Classes as Clients of the State: Landlords and Labourers in Andalusia

In: Comparative studies in society and history, Band 35, Heft 1, S. 159-182

Abstract

This is a study of landlordism, agricultural labourers, and the State of Andalusia in southern Spain. This region, a classical case of landlordism, deviates from the typically West European agrarian structure dominated by the family farm. Andalusia's history centers on the conflict over land between a majority of landless peasants and a minority of powerful landlords, which was one of the main causes of the Spanish civil war. This study deals with two periods covering nearly fifty years of this latifundist system and its conflictridden relations of production. It examines the freezing of the agrarian structure for nearly forty years by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the adaptation of social and agrarian policy for the next ten years by the socialists. In other words, this is the story of how the agricultural laborers of Andalusia were transformed in less than one-half century from "peasants without land" to "clients of the welfare state" dependent on the social policies of the state.