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The Journal of Peasant

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Hamza Alavi (1921 – 2003)

T.B
Published online: 22 Apr 2009.

To cite this article: T.B (2004) Hamza Alavi (1921 – 2003), The Journal of Peasant
Studies, 31:2, 341-344, DOI: 10.1080/0306615042000224348

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 Obituary

Hamza Alavi (1921 – 2003)

Hamza Alavi, who died in December 2003 aged 82, was one of the most
important intellectuals from the Asian subcontinent to participate in (and in
many cases formulate the terms of) debates from the 1960s onwards about
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Third World development. In particular, he contributed substantially to

discussions on the complex interconnections in Asia between on the one hand
colonialism, imperialism and the state, and on the other the agrarian class
structure there, revolutionary transformation and the peasantry. It was
because of the latter dimension that Hamza was a much-valued member of
the editorial advisory board of this journal, a position he held for more than
two decades, from 1973 to 1996. Unlike much of what nowadays passes for
radical theory about economic development, the epistemology informing his
analytical framework was consistent and coherent.
An intellectual and activist of considerable international standing, Hamza
was born into a well-off family from Karachi. He studied economics at
Aligarh University, and worked first for the Bank of India, and after partition
for the Bank of Pakistan. Following a period of research in Tanzania, where
the focus of his intellectual interests turned to the peasantry, he began a
doctorate at the London School of Economics, and in the mid-1960s joined
the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. During the 1970s
he taught politics at Leeds University, where he became a Reader in 1977 and
from which he retired in 1988, returning to Pakistan in 1997. More than most,
his work engaged theoretically and politically with colonialism and – before
it was appropriated and distorted by postmodernism – the notion of post-
colonialism. The latter concept linked both class and state formation in the
so-called Third World to peasant agency. Because it was allied to the local
bourgeoisie and landlord class, neo-colonialism continued to flourish by
means of aid leverage. International capital was thus able to exercise power
over newly formed or newly independent Third World states, particularly
their army and bureaucracy (termed the ‘military-bureaucratic oligarchy’).
His own social background in Pakistan gave Hamza a unique insight into
the significance of an educated middle class in post-colonial societies, and in
particular its crucial political role. His argument with classical Marxist theory
[Alavi, 1975] was that on account of its colonial experience, the state
apparatus of newly independent nations was not, and could not be, an
institution through which a single class exercised political power. This was
because unlike European countries, where an indigenous bourgeoisie rose to
The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.31, No.2, January 2004, pp.341–344
ISSN 0306-6150 print/1743-9523 online
DOI: 10.1080/0306615042000224348 # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd.
 342 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES

power economically, in the course of which it shaped the state apparatus in its
own image, in post-colonial societies this task had to some degree already
been accomplished by a foreign ( = metropolitan) bourgeoisie. He identified
three competing propertied classes struggling for control over the state in
Pakistan: an indigenous ( = domestic) bourgeoisie, a neo-colonial ( = foreign)
bourgeoisie, and an indigenous landowning class, frequently (and in his view,
wrongly) labelled ‘feudal’ or ‘semi-feudal’. Hence the state apparatus itself
became the crucial site of struggle for economic power exercised in post-
colonial contexts [Alavi, 1982b], as a result of which the ‘bureaucratic-
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military oligarchy’ assumed a relatively autonomous role vis-à-vis competing

interests attempting to wrest control over its project and/or resources (the
extraction/allocation of economic surplus, who was to benefit from planned
development).
Consequently, in erstwhile colonies the indigenous middle class remained
economically weak, and had to prosecute a twofold struggle: against on the one
hand ‘bureaucratic-military oligarchy’ in charge of the state apparatus, and on
the other the mainly rural masses (to prevent revolution). Rather than opposing
the continuing economic influence of neo-colonial interests, therefore, the
indigenous propertied classes reached an accommodation with imperialism,
the outcome being that capitalist development was both dependent on and
occurred under the aegis of what were misleadingly thought to be ‘feudal’
landowners utilizing ‘pre-capitalist’ production relations. That capitalist
farming (in the form of the Green Revolution) developed on the basis of
supposedly non-capitalist property and production relations meant in turn that
it was no longer necessary in such contexts to eliminate ‘feudal’ structures.
These, Hamza concluded, were no longer the obstacles to capitalist
development in the so-called Third World that they were once thought to be.
This was linked in turn to his view [Alavi, 1965, 1973a, 1973b] about the
revolutionary role of peasants in post-colonial societies. Since no opposition
to imperialism could be expected from either an indigenous bourgeoisie or a
landowning class, any struggle against capitalism and for socialism in so-
called Third World societies would of necessity have to be led by the rural
masses in general, and the peasantry in particular. On the basis of his study of
agrarian mobilizations in pre-revolutionary Russia, in mid-1920s China (the
Hunan movement), and in India during the mid-1940s (the Telegana and
Tebhaga movements), Hamza maintained that middle peasants were ‘the
most militant element of the peasantry’. This theory not only anticipated the
‘middle peasant’ thesis applied subsequently by Eric Wolf [1971] to peasant
movements in other contexts (Mexico, Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba), but also
departed from the classic Marxist argument that in the countryside of so-
called Third World societies it was the poor peasant who was the main
revolutionary subject.
 OBITUARY: HAMZA ALAVI 343

Although the view that ‘feudal’ structures were no obstacle to the growth
of capitalist farming has been vindicated, some of his other arguments were
challenged by subsequent developments. This was the case with the
specificity attached to what was identified as the colonial mode of production
[Alavi, 1975, 1982a]. Similarly, the view that the object of neo-colonialism,
or the new imperialism, was not the export of capital to exploit cheap labour
in the Third World [Alavi, 1964] has difficulties when confronted by what
came to be seen as the new international division of labour. What is not open
to dispute, however, is the influence of these ideas on those writing at the
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time about the peasantry and peasant movements. This is especially true of a
series of important articles published in The Socialist Register from the mid-
1960s onwards [Alavi, 1964, 1965, 1971, 1975]. Their impact during the
decade that followed is evident both from the anthologization and translations
of his work [Alavi, 1976, 1988a, 1988b], and from its critical application to
non-Asian contexts [Saul, 1974].
Hamza Alavi was also a perceptive and generous intellectual opponent. A
decade after I had criticized his argument about the middle peasantry, he
expressed regret at having missed the opportunity of debating the issue,
observing that it would have enabled him to clarify and elaborate on some of
the more complex conceptual issues involved. This willingness on his part to
discuss points of contention was not just indicative of an intellectual
openness but was also in keeping with the old Bolshevik practice, where
strongly held views were vigorously defended on a platform or in print, rather
than being suppressed or ignored (as is now frequently the case). In the
course of our communications, an initial diffidence on his part vanished when
he discovered two things. First, that we possessed a mutual enthusiasm for the
early work of Kautsky, for whose seminal text on the agrarian question he –
together with the founder of this journal, Teodor Shanin – wrote an erudite
and illuminating introduction [Alavi and Shanin, 1988: xi–xxxix]. And
second, that we also shared a mutual disdain for an earlier translation/
interpretation, about which his comments were both scabrous and hilarious.

T.B.

REFERENCES
Alavi, Hamza, 1964, ‘Imperialism Old and New’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville (eds.), The
Socialist Register 1964, London: The Merlin Press.
Alavi, Hamza, 1965, ‘Peasants and Revolution’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville (eds.), The
Socialist Register 1965, London: The Merlin Press.
Alavi, Hamza, 1971, ‘Bangla Desh and the Crisis of Pakistan’, in Ralph Miliband and John
Saville (eds.), The Socialist Register 1971, London: The Merlin Press.
 344 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES

Alavi, Hamza, 1973a, ‘Peasant Classes and Primordial Loyalties’, The Journal of Peasant
Studies, Vol.1, No.1.
Alavi, Hamza, 1973b, ‘The State in Postcolonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh’, in
Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma (eds.), Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia, New
York: Monthly Review Press.
Alavi, Hamza, 1975, ‘India and the Colonial Mode of Production’, in Ralph Miliband and John
Saville (eds.), The Socialist Register 1975, London: The Merlin Press.
Alavi, Hamza, 1976, Las clases campesinas y las lealteades primordiales, México: Anagrama.
Alavi, Hamza, 1982a, ‘India: The Transition to Colonial Capitalism’, in Hamza Alavi, P.L.
Burns, G.R. Knight, P.B. Mayer and Doug McEachern, Capitalism and Colonial Production,
London and Canberra: Croom Helm.
Alavi, Hamza, 1982b, ‘State and Class Under Peripheral Capitalism’, in Hamza Alavi and Teodor
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Shanin (eds.) [1982].

Alavi, Hamza, 1988a, ‘Peasantry and Capitalism: A Marxist Discourse’, in Teodor Shanin (ed.),
Peasants and Peasant Societies, London: Penguin Books.
Alavi, Hamza, 1988b, ‘Village Factions’, in Teodor Shanin (ed.), Peasants and Peasant
Societies, London: Penguin Books.
Alavi, Hamza, and Teodor Shanin (eds.), 1982, Introduction to the Sociology of ‘Developing
Societies’ (first published in 1970), London: Macmillan.
Alavi, Hamza and Teodor Shanin, 1988, ‘Introduction to the English Edition: Peasantry and
Capitalism’, in Karl Kautsky, The Agrarian Question (two volumes), London and
Winchester, MA: Zwan Publications.
Saul, John S., 1974, ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania’, in Ralph Miliband and John
Saville (eds.), The Socialist Register 1974, London: The Merlin Press.
Wolf, Eric R., 1971, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber.