Capitalism and pre-capitalism in the fields of Portugal, during the period between the two worldly wars

Abstract

During the period between the two wordly wars, the Portuguese agrarian economy was a mosaic of different situations, not only under the geo-economic point of view but also as far as the production modes are concerned, articulated among them in a complex manner. In the first part of this article one examines the distribution of the real estate, showing that it is uncorrect the dualist conception of a country shared between a south, characterized by an absolute predominance of the big possessions and a north with its soil totally divided into an enormous quantity of small and tiny possessions. As a matter of fact the phenomenon of real estate concentration was also to be found in certain northern regions, partially as a consequence from the penetration of the capitalist production relations into the agriculture. Besides the most concret examples of capitalist production relations in agriculture may be seen at two levels: that of the forms of soil exploitation and that of the composition of agricultural labour force. The second part of this article is devoted to these two points. In the third part one examines the production models in agriculture, dealing firstly with the familiar exploitations and then with the agricultural exploitations of capitalist type. Finally, in the last part, one studies the articulation of the two models of production, showing how, either in the north or in the south, the capitalist exploitations were articulated with the familiar exploitations, dominating them and taking profit from the labour force existent in them. The agrarian bourgeoisie was unified, at the national level, exactly through its common interest in using, for its own benefit, the cheap labour force that the small familiar exploitations provided.