From proletarian to peasant: Rural transformation in the state of Acre, 1870–1986

Abstract

There is a certain style of analysis of the process of rural development which posits a unilinear process in which the ‘penetration’ of capital into areas in which petty commodity production predominates inevitably leads to the separation of direct producers from their means of production, that is, the land, and their subsequent transformation into agricultural or urban wage labourers. This approach assumes no previous articulation with capital, thus denying the heterogeneity of relations between so‐called pre‐capitalist and capitalist social formations. In addition, the form and trajectory of the transformation process are seen to be predetermined by the laws of the reproduction of capital. This article will discuss the struggle for land in the State of Acre in the Brazilian Amazon. It will argue that the outcome of this and similar struggles cannot be simply ‘read off from economic laws, but depends upon a combination of economic, political and socio‐ecological factors that vary through time and space.