Capitalism and Peasant Productivity

The Journal of Peasant Studies
ISSN: 0306-6150 (Print) 1743-9361 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjps20
Capitalism and peasant productivity

Kostas Vergopoulos
To cite this article: Kostas Vergopoulos (1978) Capitalism and peasant productivity, The Journal
of Peasant Studies, 5:4, 446-465, DOI: 10.1080/03066157808438057
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066157808438057
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Date: 13 January 2017, At: 02:08
Capitalism and Peasant Productivity

Kostas Vergopoulos*
This article is a response to comments upon and criticisms of the author's
two books, and especially to N. Mouzelis' critique published in this journal.
The central thesis is that family farming is the most successful form of
production for putting the maximum volume of surplus peasant labour at
the disposal of urban capitalism and constitutes the most efficient way of
keeping down the prices of agricultural products. The argument is developed
in general terms (i.e. theoretically rather than empirically) and must be
judged or countered in those terms. It is, however, illustrated with respect to
Greece and to other countries of Southern and of Eastern Europe.
Since the publication of my two books,1 a number of comments have been made.
Of them, N. Mouzelis' analysis strikes me as being the most complete and most
comprehensively worked out, pointing with the greatest precision to the many
problems which arise.2 Taking his remarks as a point of departure I will, therefore, attempt to clarify certain issues, stemming from my previous analysis,
which I consider fundamental.
My central thesis is the following: family farming is the most successful form
of production for putting the maximum volume of surplus peasant labour at the
disposal of urban capitalism. It also constitutes the most efficient way of
restraining the prices of agricultural products. The peasant who is working for
himself does not necessarily consider himself to be a capitalist, or an entrepreneur, whose activities depend on the ability to obtain a positive rate of profit.
On the contrary, although the head of his agricultural concern, he sees himself,
more often than not, as a plain worker, who is entitled to a remuneration which
will simply assure him his livelihood. Moreover, in the framework of domestic
economy, the problem of ground rent does not arise. In theory, the latter presupposes the existence of a true rent market. In a land rent economy, as seen or
defined by nineteenth-century economists, the existence of a 'ground rent
market' makes it possible for the landowners to receive a specific income in
accordance with the elasticity of the land supply. Where there is a given demand
for land (by capitalist farmers) the rate of rent will be in inverse proportion to the
supply of land: if the latter proves to be low, the rate of rent will be high, and
vice versa. Consequently, the point of prime importance in the creation of a
specific ground rent rate is always the greater or lesser elasticity in the supply of
land, or in other words, the existence of a land reserve.
One can see the necessity for this presupposition, not so much in how the flow
of rent is generated, but rather in how it is obtained as a specific income by the
class of landowners. One can therefore make the deduction that agriculture can
only obtain ground rent by manipulating the rate of land supply. How* Universite de Paris.
447
ever, this manipulation is only possible in an economy of large estates, where

agriculture actively participates in the formation of agricultural prices. On the
other hand, in the framework of contemporary family farming, where the
peasant is worker, entrepreneur and landowner at the same time, agricultural
prices in general are 'suffered or imposed'. The owner of an ordinary plot of
family land is practically powerless to manipulate the level of land supply: he is
obliged to bring his land into the productive process, even if he gains nothing
from it.
It is evident therefore that the peasant who owns no land reserves is not able to
obtain a ground rent income. Equally, he cannot obtain an entrepreneur's income,
that is, a profit; but he is nevertheless able to engage in production, even if there
is no profit and no rent, so long as he receives a payment comparable with that of
wage workers.3
We must note that both the profit and the rent not realised, constituting
'failures of earnings' for family farming, are already positive gains for the urban
economy. Family farming thus provides contemporary society with agricultural
products at their 'cost price' (which includes the strictly necessary remuneration
of labour), as well as putting the totality of his own surplus labour, which would
normally correspond to profit and ground rent, at the disposal of the urban
economy.
It is obvious that this analysis is inevitably at the level of theoretical abstraction. On this level it seems most important to study the conditions of social
incorporation of the family farming economy. However, the social deformity
which is manifested in the relations between the urban economy and agriculture,
is not of a nature which would prevent an approach to this phenomenon in terms
of an analysis of capitalist society. In other words, it is indeed this family farming
which constitutes a necessary mechanism for the accumulation of urban capital
and the development of capitalism. Indeed, this form of agriculture, although
based on the family, is nevertheless capitalist; it is within the family form of
production that, in the domain of agriculture, the contemporary movement of
capitalism manifests itself. It is indeed this inequality, this non-correspondence
between urban and rural social forms (which are nevertheless integral parts of
the same social body and of the same unitary movement of capital) which I have
called 'deformedcapitalism'.
I. The Method
A number of criticisms have been put to me on this point. I am very surprised to
find myself placed in the 'structural-Althusserian' school by some people. (I
certainly feel that to approach an object of study with conceptual and analytical
rigour cannot be the monopoly of any school, even of Althusser's, but must be a
precondition of any analytical work.) I do think, however, that one has to
recognise that it was Louis Althusser's school which first formulated the terms of
the problem of the 'co-existence' of several modes of production. From this
insight P.-P Rey has drawn the ultimate, most far-reaching consequences: he
looks at the problem of co-existence in terms of the articulation between differing
448
modes of production. However, this approach which I have already characterised as 'scholastic', in the same sense as this term was used of Thomist
scientific theology is not mine. For Marxist structuralists, the concept of
'mode of production' is seen as a structure par excellence, as a kind of 'royal
structure'. In this approach, the intertwining of structures of different types is
not a problem of normal reproduction, but only a problem of transition.
According to Rey, the diverging social forms are stacked historically, concretely,
practically, but not theoretically; for historical reasons, some of these forms are
survivals from the past, others anticipate posterity, and others will correspond
exactly to the conditions of the actual mode of production.
My analysis has always been based on criticising and transcending this structuralist fantasy. First, I refuse to subscribe to the fetishisation of the concept of
mode of production, which leads to thinking of it as the point of departure for the
analysis of social processes. My view is that the mode of production cannot be
defined as a level, distinct from others and determining them; but rather as a
dimension of the whole spectrum of social relations. In addition, I have tried to
explain 'social polymorphy' not in practical terms of transition or articulation,
but in terms of a necessary theoretical principle on the synchronic plane. To set
out the problem in terms of articulation, as does structural-Althusserian analysis,
inevitably leads to the following alternative: either one must base these problematics on the dualist conception of the historical process, or else one has to admit
that the actual so-called problem of articulation is only transitory. The first
solution is that of the 'desarrollist' economists of Latin America, who are
pessimistic about the possibility of extending the modern sector to the detriment
of the 'archaic' sector. The second solution is that of the Althusserian political
economists, who are optimistic as to the possibility of purifying the contemporary capitalist system of any heterogenous elements, of any pre-capitalist
vestiges. In any case, the common basis of these ideas ignores the need to take
into theoretical consideration the simultaneously unifying and diversifying
principles of capitalism. This is the point which I always try to make.
II. Productivity
Another series of questions which have been put to me relate to the inevitable
problems of productivity. Although these questions are several and various, I
think it is necessary and possible to grasp their essentials without doing any
injustice to them. I think that on the whole, the points relating to the problem of
productivity are based on the following explicit or implicit affirmations:
a.
b.
family farmers are poor, not because they are forced to pursue a productive
effort based on the equivalent of a subsistence wage, nor because
agricultural prices regress in relation to industrial prices, but because of the
very weak productivity of agriculture in relation to the social average;
the weak productivity of agricultural work is the result of the specific nature
of agriculture and of the dualist and disarticulated nature of the national
c.
449
economy. (The latter point seems more realistic in the case of dependent or
developing countries such as Greece.) To put it in another way, weak
agricultural productivity is the result of non-modernisation of the
productive structures and of the persistence of archaic social relations.
Mouzelis even notes that all industrial progress in Greece only widens the
gap between urban and agricultural productivity, since the latter is supposed
to be practically stagnant.
family farming, hardly functioning on its subsistence costs, does not
contribute to the accumulation of urban capital; on the contrary, because of
its weak productivity, it is said to restrain and to limit the development of
the urban and national economy.
I must emphasise that in my view the explanation that poverty or economic backwardness arises from weak productivity is not an explanation at all: it constitutes
often only a simple tautology, perfected a few decades ago by the founders of the
marginalist theory. This 'explanation' comes down to saying that if the peasant
receives a low remuneration for his work, this is because his labour does not
produce riches. But the question is, in fact, to know what social mechanism
prevents peasant production from gaining access to wealth, that is to the social
surplus product. In other words, one cannot explain the low income of the
peasant by low productivity: one has rather to explain both phenomena by
referring to something which is outside the price system.
Moreover, to measure the product by the quantity of labour spent would mean
that labour can function as a standard vis-d-vis the product. But in agriculture,
the vicissitudes of agricultural prices, the unknowns or the risks of agricultural
life make peasant labour a very singular magnitude at the theoretical level and
very difficult to measure in practice. Therefore the social cost of reproduction of
the working man in agriculture is very different from that of the workers in other
sectors: it is actually impossible to measure this cost in different sectors and in
different societies of unequal levels of development.
One cannot compare the results of human labour if the worker is not
reproduced in comparable social conditions. Paul Samuelson has already pointed
out that: 'it is said that a man is equal to another man, but does the backward
peasant have the same value as his cousin who works in a factory in Detroit?'4 If
the worker is 'equivalent' to what he produces by working in society, he also
'costs' what the recognised social norms allow him to consume. To compare the
products of labour where labourers are living in substantially different social and
economic conditions is hardly significant if one does not take into account the
respective social costs of reproduction. Today, the economies of Western
Europe, although they have a much higher standard of living than Japan, are at a
disadvantage in international competition because the social cost of reproducing
the labour force in Japan is 'abnormally low' compared with that of western
economies. On the international market this is presented as a higher productivity
of labour: for each unit of wage expenditure there is a corresponding volume of
product, incomparably higher in Japan than in Western Europe, due to conditions of production there. This 'higher productivity' in Japan is often as much as
450
double that of France. However, the low prices of Japanese exports can only be
explained by the low payment for labour. It is this which determines both the
low price of the product and the 'higher productivity', not the reverse.5
Since my analysis often involves Greece, let us examine things in relation to
that country. Mouzelis tried to apply, in the case of Greece as well, an approach
inspired by dualism. According to him, capitalism in Greece, as in other Third
World countries, develops in 'enclave' forms, never really giving rise to a
genuine national economic system. The economy being thus 'disarticulated', the
sectors function without reciprocal organic relations, which would explain,
according to Mouzelis, the persistence of blockages and archaic forms, as in
agriculture. All this is open to discussion. But I do not want to enter into a
debate here about the concept of 'under-development' used by my critics. I must
emphasise, however, as a point of principle, that 'under-development' cannot be
used as a synonym for economic stagnation, blockages, archaic forms of disarticulation, except in some limited cases. An 'under-developed' economy is not
in itself necessarily less dynamic or less integrated than the dominant economy.
'Under-development' does not express a blocked or stagnant state, but rather a
diverted dynamism. Even if one uses the term 'blocked economy' for the
dependent countries, it is not in the sense of a return to a state of immobility, but
in the sense of a dynamic distortion which diverts the potential productive power
of the country towards objectives imposed by the logic of the world market.6
Greece presents a perfect example of the model of social incorporation of
family fanning in the capitalist system. The Greek peasant has a low income not
because of the supposedly archaic or stagnant character of his domestic economy,
but rather because of his full integration into the system of urban capitalism. In
spite of seemingly traditional social relations, the Greek peasant economy is far
from being blocked: it is developing at an astonishing rate. Between 1952 and
1973, the general index of Greek agricultural production rose by 120 per cent (in
constant prices); this rate of growth is the highest in relation to the respective
indices of 22 European countries and of Japan.7 Again, in the period 1952-68
Greece held the top position among the 22 countries of the OECD in respect to
the rate of growth of gross formation of fixed capital in agriculture.8 These two
indices alone make the discussion on the hypothesis of blockage in Greek
agriculture irrelevant and, at the same time, allow us to grasp the importance of
the economic movement which is taking place in Greece in spite of the apparent
persistence of'archaic' social relations. Invested capital and agricultural output
is thus increasing at a faster rate in Greece than in other OECD countries. The
same applies to the use of fertilisers: between 1950 and 1967 the use of fertilisers
in Greece increased more than in other OECD countries (+153 per cent for
nitrates, +151 per cent for phosphates and +170 per cent for potassium
fertilisers).9 In the context of modernisation and incessant adaptation to technical
progress, the yield of crops has not stopped increasing. Between 1950 and 197475, the average wheat yield per cultivated hectare10 increased by 137 per cent. In
the same period it increased by 84 per cent in Germany, 46 per cent in Italy, 77
per cent in the Netherlands, 67 per cent in Belgium, 88 per cent in Britain, 158
per cent in France and by an average of 110 per cent for EEC countries as a
451
whole. One consequence of these radical changes in Greek agriculture was that
the rate of growth of productivity in agricultural labour during this period was
higher in Greece than in the EEC countries, and among the highest in the
world.11
In these conditions, it is difficult to maintain that Greek agriculture today is
blocked or stagnates. At worst, it develops at a rate comparable to that of
European agriculture, regarded everywhere as advanced. But how do its relations
with other sectors of Greek economy fare? Is there a 'growing gap' as Mouzelis
maintains?
On the basis of constant prices in 1970, productivity per active worker was
distributed as following:
Greece: Gross output per worker12
(1960 = 100, in constant prices, 1970)

Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
TOTAL
1960
100
100
100
100
1970
235
187
174
210
1975
327
298
The productivity of agricultural labour in Greece, at constant prices, thus

increases more quickly than that of urban labour. In 1960 agricultural productivity was at 42.2 per cent of the average national productivity of labour; in 1975
it was already 52.8 per cent. The relative blocking of agricultural prices
constantly encourages the peasant to get into debt and to invest, in order to
improve the technical conditions of production. If there is really a 'growing gap'
between the unit-prices of the respective outputs of the sectors, unfavourable to
the peasant, a gap in the respective rates of productivity is widening in the
reverse sense. The relative lowering of agricultural prices merely expresses the
peasant's lowering payment per unit of labour expended. The hourly wage rate
tends to fall even if its global returns are maintained. All in all, there is no proof
that labour productivity in the family farming economy is stagnating, or that it is
the victim of blockages, but rather it is aligned with the rhythm of the economic
development of the whole country.
The huge modernisation effort which the Greek peasant has undertaken does
not result in a proportionally higher income, but on the contrary presupposes a
reduced and, by definition, low income. The uninterrupted growth in productivity expresses the peasants' struggle against the reduction of their income,
which is constantly threatened by the lowering of the unit-price of the agricultural output. It is a constant struggle, not for an increase, but for the
maintenance of global returns for the efforts of peasant families.
According to the model of the capitalist mode of production the rise of the rate
of wages stimulates entrepreneurs to substitute advanced technical equipment
for living labour. In the framework of the family economy, the opposite is true:
the falling rate in the remuneration of labour leads both to the development of
technical progress, and to the intensification of the family's labour. The
452
capitalist entrepreneur incorporates additional capital in the production process,

only in proportion to the rate of profit obtained. Similarly, the wage worker only
accepts overtime if he reckons on earning at least as much as he would for normal
hours. On the other hand, the peasant is willing to add a growing volume of
labour to the productive process, for decreasing rewards, because he is not
aiming at a satisfactory hourly payment, but at a global revenue, which is
obtained independently of the volume of labour expended.13 These different
attitudes arise from the fact that labour in capitalist production is an element of
cost, while in family economy it is simply a means (with no price attached) of
satisfying family needs. If its price drops, it will be necessary to offer more in
order to obtain the same monetary income as before.
In the case of the Greek family economy, the increase of invested capital and the
increase of production, technical improvements and high productivity, are
simply mechanisms determined by the low reumuneration of labour. Almost all
Greek peasant concerns show a deficit in the results of their operation: the costs
of production are on average higher by 4.25 per cent than the gross value of
production.14 The Greek peasant only succeeds in obtaining an income which is
the equivalent of a sixth or seventh of the income of his French counterpart. It is
this low income which stimulates the Greek peasant to accelerate the modernisation process.
The inequality of income mainly affects the family peasant and, to a lesser
extent, the farm wage worker. The gap involved in farm wages is much less than
in family incomes: the ratio is 1:3 or 4 to the disadvantage of Greek farm wagelabourers in relation to the level of agricultural wages in the EEC countries.15
Consequently it is mainly the peasant family which bears the costs of the social
incorporation of agriculture. In this family economy, where profit, by definition,
does not exist, saving becomes impossible. The growing flow of investment can
only be financed by borrowing, that is, by peasants going into debt. To be in
debt has become 'normal' in the family farming economy: in nearly all OECD
countries, debt corresponds to about double or triple the annual gross value of
agricultural production.
For capitalists, contemporary family farming is not an economic space which
has to be penetrated and conquered, but is an 'exotic' whole which has to be
subdued as such. The social utility of this peasant economy does not show in the
negative individual family balance, but rather in the positive balance which the
urban economy obtains in its relations with the agricultural sector. This will be
discussed in the following section. Summing up, we can see that Greek agriculture does not have a low productivity, either in relation to European agriculture,
or in relation to the urban sector in Greece. Although there is a satisfactory level
and rate of growth of agricultural productivity in Greece, it does not benefit the
peasants, but rather the urban economy.
III. The'Social Productivity'of Capital
The output of family farming cannot be measured as a product of wage-labour
nor as a product of invested capital. These 'standards' prove inadequate for a
453
strict analysis of the peasant economy. Agricultural labour creates 'perverse

results' at the level of the labourer's remuneration. Agricultural capital is
incorporated into production performing similarly 'perverse functions' in
relation to the rate of profit. However, in spite of the analytical difficulties
characterising peasant economy as such, we can grasp the degree of 'social
utility' of this sector indirectly. One can detect indirect signs through an
examination of the input/output relations of the peasant economy. The
investment of fixed capital in Greek agriculture at the beginning of the 1970s
came to nine per cent of the gross annual formation of fixed capital in the
country. However, during the same years, this investment produced almost 18
per cent of the internal gross output of the whole economy.16 Whereas in France
a unit of agricultural investment brings in five units of output, in Greece one
unit brings in six. If we assess these figures on the basis of the number of active
population in each sector, we can see that an expenditure of 100 units of fixed
capital per active person brings in an average of 303 units of output in the nonagricultural sector, 506 units in industry and 578 units in the peasant economy.
This means not only that contemporary Greek agriculture is neither blocked nor
archaic, but in fact represents an extremely high level of 'social efficiency' of
capital. Such capital productivity, unusually high in Greece in comparison with
western economies,17 implies that each active person in Greek agriculture brings
into production a quantity of labour which is 90 per cent higher than in the nonagricultural sectors. In other words, peasant labour in Greece is, on average,
almost twice as intensive as labour in the non-agricultural sectors. Similarly, a
study of capital/output ratios confirms this high 'social utility' of family agriculture in Greece. The average national capital/output ratio, that is, the relation
'capital stock/output', in constant prices, during the decade 1960-70, was on
average 3.10, whereas, for agriculture alone it was 1.38. This means that,
irrespective of the distribution of the effective population by sectors, for a capital
stock equal to 100, one obtains on average 72 units of output in agriculture and
32 units in the national economy as a whole.18
The high 'social utility' of Greek family farming is incontestable, and I would
point out that this high 'productivity of farm capital' does not benefit that sector
but the social system as a whole. The comparison is even more impressive in
international terms. The average capital/output ratio (ACOR) in west European
and North American economies is situated between six and twelve (according to
OECD statistics),19 while in Greece, at the beginning of the 1970s, it was almost
two.20
It is obvious that this situation in Greek agriculture cannot be attributed to the
specific nature of the technical or organic composition of farm capital. The
possibly low level of working capital that would explain, in part, the low average
capital/output ratio is however more than counterbalanced by the inflation of
land capital value, which represents almost 86 per cent of all farm capital in
Greece. Moreover, we know that the value of land capital grows only in relation
to fixed capital investments. Consequently, the inflation of land capital cannot
mask a weakness of invested capital (excluding land capital): the two develop
together, even if unequally. Moreover, we have to remember that the value of
454
land capital, although it is considered as a dead value from the point of view of
peasant assets, is, however, a living value, which weighs very heavily in peasant
expenditure. In other words, the land value, although without practical
importance, as an asset for the peasant, becomes very important for him when he
needs to buy land, to enlarge or to improve his holding. Consequently, the land
capital value represents a capital expenditure no less genuine than working
capital. Obviously this high 'social productivity' of capital cannot be explained
by the simple specificity of farm capital: essentially it comes from the intensification of peasant labour.
As we know already, this high 'productivity of capital' in agriculture does not
require either a higher payment for labour or a higher rate of profit for used
capital. On the contrary, both labour and farm capital are socially 'sterilised'.
The urban system advances capital in the agricultural sector through the peasant
(who is organically weak and without any personal savings) and this produces an
increasing volume of output at cost price. The balance sheet in terms of social
utility is favourable for Greece not only in terms of 'social productivity' of
capital, but also in terms of 'social productivity' of land. Fixed capital
investment is high in Greece: the equivalent of 250 francs are invested per
cultivated hectare, that is, as much as in France. Although, for an equal fixed
capital expenditure, the Greek hectare gives 16 per cent more in terms of output
than the French: 1,377 francs of gross output in Greece for 1,186 in France.21
No one can seriously claim that this is due to the higher fertility of Greek land.
The Greek peasant economy constitutes an exemplary model of the
incorporation of family farming into the inclusive capitalist system. For an equal
current working capital expenditure the Greek family farming economy gives an
output twice that of farm economies of the EEC countries. Moreover, the
proportion of net product to gross output in family farms in Greece exceeds 70
per cent, while in the EEC countries it is only about 60 per cent.22
In Greece, as in other capitalist countries, there is an unequal exchange system
functioning between agriculture and the urban economy. The low level of farm
prices is rooted in the low payment of labour and not in the so-called low productivity of the labourer. On the contrary, this productivity develops increasingly
quickly, with fixed capital investment and with technological development
(implements, fertilisers, mechanisation etc.). All this leads to an intensification of
peasant labour and then to a decreasing hourly wage. The peasant condition
declines not because of the so-called 'archaic', retrograde or blocked character of
the family economy, but because of its complete integration into the dominant
capitalist system. The gap between prices, incomes, rates of profit and living
standards does not come from 'archaic survivals' or from any traditional
pathology, but constitutes the contemporary, novel form by which the urban
system incorporates modern family farming. The more important the gaps the
more complete is the social integration of the sectors. From the point of view of
those in whose interests it is to realise this integration, agriculture must fulfil a
double requirement: (a) it must maximise the gross efficiency of farm capital,
and (b) it must reduce all forms of return (profit or rent) of this same capital.
Only the family form of production can meet these two conditions without
455
problems.
It is frequently suggested that this type of farming in Greece constitutes a
brake on the development of the national economy as a whole. I think I have
demonstrated that Greek family farming, at least after the Second World War, is
really far from being stagnant. On the contrary, it undergoes profound economic
and technical mutations. Essentially, it is continually carried forward by the
growth rhythms of the urban economy. Consequently, family farming is not an
external restraint on the development of the progressive sectors of the economy,
but is completely dominated and functionally determined by the needs and
imperatives of the accelerating growth of the Greek capitalist sector.
I would like to add here a short comment on the so-called dual or disarticulated
character of capitalism in Greece. First, I believe that it would be very hazardous
to try to trace real or assumed inequalities in the productivity of various sectors
to any supposed duality in the economy. Criticism of the theory of dualism has
already demonstrated, in the 1960s, the close relationship between the sectors of
the economy,23 their reciprocal determination and the ensuing inequalities. The
concept of dualism24 may perhaps find some application in the case of countries
in the first period of foreign conquest or colonisation. For contemporary underdeveloped societies this concept is very problematic, if not altogether irrelevant;
its application becomes still more problematic in the case of modern Greek
society.
In general, the Greek economy, since Independence (1830), has never seriously
followed the agro-export model, unlike for example, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt,
Romania etc. Large-scale landownership in Greece was always limited and
produced very little for export. Agrarian reforms, favouring peasant access to the
land, began in the nineteenth century and were completed during the inter-war
period (1920-40). The only non-integrable elements, that is the large estates of
northern Greece, were eliminated at the beginning of the 1930s. Moreover, this
elimination contributed to the advance of a very important industrialisation
sequence in Greece in the 1930s. After the Second World War, agriculture
operated as a sector perfectly complementary to the urban sector. Its function
was a double one: (a) to ensure the supply of food, so contributing to the reproduction of the urban labour force, at low prices, and exercising a downward
pressure on urban wages and (b) to operate as a labour reservoir, which also
served to reduce urban wages.
In Greece there is a high degree of integration among the various sectors of the
economy. There is a national economy, with the state as its principal axis. It is
important to point out, however, that Greek national integration has a rather
direct and 'material' character, while it has an indirect and 'immaterial' one in
Western countries. In other words, while in Western economies the integration
is the result of market laws, of a certain economic and monetary autonomy and of
certain indirect policies of the state (for example, the rate of interest or open
market operations etc.), in the dependent countries, of which Greece is one, integration is based directly, not on certain policies, but mainly on the material
omnipresence of the state. The state in Greece does not merely centralise market
information or merely define a simple reference framework for the choices of
456
private economic agents. In view of the atrophied character of the domestic

market, the state takes charge of it, completes it and often takes on its function.
Finally, it may be said that problems related to integration in Greece have to
be understood in terms of state activity. It is no longer a question of integrating
one sector into another, but of developing to the maximum all imaginable and
possible forms of state activity. Although it is often presented as a development
of the private economy especially in Greece the omnipresence of the state
and its coercive power are constituent and necessary to the private economy.
Greek family farming would be almost unthinkable but for the specific role of
the state in this field. Here the state is more than a simple guarantor of national
integration: it is the architect and creator of it.
I would like to note once more, in concluding this section, that I consider it to
be a matter of course that any integrated economy is not necessarily a balanced
one: integration can often accentuate all kinds of inequalities within the whole.
IV. The Field of Application of my Analysis
My critics wonder whether it was not my intention to replace the old unilinear
scheme of universal evolution by a new one which, while subtly taking account
of the deformities, would make similar claims to universal validity. If this is not
my intention, then I am invited to make clear the conditions under which my
analysis has application.
First, I have to remind readers how fruitless it is to examine pure empirical
situations in order to validate or invalidate theoretical conceptions. Empirical
'proofs' are only valuable in so far as they allow us to discern tendencies. At the
centre of my analysis is the question of the superiority of the family farm in
relation to capitalist enterprise in agriculture a superiority which must be
understood from the point of view of the process of urban capital accumulation.
Since the 'secret key' of this superiority is none other than low peasant income,
it is obvious that my analysis is more relevant to those sectors of production
where the proportion of labour input is higher and more difficult to replace by
machines, that is in the labour intensive sectors, the 'intensive' sectors of
agriculture. Although to a lesser extent, and therefore less easily detectable in
empirical observation, low labour remuneration is also important in the price
formation of 'extensive' agriculture, even of those sectors which are highly
mechanised. But in these cases the influence of low labour costs on the choice
between one or another form of production (in this case, the choice between
family or capitalist forms of production) is minimised.
However, to affirm, as I have done, that my analysis is more relevant to those
sectors with a low organic composition of capital, might be understood as a
unilateral reference to under-developed or under-capitalised agriculture. This is
why I hasten to make the following two points:
a) In developing economies family farming does not necessarily and per se
constitute a factor for development. First, it is important to point out that in
Third World countries, family farming is either unknown or a relatively new
phenomenon, introduced along with decolonisation. In most colonial or semi-
457
colonial economies, blockage or disarticulation was not caused by family farming

structures, but rather by big estate structures. This is why the struggle for
national independence and the interest in economic development have always
been confused with the struggle against the latifundist bourgeoisie and the
demand for agrarian reform. In general, in Latin America, and especially in
Mexico, we can find confirmation of this: (i) family farming is not an 'archaic'
survival from the past, but an innovation made by rising capitalism in the
twentieth century; (ii) agrarian reform constitutes the starting point of an
important development of capitalism in Mexico.
Therefore, we must admit this distinction: whether family farming is a
positive factor for development or not depends on the condition of its emergence
and the social and economic utility it creates. If family structures are set up in the
context of the rise of a private or state bourgeoisie, this type of agriculture will be
a form of very high 'social utility'.25
On the other hand, where this is not the context, even if family structures
persist, the social advantage is lost for capitalist development and directly
benefits the world market (in the case of agro-exporting structures directly
associated with the foreign market), or else the advantage remains unexploited or
is destroyed by the inadequacies or inefficiency of pre-capitalist structures. This
is what happens in the case of traditional societies in so far as they stay very
exceptionally in our time in a state of isolation and autarchy.
To sum up: family farming per se is not a sufficient condition to induce a
process of economic development in Third World countries. Nevertheless, it
constitutes an undoubted advantage for development; this advantage is fully
exploited only in connection with certain social and class conditions, especially
with the rise of a private or state local bourgeoisie in the country concerned.
b) In the developed economies of the 'central' countries of the world system,
family farming constitutes a relatively recent structure. It was consolidated in the
last years of the nineteenth century and particularly in the first decades of the
twentieth. It constitutes essentially a new social category which has to be
understood in terms of the 'organised' capitalism of the twentieth century, which
took off in a big way only after the Second World War. Today little remains of
the old important groups of landlord rent collectors, who threatened bourgeois
society in the mid-nineteenth century in western Europe and North America. In
the six countries of the EEC in 1974, 95.5 per cent of farms had less than 50
hectares each, and 2,147,000 farm 'entrepreneurs' were 'exploiting' 1,147,000
farm wage labourers, which gives an average of two 'entrepreneurs' for each
wage labourer. In the same year there were in Belgium 12 'entrepreneurs' for each
wage labourer, in Denmark 6.3, in Federal Germany 5, in the Netherlands 4.27
and in France 4.1. Obviously, we cannot easily envisage the development of the
capitalist mode of production in European agriculture. Even in the U.S.A.,
where the myth of agrarian capitalism is the most diffused, wage labour does not
exceed 29 per cent of the total active population in agriculture (1970) which, in
relation to the number of commercial farms (2,780,000), gives an average of 2.7
'entrepreneurs' for one wage labourer.
458
The 'longevity' of family farming in contemporary capitalism is not difficult to

explain. It follows from the facility and the rapidity with which the family
productive unit adapts itself to the requirements of the urban system: it modifies
its production, its specialisation, its investment and its work more easily and
more rapidly than capitalist enterprise, and it certainly knows how to restrict its
costs much more effectively. In the past, the competition from cheap overseas
wheat (from U.S.A., Russia, Romania etc.) encouraged French peasants to
convert to labour-intensive agricultural production. This is why the capitalist
wheat production sector in France could grow. However, the predominance of
family structures has been maintained by the shift of peasant agriculture to
labour-intensive production. Today, if this intensive agriculture is again
threatened, it is not by capitalist agrarian productive structures, but rather by
other, equally family-based producers. The agriculture of southern European
countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal) does not threaten French or Italian
agriculture because of any superior capitalist organisation of production, but
because of its low social costs of production, blocked at abnormally low levels, in
relation to what is currently recognised in Western societies. Obviously this
competition does not call in question family forms of production. If these
pressures continue French family farming will turn completely to more labourintensive production, for example in cattle, with or without land.
To conclude: when I say that family farming presents advantages for the
development or urban capitalism, I certainly formulate a general and theoretical
proposition; but it is at this level, in the end, that I must be challenged. Family
farming is the form which permits the maximum reduction of food prices, and
consequently the social cost of reproduction of the labour force as a whole. My
statement does not plot a unilinear model of evolution (such, for example, as is
proposed by the well-known mechanistic 'Marxist' conception of the five stages);
but it defines the terms of a theoretical reality, even leaving the field open to
different approaches. Moreover, the empirical investigations which have already
been done, in spite of specific differences, essentially confirm the thesis of the
preponderance of family structures in agriculture as the necessary complement
to the development of urban capitalism.
Moreover, I wonder about the real significance of the question put to me. Does
it not show a distrust for theoretical analysis in general to demand historical
'proof of a theoretical explanation and to examine this only from the angle of
historical and circumstantial applicability? Is this not the eternal historicist
debate once again? This hypothesis is reinforced when Mouzelis, at the end of
his article, reproaches me for not having a 'class point of view', for not bringing
up the role of the subject (collective) in history, and thus not explaining the
genesis of social structures. To this objection I would only say that in principle I
am opposed to any separation because it is artificial of genesis from
function. If by the latter we mean a functioning system, we should not conclude
that at the level of historical production this operates unsystematically and in
disorder. If theory is necessary to elucidate the conditions of functioning, it is no
less necessary to analyse the historical process of production. As for the functioning level or the level of genesis of social structures, any object of analysis is
459
conceivable only in its place in social relations as a whole. Even social classes do
not act as distinct subjects in their reciprocal relations, but as inseparable consequences of their struggles and social contradictions. Subjects, even collective
subjects, are not the starting point for class struggle, rather class struggle is progressively crystallised in forms which we understand as 'social subjects' and call
'social classes'.
V. Some Historical Cases
To support his criticism Mouzelis cites some countries which are supposed to
conform to the model of the consolidation of family farming. First Spain: in spite
of the rapid industrialisation of this country, especially after 1960, large-scale
landownership is said not only to have survived, but even to have grown stronger
in terms of efficiency, in relation to small-scale family farms, mostly in the
northern part of the country.
In reply to this I would say:
a) That the fundamental criterion for understanding social relations in agriculture is not the dimension of farm exploitation, but rather the labour relations of
the direct producers. The existence of large landownership does not, in itself,
enlighten us as to the social character of Spanish agriculture. Big farms can be
consolidated as forms of agrarian capitalism only if they mainly use wage labour,
which is precisely not the case in contemporary Spain. Moreover, large estates
create a ground-rent economy only if they lead to the development of a 'rent
market', which is also not the case in contemporary Spain. The direct ownerfarming system includes more than 76 per cent of the area under crops, tenant
farming and metayage representing respectively 12 and 7 per cent of the
cultivated areas. We have to remember that in spite of its impressive appearance,
large-scale landowning does not comprise a very large proportion of the total. In
1962, although occupying 56.5 per cent of all agricultural land, large owners
only held 11 per cent of the irrigated land and 18 per cent of the arable land.
b) In Spain, large-scale ownership has not been reinforced during the last
decade but, on the contrary, faces important and increasing difficulties. The
proportion of the total held by big estates (over 100 hectares) went down from
56.5 per cent in 1962 to only 30 per cent in 1972.26
c) Massive migration of farm wage workers to the urban centres or abroad
have created unprecedented difficulties for the large landowners. The increasing
shortage of dependent labour creates imbalances for large landownership in
terms of labour costs.27
d) The majority of the active agricultural population works in family farms
with less than five hectares. From the point of view of social relations, among
the direct producers family and independent labour and not wage labour is predominant. In 1960-62 farm wage-labourers were 38 per cent of the active
population in agriculture; in 1973 the figure was not more than 29 per cent.
There are now close to three owners for each wage-labourer in Spanish
agriculture. Consequently, the relative survival of large property in Spain does
not lead to a growth of dependent labour forms and creates neither capitalist
460
profit for the agricultural economy, nor a ground-rent economy. Here again, in
spite of the exceptional heterogeneity of structures and of the resulting contradictions, it is family farming which appears again as the central form in
contemporary Spanish agriculture.
e) Already in 1962, with 56.5 per cent of all agricultural land, large
landowners had only 11 per cent of the irrigated and 18 per cent of the arable
land. Today, with the decrease in large holdings to less than 30 per cent, their
occupation of irrigated and arable land will have further declined.
For all these reasons accepting that large-scale landownership predominates
geographically in Spain today, we cannot admit that in terms of social relations
agrarian capitalism or a ground-rent economy are predominant. What is sure is
that large-scale property holding does not grow, but decreases. Here again it is
condemned by the development of urban capitalism.28
According to Mouzelis, Eastern Europe, and especially Poland and Hungary,
were more advanced in the development of capitalism than the.Balkan countries
even before the installation of 'socialist' regimes, in spite of the fact that land
reform arrived in these two countries very late and in a very deficient manner.
My position is that agrarian reform facilitates the development of urban
capitalism. This does not mean that capitalism will not attempt to find other
ways, depending on historical circumstances, of surmounting the obstacles (of
ground-rent or farm profit); nor does it mean that it will not come to an arrangement with the cultivators, even at the cost of stagnation in the urban rate of
growth. In Poland, land reform distributed to peasants only six per cent of the
land, in Hungary nine per cent. The landed aristocracies remained in both cases
and this raised insuperable barriers to the growth of both economies. Neither in
Poland nor in Hungray was capitalism more developed than in Greece in the
1930s.
Poland, as a new state founded in 1918, was immediately submerged by
foreign capital, mostly German, but also French, which functioned as in a
colonial country. The main investments were made in the most typical sectors of
the colonial dependence model: the sectors of primary production (mines and
agriculture). The bank system, communications and energy were rapidly
monopolised by German and French capital. In these conditions, it would be
particularly difficult to isolate a so-called 'Polish capitalism'. The land
aristocracy, supported by foreign capital, also became involved in the political
and economic affairs of the country. In 1930, 76 per cent of the active Polish
population was still occupied in the agricultural sector, and only 8 per cent in the
industrial sector.- During the same period the respective data for Greece were 53
and 15 per cent. Furthermore, in 1930, Poland had a total foreign trade of 439
francs per head of population, when it was 1,100 francs in Greece. In such
conditions, it is difficult to sustain the claim that capitalism was more advanced
in Poland than in Greece. Perhaps the blockage of Polish agriculture in
latifundist structures may also explain, at least in part, the non-appearance of any
important wave of industrialisation. This could happen historically in Poland
only with the appearance of the 'people's democratic' regime just after the
Second World War.
461
In spite of certain secondary factors, Hungarian capitalism is a category no less

problematic than its Polish counterpart. In 1930 more than 58 per cent of the
active population in Hungary were still occupied in agriculture. Total foreign
trade per head of population was 900 francs (cf. with l,100fr. for Greece).
During the 1930s, the main Hungarian exports were cereals, farm and cattle
products, fruit and vegetables. This was to be expected: geographically blocked
between its economically stronger neighbours Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia flooded by their manufactures products, Hungary had no hope of
escaping from its pastoral and agricultural vocation. The ruling landed
aristocracy understood, after the suppression of the Bela Kun revolutionary
movement, that their only hope lay in an alliance with their powerful neighbours
and in the adaptation of the Hungarian economy into a simple agricultural
appendix to the economic and geopolitical whole of central Europe. In such
conditions, it is obvious that the capitalist economy in Hungary, as in Poland,
was far from growing. Both countries, in the 1930s, were agrarian 'poor
relations', forced into the famous 'triangular trade' circuits, of which the chief
beneficiary was Hitler's Germany. Both countries, before the war, were part of
'agricultural Europe' as defined by the League of Nations.29
In general, the evolution of capitalism in eastern Europe has been characterised by slow growth and conservatism, which must be attributed to the fact
that the control of the national economy was often in the hands of a coalition of
people who were very suspicious of any appearance of change; a coalition of
interests comprising, on the one hand, a group of 'compradors' and foreign
capital, and on the other the landed aristocracies. In this situation, not only
was land reform impossible, but also the development of urban capitalism.
Finally, we come back to the Balkans and to Greece. According to Mouzelis,
we do not need to seek the secret of the persistence of family farming in southeast Europe in the laws of development of the capitalist mode of production, but
can easily explain it by reference to the historical circumstances. The 'early
dissolution' of the large estates in the Balkans is, according to Mouzelis, attributable to the sudden withdrawal of the Ottoman landowners. This sudden
withdrawal is said to have created a 'gap' in land ownership which was rapidly
filled by peasant families, who were stronger than the autochthonous landlord
bourgeoisie. The more sudden and unexpected the Ottoman withdrawal, the
easier and more efficient was the recovery by the peasants of the abandoned land.
About this interpretation, which seems 'realistic' and free from any theoretical
formalism, I would say:
a) Most of the land reforms in south-eastern Europe were made between 1917
and 1921 (Romania 1918, Bulgaria 1921, Yugoslavia 1919, Greece 1917). By
that time the youngest Balkan state, Bulgaria, was already forty years old as an
independent state: how can one maintain that land reform in the Balkans
distributed the land abandoned by the Ottoman owners?
b) Moreover, as I have already shown, these landowners had never succeeded,
under the Ottoman empire, in constituting themselves as absolute private
landowners. The concept of private property in land was historically accepted in
462
the Balkans only with the abolition of Ottoman rule and the transition to the
juridical and political forms of independent Christian states. Private landownership was not instituted by the Ottomans, but by their Christian successors.
The dissolution of big private estates forty years after Bulgarian
independence, ninety years after Greek independence and sixty years after
Romanian unification was promulgated not against certain Ottoman landowners (who existed only in popular Balkan legends), but precisely against
national, Christian, recently established landowners.
c) If the withdrawal of the Ottomans created an 'empty space' in landownership at the moment of Balkan independence, that is, between forty and
ninety years before the land reforms, that space was very soon filled by the local
and regional bourgeoisie, who succeeded in interpreting the old Ottoman right of
'tenure' (tessarouf) as equivalent to the modern right of absolute private property.
They thus succeeded in appropriating the peasants, who were precisely the traditional tenants of their lands. This has been the case in all 'modernisation'
reforms of social and juridical systems: it is true of the Tsarist law on the
emancipation of serfs (1861), of the 'organic law' in Romania (1864), of the
transition to modern civil law in Thessaly (Greece) in 1881. Modern private
ownership of land was instituted not by the Ottomans, but by their successors in
the bourgeois Christian states.
d) It is obvious therefore, that land distribution in the Balkans, between 1917
and 1921, was not connected with the eviction of Ottoman control, or with the
question of national liberation, but rather with the economic development of
Balkan societies, long after their independence. During the independence wars,
Ottoman lands were usurped not by the peasants, but by new autochthonous
landowners. Peasants appeared in force only later to present their claims for land
distribution. If they finally succeeded, through the reforms, in acquiring ownership, it was not by a 'sudden and surprise effect' as Mouzelis says, but after long
and severe struggles, debates and hesitations, which lasted many decades in all
Balkan states. In these struggles, Balkan peasants found decisive support among
the urban and administrative bourgeoisie. It was this convergence of interest,
coming from 'above' and 'below', that allowed the realisation of the land reforms
of 1917 to 1921. Peasants fought to satisfy their demands, but they could only be
satisfied within the logic of the development of bourgeois systems.
e) Clearly in my approach it is less important to know the precise historical
circumstances that allowed the imposition of land reforms. More important, I
think, is to understand how agrarian reform constituted an expression of the
struggle between the urban and rural bourgeoisie, and how they have become
part of the logic of urban and industrial capital accumulation, and capitalist
development in general.
The problem of the persistence of family farming in the Balkans is posed
mainly in theoretical rather than historical terms. From this point of view, it is
important to emphasise that family farming structures in the Balkans, whatever
the exact nature of their genesis, are living and constantly renewed forms,
functionally inserted into the logic of modern capitalist development, rather than
merely historic, disappearing vestiges.
463
What is important in my analysis, is not that peasants claim land that, of

course, we have known for a long time but that capitalism agrees to satisfy this
demand. The conditions of complementarity between family forms of
production and the capitalist mode of production can undoubtedly be elucidated,
in the first instance, by a theoretical approach.
VI. The Enlargement of the Domestic Market
The persistence of family farming structures, in which the peasant's surplus
labour is contributed without remuneration, permits, to be sure, the maximisation of the social surplus product, but does not this same surplus product
encounter increasing difficulty with respect to realisation? Who will buy this
surplus product, abnormally increased by peasants' self-exploitation if, at the
same time, the peasants' purchasing power is reduced? In other words, I am
asked the same question as was asked by Malthus, Sismondi, Rodbertus,
Vorontsov, Danielson and Rosa Luxembourg. Obviously I cannot deal with this
question in a few paragraphs. However, I have to make clear a few points in the
framework of the analysis of peasant economy.
When land reform was discussed in Greece, the argument of bourgeois
advocates of land reform stressed precisely the expansion of the domestic market.
In fact, family farming allows the development of the domestic market. This
argument is still good in the context of contemporary agriculture. What other
formula will permit a larger domestic market than family farming? I must point
out that if a peasant does not realise a profit for his capital used, he is not for that
reason isolated from the market. He gets a wage-equivalent which he spends,
together with his gross monetary return, on the market. Even if his individual
balance shows a deficit, the market in farm equipment grows. If we could
distinguish his 'subsistence account' from his 'exploitation account' we would
realise that only the former is in crisis, while the latter grows. The continual
indebtedness of the peasant has the function of supporting and accelerating the
growing flow of his inputs. The model of family farming, as we can see, is
surrounded by merchant relations, by purchasing and selling circuits and, for the
good functioning of this model, the peasant has to buy more and more. The
peasant is always encouraged to buy, by increasing his debt. There is no limit to
the development of this process: the development of merchant relations does not
depend on peasant solvency. Consequently, the model of family farming is the
only one that guarantees an increasing and unlimited purchasing flow by the
cultivators.
So we arrive at this situation: while the gross income of the peasant increases,
because of the inflation of his input prices, his net income progressively
diminishes. This leads us to a paradoxical situation: while peasants often cannot
balance their individual family budgets the agricultural economy as a whole
suffers from an excessive volume of farm equipment and machines. Some speak
of over-equipment in contemporary family agriculture, others of waste.
However, it is certain that only family farming is able to combine peasants'
personal frustration, on the one hand, with unlimited peasant expenditure on the
other.
464

NOTES
1.
K. Vergopoulos, Le capitalisme difforme et la nouvelle question agraire, Maspero 1977 and S.

Amin and K. Vergopoulos, La question paysanne et le capitalisme, Anthropos 1977.
2.
N. Mouzelis, 'Capitalism and the Development of agriculture', Journal of Peasant Studies, vol.
3, no.4, July 1976.
3.
In the same sense Marx emphasises, 'For the peasant parcel holder to cultivate his land, or to
buy land for cultivation, it is therefore not necessary, as under the normal capitalist mode of
production, that the market-price of the agricultural products rise high enough to afford him
the average profit...' Karl Marx: Capita! Vol. III p. 806 (English Edition) Moscow 1966.
4.
P. A. Samuelson, 'International trade and the equalisation of factor prices', The Economic
Journal, June 1948.
5.
On the small unit of family farming Marx pointed out, 'This lower price is consequently a
result of the producers's poverty and by no means of their labour productivity.' Marx, Capital,
loc. cit.
See also A. Emmanuel, L'change ingal, Maspero, 2nd edition, 1972, p.85.
6.
Cf. S. Amin, L'Afrique de l'Ouest bloque, Ed. Minuit 1971.
7.
Cf. OCED, Le capital dans l'agriculture et son financement, Paris 1970, Vol. I, p.22.
8.
Op. cit., p.26. See also EEC, Statisques de base de la Communaut Economique Europenne,
1975-76.
9.
OECD, Statistiques agricoles, 1955-1968, Paris 1969.
10. We must point out that wheat is among the less dynamic products in the Greek economy.
11.
FAO/CEE, Seventh Report on Output, Expenses and Income of Agriculture in European

Countries, 1960-68, United Nations, New York 1976, Vol. 1, p.84.
12. National Accounts of Greece, 1958-75, Athens 1976; OECD, Grce, tudes economiques, June
1877; M. Delivanis and D. Germidis, Industrialisation, emploi et repartition des revenus en
Grce, OECD 1975, p.169.
13. Jerzy Tepicht, Marxisme et agriculture, Paris 1973.
14. With the only exception of farms in Macedonia, Northern Greece; see Structural and Economic
Data on Family Farming in Greece, edited by the Agricultural Bank of Greece (ATE), Athens
1973.
15. FAO/CEE, Prix des produits agricoles et de certaines moyens de production en Europe et en
Amrique Latine, 1975-76, New York 1977.
16. National Accounts of Greece, Athens 1976.
17. Agriculture in the U.S., with 3.8 per cent of the total investment, produces only 2.9 per cent
of the national output, see OECD, National Accounts of OECD Countries, Paris 1970.
18. Delivanis and Germidis, op. cit., p.65.
19. OECD, Le capital dans l'agriculture, 1970, l,pp.73-4.
20. Delivanis and Germidis, op. cit.
21.
In constant prices, see EEC, Yearbook of Agriculture Statistics, Brussels 1976.
22. FAO/CEE, Seventh Report on Output Expenses and Income of Agriculture in European Countries,
New York 1976.
23.
R. Stavenhagen, Sept thsesrronespour l'Amerique Latine, Paris 1973.
465
24.
See C. Benetti, Essai sur le mode de dveloppement dualiste, (Thesis), Paris 1970.
25.
It is not surprising that the Polish Marxist Jerzy Tepicht recommends to Third World
countries the model of family farming as fundamentally favourable to all development; see
Tepicht, Marxisme et Agriculture.
26. OECD, La politique agricole en Espagne, Paris 1964, p.26.

27.
OECD, Le dveloppement de l'agriculture en Europe meridionnale,Paris 1969, p.108.
28.
I must point out that between 1962 and 1972 new experiences of group farming have been
tested, with very considerable success. These suggest new ways of transformation and adaptation for peasant farmers; see OECD, La politique agricole en Espagne.
29.
C. Bettelheim, Esquisse d'un tableau conomique de l'Europe, Paris 1948 p. 176.

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