians employed in agriculture, in unorganised manufacture, in self-employment, in rural areas, using informal sources of finance, who are socially poor (less than 100 rupees a day), who actually invest in stock markets, who read English newspapers and so on affect the outcomes of economic engineering. Not paying heed to these significant characteristics is the same as formulating an inappropriate policy. Let me highlight once instance. The RBI conducts Inflation Expectations Survey to estimate how the expectations of the Indian populace change over time and this result forms an input into monetary policy making. Despite this, the RBI did not survey any Indian living in rural areas; they seem to neglect and forget the fact that the main producers live in rural areas and their chief occupation is agriculture! This certainly deserves to be questioned. Policies should not be formulated “at any point which regards the political oeconomy of a nation, without accompanying the example with some supposition relative to the spirit of the people” (p. 23). If the “spirit of the people” is not taken into account, as the example above indicated, such policies could prove to be harmful. This also calls for greater dialogue between economists and other social analysts (sociologists, cultural theorists, political scientists, anthropologists, social workers, etc) when engineering nation-wide socio-economic policies. Hence, Steuart writes that “in every step the spirit of the people should be first examined” (p. 25).

Often, the attitudes of policy makers indicate how much their academic knowledge is irrelevant for practical economic and social problems. The reliance on “pure economic theory” is nothing but an intellectual looking, mathematically replete and made-difficult-to-understand version of free markets, because efficiency and rationality are our new gods! As Keynes writes in his preface to The General Theory, “the difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.” Today, these “old ideas” are not only fashionable and ‘scientific’ (and often unsuited to India), but they are also communicated relentlessly to the new generations through schools and universities. In conclusion, it is scary to realise that India’s policy making is done by those who are “strangers” to the Indian realities. Steuart warns us that “when strangers are employed as statesmen, the disorder is still greater, unless there be extraordinary penetration, temper, and, above all, flexibility and discretion” (p. 27).