Page 20 RAIN Winter/Spring 1991 Lao Peasants Under Socialism Grant Evans Yale University Press 1990, 304 pp., $30 Grant Evans makes compelling arguments against collectivization in countries, such as Laos, which rely on the subsistence agriculture of self-reliant villages. Evans questions the orthodox Marxist assumption that such traditional peasant societies have a "natural" inclination toward capitalism. Borrowing from Soviet economist A.Y. Chayanov's views, Evans argues that peasants are involved in subsistence agriculture mainly for their own households, not for exchange. Therefore, the peasant society does not automatically develop the degree of accumulation necessary to spark a capitalist economy. He calls this special type of economy a "natural economy". To explain how Laos has been able to maintain such a high degree of subsistence agriculture along with their traditional way of life, Evans points to the extraordinary geography and history of Laos. The difficult terrain has always limited trade and communication routes, with many villages becoming impassable in the wet season. The inaccessibility of the outside world during these times encouraged self-reliant communities. That the French were never able to centralize enough power to extract a surplus from its colony in Laos shows the extent of Lao's decentralization and independence. Those most affected by the French colonization were the highland groups, the H'mong, who were forced to pay taxes in the form of opium. After Lao independence from the French (1953) the elite in the countrY became dependent on U.S. aid, funnelled into the country by the millions. Evans states that, "U.S. AID's (Agency for International Development) gradual usurpation of governmental responsibilities and division of the country into military regions during the civil war created a peculiar dispersal of state power."(p.35) The foreign dependence unintentionally ensured that the elite would not concentrate on centralizing power. A mid-1960s increase in migration from Thailand and elsewhere, weakened traditional agricultural cooperation. The migrants provided cheap labor and created a nonlandowning group. Additionally, the war created a massive refugee movement which further disturbed the countryside. Yet even with these disturbances, when the socialist Pathet Lao came to power in 1975, they inherited a dependent elite in the capital (Vietiane) and a very decentralized former administration. There was no entrenched capitalist class common in other revolutionary settings. With the cessation of U.S. foreign aid following the socialist victory, the elite class quickly collapsed or emigrated. The Pathet Lao were faced with the grand task of reviving a country that had undergone more bombings than had all countries combined during World War II. The Pathet Lao instituted a collectivization program in an attempt to provide a surplus for industrialization. However, unlike the Chinese or Pol Pot's Kampuchea collectivization campaigns, coercion was not involved. Also unlike those neighbors, the Laos government was never able to make the collective a major form of farming. The family farm persevered. Besides the lack of prior land concentration, Evans cites many reasons for the failure of collectives. There were virtually no economic gains for the peasant family in joining a cooperative. Evans' research shows that there were more dependents in the cooperatives than in the average family farm, therefore forcing the working members to work harder. The government could not provide enough inputs or well-adapted machines to compensate for increased numbers of consumers, the freeloaders and the loss of labor to supervision. Evans points out that supervision becomes necessary to maintain productivity in an institutionalized system of suspicion. Additionally, the social changes that the cooperative system encouraged did not seem to benefit anyone. Men had little to gain from cooperatives: The somewhat equalizing effects of the cooperative undermined male authority and autonomy. Additionally, they were no longer suppose to claim credit for their family's work. Evans, however, fails to acknowledge any benefit in greater legal equality. This may be due to the fact that legal rights did not readily translate into increased individual prestige for women. In Vietnam and China, where women had no right to land ownership, they had much to gain from cooperatives. But Lao women owned land and by joining a cooperative they would give up their little bit of control to the domination by male cooperative decision-makers. "In Laos, women have some power by virtue of their possession of land and the general practice of matrilocal residence. Their ability to dispossess their husbands through divorce tempers male tyrannical tendencies, and the fact that the husband often moves into a situation where his wife's relatives and friends attenuate his social and political commands over her." (p.131) Also, the point system by which the family's work was figured discriminated against women by allotting more
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