Peasant Agency and Community Mutual Aid: An Alternative to Capital and Market Dominance

Abstract

Formalist legal and economic theories axiomatically assume the “rational economic man” and the “inevitable optimal resource allocation by perfectly competitive markets,” thereby justifying the ownership of corporate entities by the holders of capital assets. Professional cooperatives, guided by this formalist logic, predominantly serve the interests of capitalized large-scale peasants. In contrast, the organizational practices from mutual aid to comprehensive cooperation during the Chinese revolutionary period reveal an alternative possibility diverging from formalist logic. This alternative centers on community-based rationality of small-scale peasant households, promoting agricultural development by enhancing resource use efficiency through community mutual aid among smallholders to meet their collective production and living needs. This substantivist logic, grounded in mutual aid practices, can also provide direction for integrating small-scale peasant households into large markets in the contemporary context.