¹ For a broad, historical synthesis of the processes involved in modernization, see Black, C. E., The Dynamics of Modernization (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).Google Scholar

² See, inter alia, Harrington, Michael, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962)Google Scholar, and Rural Poverty in the United States (Washington, D.C.: The President's National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty, 1968).Google Scholar

³ The orthodox view assumes that rural areas and peoples are left behind in the process. See International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of Venezuela (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1961), esp. Chap. 9.Google Scholar For an effective presentation of the Marxist view, which holds that rural impoverishment results, not from being bypassed by capitalism, but from being exploited by it, see Frank, Andrew Gunder, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), especially Part IV, ‘Capitalism and the Myth of Feudalism in Brazilian Agriculture’.Google Scholar

⁴ An elegant statement of this proposition is found in Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven; Yale University Press, 1968), in particular pp. 72–8 and Chaps. 6 and 7.Google Scholar

⁵ A prime example of this type of recent analysis is Consejo de Rural, Bienstar, Present Status and Possibilities of Agricultural Development in Venezuela (Caracas: Consejo de Bienstar Rural, 1967).Google Scholar

⁶ Tuma, Elias H., Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform: A Comparative Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965).Google Scholar

⁷ Tuma, Elias H., Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform, p. 167.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid., p. 173.

⁹ Ibid., p. 176.

¹⁰ Friedmann, John, Venezuela: From Doctrine to Dialogue (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965), p. 5.Google Scholar

¹¹ For evidence of this dissatisfaction, see Powell, John Duncan, ‘The Politics of Agrarian Reform in Venezuela: History, System and Process’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1966, Chaps. I–III.Google Scholar

¹² Coutsoumaris, George, ‘Policy Objectives in Latin American Land Reform, With Special Reference to Venezuela’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn 1962), 25–40.Google Scholar

¹³ Tuma, , Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform, p. 184.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Suffrage was universal, that is, for Venezuelan citizens over eighteen years of age.

¹⁵ These and other details in this essay are amplified in my book, Political Mobilization of the Venezuelan Peasant (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

¹⁶ ‘The exception has been when the government followed an extreme policy of abstaining from intervention, as in England, or controlling the land system completely, as in Soviet Russia. In the former case, the result was the entrenchment of private ownership; in the latter, its total destruction’. Tuma, , Twenty-Six Centuries of Agrarian Reform, p. 198.Google Scholar

¹⁷ This is one of the central findings of the exhaustive and meticulously conducted evaluation study of the Venezuelan agrarian reform carried out jointly by the Comite Inter-Americano de Desarrollo Agricola (CIDA) and the Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo (CENDES) of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. The study took three years to complete (1965–8); so far, only preliminary publications have been circulated by CIDA under a series entitled Trabajos de Investigación sobre Tenencia de la Tierra y Reforma Agraria. From all indications, it has been an absolutely first-rate example of social science research.

¹⁸ See Powell, , Political Mobilization of the Venezuelan Peasant, Chap. IX, for a detailed account of these events.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Comité Inter-Americano de Agrfcola, Desarrollo, Trabajos de Investigacidn sobre Tenencia de la Tierra y Reforma Agraria (Washington, D.C.: CIDA, Pan American Union, 1969), Trabajo No. 9, Anexo I, pp. a65–a71 (mimeographed).Google Scholar

²⁰ Inter-American Committee for Agricultural Development, Research Papers on Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform (Washington, D.C.: CIDA, Pan American Union, various years). Research Paper No. 1, 1967, and Research Paper No. 7, 1968 (both mimeographed) are two such case studies, detailing this and other problems.Google Scholar

²¹ The FCV's solution to this impasse is the breaking up of BAP's functions and the creation of two special-purpose lending institutions, a Banco Empresarial for commercial loans, and a Banco de la Reforma Agraria, the purpose of which would be to rehabilitate current peasant debtors and to expand supervised credit programs to all peasant agrarian reform beneficiaries.

²² These alternative means to achieve disposable income have been carefully identified and analyzed in the CIDA studies. The phrase, ‘sharecroppers in reverse’, it appears, was coined by the social anthropologist Charles Erasmus. See ‘Agrarian Reform: A Comparative Study of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mexico’, by Erasmus, Charles, a manuscript mimeographed and circulated by the University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center, 1965, p. 600.Google Scholar

²³ An outstanding treatment of this phenomenon, with extensive evidence from agrarian societies, is Lenski, Gerhard E., Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).Google Scholar

²⁴ See, for example, Lenin, V. I., Theory of the Agrarian Question (New York: International Publishers, 1938)Google Scholar; and for a broader perspective, Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951).Google Scholar

²⁵ For an exploration of the meaning of political community by the great philosopher of democracy, Dewey, John, see The Public and its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927), esp. Chap. V.Google Scholar