POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AGRICULTURE 23 its aim. We are uncertain about many things, but we think we are sure of one point : the small peasants can only be mobilised in a struggle for their immediate demands. When such a struggle becomes successful, a strong small-peasant organisation can be built which can fight, together with the agricultural workers, for a more fundamental and more revolutionary demand : land to the tiller ! 3S From this table and from this analysis it may appear as if the small farmers are more exploited and economically more depressed than the agricultural labourers. But here we are dealing only with the agricultural production system. If the total economic system of Thaiyur is taken into account we find that there is first of all a great overlap between the categories agricultural labourers and small farmers. Second, the agricultural labourers are also heavily indebted and exploited through usury. And third, both groups are heavily exploited as salt-field workers. All in all, small farmers are somewhat better off than agricultural labourers-cum-salt-field workers. 38 The role of the commercial sector is more important in salt production and in the supply of consumer goods to the panchayat. 87 This table builds upon a rather scanty material of estimates and assumptions. The figures contained in it should not be regarded as precise but rather as indicators of an underlying pattern which, we believe, is rather reliably brought out in the table. 38 This trend is an equivalent to the concentration and centralisation of capital within industry, commerce, and banking. 39 For an excellent treatment of this phenomenon see Utsa Patnaik, "Development of Capitalism in Agriculture", Social Scientist, No 3, October 1972, New Delhi, pp3-17. 40 See Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India .* Agricultural Labour in the Madras Presidency During the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1965, p 84. 41 "Erscheinungsform" is Marx's term. He uses it together with "Wesen", Comparable English terms might be ^perceptual form" and ^essence", 42 This is nothing peculiar to Thaiyur. All existing social structures tend to get legitimated in this way. The best theoretical account for these processes are, according to our view, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality : A Treaties in the Sociology of Knowledge, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, NY, 1968. 43 There are exceptions to this statement. East Tanjore District seems to be one, 44 See for example, Mao Tse-tung, ^Report on an investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol I, People's Publishing House, Peking 1960.