Beyond “salaried work”: José de Souza Martins and the discovery of Brazilian peasantry

Abstract

This article consists of a theoretical review of the problem of the peasantry as a social class within capitalism, particularly in Brazil, based on the development of the theme in two works by José de Souza Martins: A comunidade na sociedade de classes (1970), taking into account also its revised version, A imigração e a crise do Brasil agrário (1973), and Cativeiro da Terra (1979). Taking into account the different versions of each work and placing them in their historical context, the aim here is to recover and clarify the process of recognizing the peasantry as a class beyond salaried work, highlighting the category of land rent and, in this regard, the nuances and constitutive differences of the theme within the aforementioned bibliography—a body of work that has now established itself as a fundamental reference for the subject. It is hoped that the review proposed here will provide some important elements to underpin not only the continuation of the debate on the peasantry, but also on new forms of the subjugation of labor by capital.