Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance

by James C Scott

  The social construction of sewa tunai by a few large landlords is that it puts an end to a system that allowed tenants to avoid the consequences of their own carelessness by cheating their well-meaning landlords. The social construction of sewa tunai on the part of most others is that it puts an end to an arrangement in which the landlord showed a due regard for the circumstances and needs of his tenants.31

  COMBINE-HARVESTERS

  Mesin makan kerja (“the machine eats work”)

  Several villagers

  We have examined in some detail the consequences of combine-harvesting that are amenable to statistical analysis. Many of the “facts” of the matter—the loss of direct harvest work, the loss of gleaning, the extent of lost income, the strata that have been most directly touched—are established with some assurance. Here I turn to the social construction of these facts by the inhabitants of Sedaka. At the crudest level, there are at least two social histories of the entry of combineharvesters: one propagated by winners and one propagated by losers. The winners and losers, in this case, are not tenants and landlords but rather large-scale cultivators (whether owners or tenants) on the one hand and smaller-scale cultivators together with landless laborers on the other. In between lies a strata of modest farmers whose gains and losses are roughly offsetting and whose view is therefore ambivalent.32 Size of farm is, of course, a fairly reliable indicator of income in Sedaka, so that winners and losers correspond closely to the rich and [Page 155] the poor. Their respective social histories of the combines are an integral part of class conflict as it is in fact waged in the kampung.

  Certain social facts about combine-harvesters are so apparent and indisputable that they are acknowledged by all concerned. These facts make up something of a zone of consensus. At the core of this consensus is the fact that the poor, who depended on harvest labor, have been hurt and that the well-to-do have benefited. How great the hurt, how substantial the benefit-the magnitudesis another matter altogether, but the overall impact is not in dispute. As Abu Hassan, who has a steady job with the Farmers’ Association and farms 6 relong notes, “Since the machine came in, those peasants who work for wages have just sat around.”33 Tok Kasim, also fairly well-to-do himself, adds, “It’s certain that the poor have lost.” Most often when talking of machine harvesting, the wellto-do are less reticent about acknowledging the losses of the poor than their own gains. For poorer villagers, it is typically the combine-harvester that brings to their lips the saying, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” In the process they often make it clear that the machines bring the rich pleasure as well as profit. Hamzah, a landless laborer, makes it clear just where the dividing line between pleasure and pain fell and which side he is on: “The friends who work for wages couldn’t get enough [work] but those who don’t earn wages were happy.”34 Even in the joint recognition of social facts, there is thus a special twist to the remarks of the poor, who are likely to link their losses to the profits of others, their pain to the pleasure of others.

  When it comes to how efficient and profitable the machines are, we enter a zone of claims and counterclaims that divide the rich and poor. The claims of the well-off are essentially a series of assertions about the advantages of machine harvesting over hand harvesting. The large farmers note, above all, the speed with which the combine gathers and bags the crop. They believe that their harvest per relong is increased by anywhere from one to two gunny sacks of paddy over hand harvesting, and they note the savings in labor and cash over having to haul rice from the field to a nearby bund. This last operation often costs as much as one or two dollars a sack, thereby raising the cost of production appreciably.35 Large cultivators such as Haji Jaafar, the village headman, continually [Page 156] calculate the monetary advantages of machine harvesting as compared with hiring labor. Not counting the elements of speed and reduced spoilage, they estimate that they save anywhere from M$18 to $30 a relong-depending on the season, the location of the field, the yield, and so forth-by hiring the combine.

  Machine use has at least two additional advantages, one of which is mentioned frequently while the other is, significantly, never noted openly by the well-todo. Large farmers are pleased to be relieved of the management and supervision problems involved in recruiting harvest labor. This not only includes arranging for a group of reapers and threshers at the right time, when others may want them too, but also overseeing the threshing to make certain that it is thorough and providing meals and snacks for the work force. Hiring the combine-harvester not only saves labor and expense; it also eliminates a task that is complicated and liable to come unstuck at any moment.36 The wage laborers in Sedaka point out another factor that they claim motivates the large farmers to mechanize. Machines, Karim pointedly notes, do not ask for wages in advance nor do they expect to receive Islamic charity (zakat peribadi) over and above their wages. This is a point on which the well-to-do are silent-perhaps because it would reflect a callous attitude toward time-honored customs now being breached. In any event, it is clear that most large cultivators have moved with alacrity from a harvesting system that enmeshed them in a series of customary social ties and obligations to their poorer neighbors to one in which only a single, impersonal contract with a machine broker is necessary. Others, particularly those who have most to lose, contest some if not all of these advantages and cite other drawbacks of machine use. The fact most often contested is that yields are greater with the combine. A low-keyed dispute that once took place between Mat “halus,” a landless laborer, and Ghazali, a tenant on 9 relong, is fairly representative of many other such discussions. Mat “halus” claimed that the combine-harvester often missed rows close to the bund and flattened the paddy at the point where it entered the field. Furthermore, he said, the machine often jams and spills paddy when it is turning or when its bin is full. As the inventor of gleaning behind the machine, Mat “halus” is something of an expert in this area. Ghazali politely disagrees; he says he gets at least an extra gunny sack when he uses the combine and that, in any case, his neighbor’s son, who hand threshed for him last season, spilled much paddy from the tub and left a great deal of grain on the stalks.

  In other ways as well, the poor attempt to prove that, apart from the ethics involved, the use of combine-harvesters is not in the self-interest of cultivators. They claim, with some justice, that the huge machines create deep ruts, par [Page 157] ticularly during the irrigated season harvest when the fields are wet, which are difficult to smooth out before planting again. They cite the destruction of bunds as the machines pass from one plot to another and the inconvenience of having to coordinate planting times in order to ensure that the combine will have a route through cleared fields to any parcel that is not beside an access road. Large farmers are, with few exceptions, unmoved by this litany of disadvantages; they have made their decision and are satisfied with the results.

  The richer peasants in Sedaka would, however, be loath to admit that they had in effect taken away a major part of the livelihood of poorer villagers merely because the machine was more convenient and saved them a few dollars. To do so would be to announce openly that their own marginal private advantage was paramount and to disavow openly any responsibility for the welfare of the rest of their community. Having acknowledged, as virtually all have, that the combine-harvester has meant economic hardship for the poor, the larger farmers are at pains to present a description of their behavior that justifies it in terms that their neighbors can understand if not accept. They endeavor to do this by asserting that there is a labor shortage and they have no choice but to use the combine-harvester if they are to harvest their paddy in good time. This is their second and more substantial line of social defense; practicality gives way to necessity. It is, as we shall see, a line of defense that is under constant sniper fire from the poor but is in no danger of being abandoned.

  The concept of a labor shortage is tricky. At one level it simply means that some people are paying more for labor than they would like to p
ay. If labor were more abundant, its wage would decline. At another level-a more objective level-it could certainly be claimed that a labor shortage existed if paddy rotted in the fields for want of harvest workers. Not even the rich make this claim, for even before the combines came to the Muda region, but after double-cropping, the paddy crop was successfully gotten in. Their assertion instead is the more modest but no less insistent one that labor is short, hence too expensive, and that their crops are endangered if they rely on fieldhands. Thus Haji Jaafar, the village headman, and his brother Lazim, who farms 13.5 relong, explain that before combine-harvesting the village poor would often leave to thresh paddy elsewhere if the wages were higher than in Sedaka. The ripe paddy, they claim, was harvested late and was lighter than it should have been, thereby reducing the price it would fetch. “The cultivator lost,” Lazim adds. Tok Kasim echoes these sentiments. He claims that at the last minute he would be short of both reapers and threshers, who did not show up, and would have to raise wages to recruit extra hands. Even then, he says, his crop was late. Mat Isa, a tenant on 5 relong who hires the combine, says he would prefer to hire workers from the kampung but he has no choice. He is especially concerned abut the irrigated season harvest, which will sprout (padi tumbuh) if not threshed promptly, and recalls that two seasons ago some of his paddy was ruined in this way. The government drying mill would only give him half price for it. He admits that [Page 158] villagers have lost work to the machine but adds that, if it were not for the combines, laborers would relax and not work fulltime because their earnings would be so high.

  The facts of the matter are of less concern here than the argument that larger farmers are making on their own behalf. Like any public explanation of class behavior, it has a certain plausibility. Labor was tight in Muda at the peak harvest season even before double-cropping. Migrant labor from Thailand and Kelantan regularly supplemented the local work force. With irrigation, wages did initially rise nearly twofold, but between 1972 and 1974 the real wages of harvest workers actually declined.37 And there is no evidence that crop damage due to labor shortages was a serious problem from 1972 until combines became available.38 What the large-scale users of combines wish to assert is that their hands are tied, that if they do not hire machines they will lose part or all of their crop. Once accepted, this assertion justifies their behavior, for no one in Sedaka would blame a farmer for using combines if that was the only way to save his crop.

  Those who depend heavily on field labor for their income see little merit in this claim. Rokiah, who works regularly as a transplanter and a reaper, says, “If they didn’t want to hire the machine they could hire villagers; there are enough looking for work.” Another woman, Rosni, a widow widely admired for her hard work, believes that those who hire the combine are “only interested in speed,” implying, as do others, that large farmers are willing to sacrifice the welfare of the village poor for the sake of cutting their paddy two or three days early. It is clear to the wage workers in the village that the rich use the combine out of a desire for convenience and speed, not out of necessity.

  If we scratch a bit deeper we find that, as the rich see it, the labor shortage in Sedaka is not just an impersonal statistic of too much work and not enough hands to do it. Instead, it is a question of whether the poor actually want to work. Haji Salim (three wives, tractor, lorry, and many relong of paddy fields) is a typical representative of this view. After conceding that “the poor just barely manage,” that “they have no luxuries,”39 he hastens to add that they will not do the work. “They’re sluggards;40 they don’t want to work; they’re well-off [sol [Page 159] they won’t [work].” “Some of them didn’t even have a broken-down bicycle in the old days; now they have a motorcycle.”41 Fadzil, an UMNO leader with 8.5 relong, shares this view. “Villagers don’t come for work, they say they have a fever, that it’s raining, [but] they’re lazy, they go to eat cake in the coffee shops or quit early to go to the market for fish.” “That’s how our paddy is ruined.” “They are more or less lazy; they have 2 or 3 relong themselves and don’t much want to work.” “But the machine is certain and fast.” When this perspective is added to the assertion of a labor shortage, the combine users appear to be without blame altogether. They are not simply increasing their profits but are saving their paddy crops, which are threatened by the shiftlessness of local workers. No Victorian entrepreneur could have wished for a more satisfactory exoneration of his own behavior.

  This outlook, it is worth noting, receives ample support and encouragement from the ranks of officialdom. Abdul Majid, the subdistrict chief (penghulu), claims that villagers do not want to work. “People say they are arrogant, they decline,42 they won’t even show up unless the wages are high.” “If the wages are high, then only do they want [to work}.” “Villagers are difficult.”43 The only difference between his view and that of Fadzil or Haji Salim is that he talks, from his exalted post, more globally of villagers in general (orang kampung), failing to make any distinctions. He concludes by comparing these intractable villagers with the combine-harvester, which he says is “fast, cheap, and doesn’t have to be fed.” At the annual meeting of the Farmers’ Association membership from Sedaka and adjacent Sungai Tongkang-comprised almost exclusively of prosperous farmers-much the same sentiments were expressed. They were put bluntly and publicly by Ismail Arshad, the UMNO member of Parliament for this constituency and a member of a princely Kedah family. “People don’t want to work for wages as they once did.” “They work only in the morning and then pull out and go back home.”44 Basir, Sedaka’s UMNO leader, concurs heartily. “People like that are hard to keep watch on; they climb up coconut trees [to escape work); you can’t believe them.” The officials and their well-off supporters [Page 160] see eye-to-eye on this issue: on the one hand, there are wage workers who are, or have become, lazy, truculent, and untrustworthy; on the other hand, there is the perfect worker, a combine-harvester, which is economical, reliable, and fast.

  The well-to-do in Sedaka, while granting the loss of wage work, are unlikely to dramatize the damage. As Hamid notes, there are not many in the kampung who depend on wages alone for their income. It is hardly surprising that those who have borne the brunt of mechanization should speak with less equanimity. When they recount the precipitous decline in their earnings over the past three years, a frantic tone is apt to enter their assessment. Rokiah speaks for most of them when she says, “People can’t make any money if the machine comes and takes it all.” “The rich get more profit and the poor lose.” “You can’t even lay your hands on ten cents.” “It’s no use looking for work; now there’s nothing at all.”45 Hamzah puts the matter more succinctly: “We are being ruined.” Mat “halus” rounds out this apocalyptic view: “[Since] the machine came in, what are the Malays going to eat?” “The machine can now take it all.” It is not, of course, a question of starvation, as Mat “halus” ‘s rhetoric implies. It is instead a choice between a life of permanent penury in the village or the alternative, for the young, of permanent or semipermanent migration. The growing tendency for large farmers to broadcast some or all of their fields, thus eliminating transplanting, only serves to make the sense of foreboding that much more palpable.46

  Just as substantial farmers see the “labor shortage” as a human problem rather than as a statistic, the poor see the introduction of combine-harvesters as a human problem rather than as machinery. If the rich think the poor are largely to blame for labor problems, the poor think the rich are largely to blame for mechanization. On the face of it, others might plausibly be held responsible for the combines: for example, the government, which has encouraged their use, and the syndicates of largely Chinese businessmen, who purchase and deploy them. The overwhelming consensus among the village poor, however, is that the cultivators who hire them are to blame. When I asked if MADA was at fault, Mat “halus” promply replied, “Not the government but kampung people; it is they who call and use the machines.” “If they refused to use them, the ma
chines wouldn’t have come.” “How could they even pay for the gas?” “It’s as [Page 161] if the machines were asking for alms and we gave [them alms].” When Rokiah talks about the inroads the combine has made into her reaping wages, she says that people in Sedaka “had no compassion”47 when they chose to use the combine. Comments along similar lines are frequently heard; thus, when Karim supposes that the rich prefer the combines because they thereby avoid paying advance wages and zakat to workers, he concludes, “Rich people don’t bother themselves [about us].”48 The calculus of blame, on this issue as on most others, finds a target quite close to home. It is not, I suspect, that poor villagers hold either the government or the syndicates blameless for their suffering. It is rather that large cultivators are, after all, within moral reach; they are a part of the community and therefore ought not to be indifferent to the consequences of their acts for their neighbors.

  Much of the same calculus appears to be at work in the praise given to those cultivators who continued to hire local labor even after the combines became available. Altogether there are seven or eight farmers who are often singled out as examples of “compassion,” as “good people.”49 The effect of this praise is to turn these men into positive symbolic examples, just as Haji Broom and Razak were used as negative examples. What is being said here is that, if other cultivators had due consideration for their fellow villagers, they would behave in the same way.

  This modest propaganda offensive seems to have had little impact on the sensibilities of the rich unless, of course, one reads a certain defensiveness into their elaborate justification of combine-harvesting. The one exception is Tok Kasim, who is clearly at pains to justify his work as a combine broker-as someone who lines up a local harvesting schedule for his Chinese employer in return for a fee of M$5 per relong.50 He is, in effect, the agent for the combine owner and is well aware of the contempt in which some of his poorer neighbors [Page 162] hold him. “They say I’m wrong,”51 he declares, “but the landowner orders me to summon the machine.” “If I didn’t do it, someone else would.” “I have to make a living too.”52 Tok Kasim is clearly squirming here; he simultaneously holds that he is “just following orders” and that someone has to do the job (why not he?). The signs of embarrassment seem obvious.53