The peasant way and its critics: Elements of debate around the agrarian question

The rise of global peasant movements is triggering debate regarding the place of small family farming in agrarian capitalism. Should peasants be considered as a political force able to counter the corporate food regime, as argued by the proponents of the “peasant way”? Or are they called upon to disappear, having internalized the relations of capitalist commodity production and being entangled in a resulting class differentiation? This paper argues that some critics of the peasant way contribute towards strengthening the narrative of neoliberal capitalism through a petty commodity producer essentialism and the resulting blind spots of their analyses.