멕시코혁명과 농민의 역할

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to testify the validity of three models of

peasant rebellion (each of which is represented by the work of Eric Wolf,

James Scott, and Samuel Popkin, respectively) against the backdrop of Mexican

Revolution. By extension, the role of the peasantry during the Mexican

Revolution is to be discussed.

I. Theoretical Aspects of Peasant Rebellion

To explain the many agrarian revolutions that have swept across the globe,

social scientists have proposed a number of theories of peasant behavior.

While varing in emphasis and in detail, most of these explanatory efforts

focus on the impact of state building and capitalism in undermining age-old

subsistence guarantees. Although somewhat arbitrary, these explanatory efforts

can be devided into three lines of prominent theoretical traditions.

Structural Analysis: The first powerful line of analysis(represented by the

works of Eric Wolf as well as Barrington Moore Jr., and Jefferey Paige) is

a structural one in which rural uprisings are analyzed primarily as a function

of class coalition and conflicts. Wolf begins his analysis with the impact of

commercial agriculture on peasant social life. This development, in the case

of Britain, France, and the United States, transformed the agrarian society

into a modern industrial one through a "bourgeoise democratic revolution".

Wolf and Moore agreed that the chances of underdeveloped country taking

this route to modernity today are remote. Wolf focuses attention on a third

route: peasant revolution, which has been the most prominent method of

social overhaul in colonial and semi-colonial countries in this century. The

main victims of this transformation of preindustrial into colonial raw material

producing societies were the peasantry. The integrity and equilibrium of rural

communities were shattered by the intrusion of market relationships. So,

according to Wolf, the very spread of the capitalist market principle also

forced men to seek defenses against it. As a consequence, it is precisely when

the peasants can no longer rely on his accustomed institutional context to

reduce his or her risks, but when alternative institutions are either too chaotic

or too restrictive to guarantee a viable commitment to new ways, that the

psychological, economic, social, and political tensions all mount toward peasant

rebellion and involvement in revolution. Wolf also argues that, disposing

Leninist mythology sourrounding the revolutionary role of the landless and

poor peasantry, it is the middle and poor but 'free' peasnats which constitute

the pivotal groupings for peasant uprisings and enjoy tactical mobility of

their revolutionary potential.