The Rise of the East: A non‐western path?

Abstract

The European (and its variants) path to capitalism is predicated on a capital‐intensive, labourdisplacing growth strategy and therefore necessitates accumulation by dispossession, or what Marx called primitive accumulation, and colonisation. The East Asian path on the other hand is predicated upon a labour‐absorbing growth strategy and therefore makes feasible accumulation without dispossession. Japan’s attempt at hybridizing the two paths ended in an imperialist debacle. The subsequent extension of the East Asian path has been contingent upon the market space provided the imperialist hegemon, USA. Arrighi has argued that China’s growth strategy, until the mid‐1990s, had followed the East Asian path and therefore accumulation without dispossession, resulting therefore in only a partial proletarianisation of the peasantry, in part the outcome of a dynamic agricultural sector. In contradistinction the paper argues that in India the peasantry is also partially proletarianised, but at least in part due to an agrarian crisis which itself is largely the outcome of neoliberal economic reforms. But the existence of a partially proletarianised peasantry and its resistance to the expropriation of land on behalf of big capital makes feasible, for both China and India, alternative, non‐western, paths to growth, centered on accumulation without dispossession. Whether this comes to fruition is dependent upon the conjuncture, but it also underlines the importance of including petty‐producers within the ambit of a struggle against big‐bourgeoisie, imperialism and globalization.