10 - Conclusions: The concept of a neo-colonial social formation

Summary

I want now to bring together the threads of the argument in this book in an attempt to develop the concept of a neo-colonial social formation in Sumatra. The aim of such an exercise is to put forward an account of the reproduction and possible transformation of the peasant economy within the wider socio-economic system. This in turn should help us answer some of the thorny questions concerning the causes of underdevelopment in the Indonesian economy as a whole, and in the peasant sector in particular.

The concept of social formation developed in the Althusserian tradition represents an attempt to build a theoretical bridge as it were from the abstract concept of mode of production to concrete situations, particularly those in which capitalist societies seem to incorporate elements of their pre-capitalist roots. The use of the concept, particularly in describing societies on the periphery of world capitalism, remains somewhat problematic and has been subject to a number of criticisms. Writers like Frank and Wallerstein, for example, take issue with any attempt to characterise the societies of the periphery as pre-capitalist when they have long been part of a world-economy. Those writers, like Laclau, Amin and others, who have advocated its use nonetheless appear to agree that apparently pre-capitalist forms are largely a product of capitalism itself, i.e. that they are produced because they are necessary to the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production.