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The economic bases of

demographic reproduction:
From the domestic mode of
production to wage‐earning
a
Claude Meillassoux
a
Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS), 13e Circonscription
Languedoc‐Roussillon, Montpellier, France

Version of record first published: 05 Feb 2008.

To cite this article: Claude Meillassoux (1983): The economic bases of

demographic reproduction: From the domestic mode of production to
wage‐earning, Journal of Peasant Studies, 11:1, 50-61

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 The Economic Bases of Demographic
Reproduction: From the Domestic Mode
of Production to Wage-Earning
Claude Meillassoux*
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This article investigates the changes affecting demographic repro-

duction of population of peasant origin when they shift from self-
sustenance to market economy and wage-earning. It shows how in
the domestic mode of production, the birth-rate and the survival of
the pre-productive generation until the age of production are depen-
dent on the labourproductivity of subsistence agriculture and on the
techniques of conservation of crops, and how social reproduction is
governed by the mode of distribution of the surplus-product. The loss
of control of the communities over their grain reserves, and their pro-
gressive integration into the market economy and wage-earning,
change the conditions of demographic reproduction, which comes to
depend on money income, prices of subsistence, market supply, level
of employment etc. These circumstances and the concomitant in-
security favour both a burst of natality as a means of social security
and the survival of the younger generations for longer periods; and
they accentuate the demographic effects of famines or unemployment.
Hence the dramatic consequences of the monetary policy implemented
in the dependent countries on the physiological conditions of the
proletarianised rural populations.

The object of this paper is to point out the main features of the processes of
production and distribution of the goods necessary for demographic repro-
duction in domestic societies and the effect of the interruption of these
processes when subsistence agriculture is drawn into a market economy.1
My contention is that demographic reproduction in self-sustaining societies
with low agricultural productivity is subordinate to the agricultural produc-
tive capacity of the active adults and the implementation of techniques of food
storage.
Evaluation of production and, hence, of production, must be considered,
consequently, not within an annual or hourly period, as classical economics
generally does, but on a life-basis.
It is a matter of observation that the reproduction of a social group never
reaches the maximum level of fecundity of the women; that is, the number

* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), 13e Circonscription Languedoc-

Roussillon, Montpellier, France.
 Economic Bases of Demographic Reproduction 51
of children a woman could bear during her puberty.2 Various factors, either
material or 'moral' (political or social) always intervene to lower the levels
of demographic reproduction below the levels of fecundity. These factors,
however, vary and have different effects according to the modes of production
referred to.

1. POLITICS OF DOMESTIC REPRODUCTION

The domestic agricultural society that we discuss as a starting point is based
on a 'self-sustaining economy': that is, producing the necessities of life from
materials directly within reach, without resorting to commercial exchanges
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and with no other source of energy than human strength. Its means of pro-
duction are manual or individual tools and the relations of production are
expressed institutionally as kinship relations along which circulate the sub-
sistence and the seeds necessary for the reproduction of the agricultural cycle.
Reproduction of the domestic unit depends on its organic composition, that
is, on the relation established between its members, on the level of production
as well as that of consumption. A certain ratio must be kept between indivi-
duals at two levels: at the level of production, between the productive and the
unproductive; at the level of reproduction, by the number of pubescent women
compared to the whole group.
Now the number of individuals usually constituting the domestic com-
munity in this mode of production is too low for the operation of the law of
large numbers to balance these ratios. Sex and age are subject to the random-
ness of fecundity and differential mortality with no other possible correction
than a policy aimed at re-establishing the proportions necessary for the per-
petuation of the group. Between productive and unproductive elements, the
actual ratio as observed in domestic units is, in social practice, comparably
stable [Meiltossoux in Seddon, 1978:159-171]. This is the result of a revamping
of the relationship of filiation, the effects of biological reproduction being
permanently corrected by shifting children from one segment to another (and
even more so as the size of these segments decreases); eventually by the
adoption of foreigners, the introduction of sons-in-law without bride-wealth
or the integration of prisoners or captives.
At the reproductive level, the maintenance of a satisfactory number of
pubescent women is also the object of 'policies', either warlike (abduction)
or peaceful (circulation of wives). Indeed one observes two kinds of filiation,
according to the way wives are acquired. Either the progeny of the woman
is affiliated with her own family unit, or with her husband's family. In the
first case (gynaecostatic and matrilinear) the reproduction of the group is pro-
portional at all times to the number of pubescent women born in that group in
each generation. If there is a decrease in the number of pubescent women from
one generation to the next, the reproduction of the group is compromised.
The only possible means of correction is the introduction of foreign women.
But if, as we assume, the group practises gynaecostatism along with all the
other groups with which it is in relation, the addition of women can only be
brought about by abduction and violence. Societies subject to this mode of
 52 The Journal of Peasant Studies
reproduction are bound to be unstable and violent while young men (who are
also producers) are in constant danger of their life by being engaged in con-
tinuous murderous wars.
To this rigid system of regulation of demographic reproduction, with its
accompanying violence, is opposed one by which women circulate between
communities belonging to the same matrimonial area on the bases of immedi-
ate or, more often, deferred reciprocity. A larger number of pubescent women is
thus available for a larger group of marriageable men which allows for a better
distribution of the former. By means of promises and/or early betrothal, a
community short of nubile women can acquire them from another community
if it pledges to reserve for this community one or several of its own girls or
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even an unborn child for the time when the family which offers a girl now
will need later a bride for one of its men.
It is by the use of bridewealth and/or sheer memorization that the deferred
bilateral exchange becomes multilateral, and is bound to involve any
neighbouring communities that adopt the same matrimonial standards. In this
system (gynaecomobile and patrilinear), by virtue of the rule of exogamy, the
pubescent women are married outside of their group, for which they are
destined not to procreate. Their progeny are acquired by the husband's
community.
Thus demographic reproduction is the result of steps, undertakings and
deals aimed at bringing into the community women in requisite number and
age for its renewal.
The sophisticated matrimonial organization of these societies, combined
with the institutional manipulations of the relations of filiation, represent the
means of a policy of economic and social reproduction, the object of which
is the subordination of natural reproduction to social reproduction.

2. SUBSISTENCE BASES OF DEMOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTION

If the preceding gives the general framework of the interventions which
regularize demographic movement, it remains the object of material con-
straints tied to the capacities and techniques of production, as well as to the
modes of distribution of subsistence.
In a society with low labour productivity like the domestic society which
only uses manual and individual agricultural tools, reproduction of generations
relies on the capacities of the producers to provide a surplus product which
can feed the unproductive until they reach, in their turn, the age of producing.
Since the level of productivity of the domestic economy is low, the number
of young unproductive individuals that can be bred by a producer during his
active period of life is limited. For lack of precise information on the agri-
cultural production of an adult as well as on the consumption of individuals
according to age and sex, this number is not established with precision.
Diverging opinions exist among ethnologists, statisticians and dieticians on
the level of food consumption actual and/or necessary for individuals; Neither
are there statistical data at the domestic level, sufficient and consistent enough,
 Economic Bases of Demographic Reproduction 53
on the yearly variations of production, which would allow one to calculate
the average individual production over a long period of time. If one keeps,
for example, to the production and consumption of millet of the African
population of the Sahel, on the basis of the production of good years and
according to the level of consumption given by those concerned, it would seem
that a male adult producer produces enough during his active life (between
the ages of 15 to 45) to bring up to the age of 15 years about nine children.
This does not take into account infant mortality whatever the causes, and in
particular it does not take into account the effects of dearth. Knowing that
only the men cultivate cereals in the observed region, one ascertains that the
number does not exceed the maximum level of fecundity of one woman.3 In
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other words, in the domestic economy, where there is no other means of

aquiring food, the agricultural capacities of subsistence set, more than the
natural fecundity of the women, the absolute upper limits of demographic
reproduction. If productivity lessens, growth slows down or stops.
The other economic factor that intervenes in the level of demographic
reproduction is the variation of subsistence production from year to year. It
is one of the characteristics of agriculture in general to have very different
yields from one year to the next depending upon the climatic conditions and,
sometimes, cataclysms (grasshoppers, pestilence, etc.) which can reduce or
even stop agricultural production for several years. In a first theoretical
hypothesis, where no storage is possible, and where the survival of a part of
the population would thus be jeopardized whenever production lessens, the
economic level of reproduction would be set by the level of subsistence pro-
duction of the worst year of period A of growth of the new generation. If,
according to a second hypothesis, the community is capable of storing the
surplus product of the good years, mortality will be situated at a lower level,
defined by the relationship between the capacity of storage and the longest
duration of the supply deficit. If the capacity of stockpiling is equal to this
duration, the level of demographic reproduction is maintained at the level of
average production. In all cases, the levels of mortality and reproduction are
closely associated with the production capacities of the community (or com-
munities sharing their products). At the domestic level, demographic repro-
duction is thus related to current production of food. There cannot be on
average more children in each generation than can be fed by the producers
of the preceding generation. It does not seem that a positive or negative
variation of demographic movement can take place that is not the effect of
a lasting modification of the conditions of food production. Increase in the
productivity of agricultural labour necessarily precedes any demographic
growth.

3. INTER-GENERATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF SURPLUS-PRODUCT

In a self-sustaining domestic economy, distribution is carried out between
generations according to the pattern of circulation related to the constraints
of agriculture. The output of agricultural labour is delayed through time from
 54 The Journal of Peasant Studies
the moment of cultivation to that of cropping. Given that agricultural activities
are carried out by parties of several individuals, these individuals have a vested
interest in remaining with each other throughout the productive cycle in order
to benefit jointly from their productive labour. Furthermore, the agricultural
cycle being interrupted by an off-season, the starting of the next seasonal cycle
depends on the access to the surplus-product of the previous season, in order
to feed the people during the off-season and the workers during the next un-
productive cultural period and also to supply the seeds of the next crop. In
this continuously renewed cycle, there is a continuous change in the member-
ship of the working-team over time: the older ones retiring while younger
workers are coming in. At each season the members of the working party owe
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their capacity to work and the seeds to the members of the previous seasonal
party. Over time it amounts to a change of generations whereby the elderly
members 'advance' the subsistence and the seeds to the junior members and
whereby the oldest in the cycle are creditors to the younger generations while
they owe nothing to anyone but to the dead ancestors (whom they come to
represent) while the younger generation are indebted to them.
Hence, continuously renewed compulsory bonds are created between
generations on the bases of the constraints of agricultural production. These
relations are the essence of kinship; they are life-lasting, they create a hierarchy
of anteriority and authority and a leadership of the elders; they are eventually
constructed into an ideology (kinship; ancestors cult) whose moral strength
persists beyond the existence of its material support.
The inter-generational circulation of subsistence is not only the condition
of reproduction of the agricultural cycle, but also of the life cycle of its
members. Through it, the pre-productive members of the community are bred
and fed until the age of production. In relation to the productive cycle, each
individual is going through three phases: the pre-productive period while one
is fed without producing the equivalent of one's consumption; the productive
period, when the surplus-product of the producer is above individual con-
sumption; and the post-productive phase. While the pre-productive period
depends on the older generation during phase a and the post-productive people
depend on their younger generation during phase c, the active members of
the community are supplying both the pre- and post-productive ones during
period b, as well as themselves (see Figure 1).
This can also be expressed by a simple formula by which a portion xaA
of the surplus-product (j8-a) of the active individuals is allocated to breed
the pre-productive ones and on other portion £ aC to support the post-
producers:
j3B, = xaA10 + aB u + | aC12
in which
(3 = annual production of an active member (in quantity)
a = annual consumption of an individual (Id.)
A = pre-productive period (in years)
 Economic Bases of Demographic Reproduction 55
FIGURE 1
Cal/day
_ £ _ - Production
— — Consumption
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80 Years
B = productive period (in years)
C = post-productive period (in years)
x non-productive members
1 being the generation of the producers
0 that of the pre-producers
2 that of the post-producers
(10) indicates a transfer from generation 1 to 0.
In the long run, the totality of the surplus-product is invested in the im-
mediate reproduction of energy (aB), in the reproduction of the producers
(aA) and for the support of the post-producers (aC). There is no 'surplus',
but 'reserves', meant to offset the bad years and to maintain the community
at a stable level. Surplus-product may bring under these conditions, demo-
graphic growth. One also ascertains that the domestic community guarantees
the support of the unproductive members and acts like an institutional social
security system. The young adults who have reached the age of production
A are the product of an investment by the preceding generation which makes
it possible to put them to work. It is understood, in such a system, that this
investment reverts in part to the post-productives elders who will be fed by
their juniors in their old age. The social agricultural product is thus reinvested
in the support and the formation of individuals (except what is attributed to
the elderly) in the production, mediated by the human being, of human energy.
This energy applied to the means of agricultural production produces in turn
the food necessary for its own reproduction.
In a non-market economy the product has use-value only if consumed, that
is, if used for the maintenance of life. There are no other investments, thus
 56 The Journal of Peasant Studies
no other security than life itself. Departure of young, active adults outside
the community, therefore, corresponds to a loss of accumulated energy about
equivalent to arA for each of them.
Non-agricultural goods, usually products of the off-season and thus in-
capable of entering this energy cycle, are not qualitatively susceptible to being
considered equivalent to subsistence. They usually belong to other spheres and
circulate within distinct spheres without free exchange with each other. Hence
the foreseeable disturbance caused in such a system by the intrusion of a market
relation capable of giving equivalence to goods belonging to qualitatively
different spheres.
The phenomenon of equivalence is observable from the moment when,
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because of its contact with a market economy, trade comes in, although it
does not immediately touch all the products. The effects of trade are discussed
elsewhere [Meillassoux, 1978, 1962, 1971] in its various social implications.
For present purposes, we will stress the more radical effects of colonisation
or its equivalent, as a result of which part of the social product of the com-
munity is put on the market because of measures such as money-taxes, com-
pulsory labour or cash crops. In such cases, two situations, sometimes jointly,
occur: either the community directs a part of its energy towards the production
of commercial agricultural goods, or it diverts a part of its manpower toward
the wage-earning sector. Without going into the details of the successive trans-
formations the community undergoes as a result of these circumstances, one
observes that, on the average, agricultural production of food diminishes and
that monetary income tends to be substituted more and more for self-produced
food (for detailed demonstration see Meillassoux [1981]). In the first case,
income from cash crops or from labour migration tends to concentrate within
the hands of the elders by virtue of the system of circulation described above, as
it persists from the domestic structure. This money may be used as bridewealth
for the purpose of the social reproduction of the community, to bring women
within the group, according to the old rule. But it is also a matter of observation
that the domestic modes of collective labour weaken once money is involved.
Use of seasonal workers, wage relations, leasing, sales of land, share cropping,
social investment, prestigious purchases, develop at the expense of kinship,
affinal and neighbourly relations which underlie domestic production. Indi-
vidualistic behaviour is observed among elders who tend to use the money in-
come for economic production rather than social reproduction of the com-
munity. Tense relations may occur at this stage between elders and juniors
who are driven to settle for themselves in distant rural areas or to migrate to
town. Usually in such cases the elders ensure their security by their control
over nubile girls to whom they refuse education and whom they submit to
superstitious or religious constraints to dissuade them from migrating to town.
As it remains difficult in such societies to marry outside the group of origin,
even in town, the young men are thus compelled to return to their elders to
get wives from within their matrimonial area, but through the delivery of
bridewealth in money. So, the elders regain part of the security which should
have reverted to them, had the young men stayed to work for them.
 Economic Bases of Demographic Reproduction 57
When the community cannot produce or export cash crops, emigration of
the active men is the only means to earn cash. But as soon as their time away
exceeds the duration of the off-season and cuts into the agricultural season,
there is a deficit of food production within the community, and the need arises
to resort to the market to buy the necessary amount. Wages of the urban
migrants tend to be of increasing importance to supply the necessities of the
rural community. The maintenance of the community as a base for retirement
in case of illness, old age or unemployment, drives people to invest in social
expenses meant to maintain the cohesiveness of the community and the rank
of its members within it. This is also what gives to this kind of wage-earner
the capacity to accept lower wages, since the rural domestic community pro-
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vides, in their case, for the cost of reproduction of labour-power. But as the
length of the stays in the city increases under the necessity to find and keep
a job, as the production of subsistence of the community falls concomitantly,
the security offered by the family fails and the migrant workers tend to stay
in town permanently.
However, the rates of wages in the city are such that they apply to the
migrant workers as if they were all relying on their rural community. Since
this is not the case for a growing number of them, they must resort to their
own means of insurance. Besides the 'tontines' and the mutual aid associations
— which are not readily accessible — social security is perceived mostly within
the outlook of the domestic peasant society whence these migrants come: that
is by the generating of a large family, as children are considered (rightly) as
the security of old age:4
Several joint conditions associated with the process of industrialisation,
have favoured this policy. Firstly, we note the creation or the extension of
a subsistence market in the dominated countries, supplied by increasing
imports of staples from countries, like the US, with a high productivity
agriculture. These subsistence goods, comparatively cheap because produced
in better conditions than in the underdeveloped rural areas, and furthermore
often subsidised, can keep wages low enough to promote the forming of higher
profits for industries. Imported grains are therefore in competition with local
staples produced domestically at very low productivity. In such conditions,
the production of subsistence in the domestic sector is maintained only to the
extent that it is the background of kinship and as long as kinship remains a
basis for security. Once the urban worker is severed from his domestic unit,
demography takes a new turn. Population growth depends no longer on
domestic agricultural productivity and on the storage capacity of the com-
munity. It depends on access to cash, on the level of wages, on the duration
of employment, on the price of food, and eventually on the rate of exchange
between the country of the worker and of his employer. Demography is
not dependent any more on local fluctuations of production; it depends on
the continuity of employment, the regularity of wage income, the rate of in-
flation, etc. If employment and wages are steady and if the price of food is
kept in check, mortality is lower and the probability of demographic growth
is higher.
 58 The Journal of Peasant Studies
5. INTERRUPTION OF INTER-GENERATION DOMESTIC INCOME DISTRIBUTION

The temporary or the permanent rural exodus which go along with these
changes make for a double break in the distribution of family income. The
young adult who moves to town from the rural community where he was bred,
carries in himself the amount of energy aA which was invested in him by his
elders who expect in return aC, that is, a quantity of labour energy transformed
in subsistence, to ensure their old age. But, as we know, distance, difficulty
in finding employment, problems encountered in the city, necessity to pay
bridewealth by oneself, the desire to bring up a large family in town or even-
tually to invest in speculative ventures to make up for the lack of security,
all these factors act against the completion of this return. Hence the invest-
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ment of an entire generation in the next may be lost to the benefit of the
industrial sector which employs the rural migrants.
This transfer, although non-materialized, must not be underestimated. It
represents a heavy loss for a community which contains only a few active
members. It is an important gain for the industrial sector which can use the
labour power of innumerable 'ready-made workers' without paying for their
breeding, as it would have to in the industrial countries through taxes or social
security dues. The break of the circulation of subsistence within the domestic
community also brings about the disappearance of family storage. Rural
families have now little or no reserve. Continuing subsistence domestic agri-
culture, whose productivity has not been improved (by contrast with cash crop
agriculture) can only feed part of the rural population and practically none
of the urban population. In the case of a poor harvest, the rural deficit is
immediate and the village population depends fully on aid from outside, in
spite of the fact that it can hardly reach such areas, which are generally poorly
equipped in means of transportation. When inclemency is repeated, as has
been the case in West Africa since 1969 for example, aid is not enough and
mortality is the higher in as much as it has been contained longer through the
substitution of imported food for the fluctuating supply of local agriculture.
Another demographic effect is the degradation of the living conditions of
the rural population, and thus a probable increase of morbidity and a lowering
of life expectancy. One can thus consider that the interruption of transfers
of income between elders and juniors within the domestic community to the
benefit of the industrialized capitalist sector has a double effect: on the one
hand it submits the exiled and urbanized fraction to new conditions of
demographic reproduction which, in a steady economic conjuncture, brings
an increase of population; on the other hand it contributes to depopulation
and a deterioration of the conditions of life in the rural areas.
At the other end of the relation between generations, the investment that
the rural migrant makes in his own urbanized progeny contains the risk, by
the same token, of being without security. The ties of solidarity between
generations that are maintained in the constraining framework of domestic
kinship relations, diminish steadily. The desocialization which is frequently
provoked by the living conditions in the slums, the ever present necessity to
 Economic Bases of Demographic Reproduction 59
sell one's labour at the best price, the absence of security, all act to sever the
young people from their parents.
Several factors work against the perpetuation of a demographic increase
beyond the first generation of rural emigrants. One is the ever-growing cost
of the progeny in relation to the anticipated security invested. This is a com-
mon phenomenon in urbanized societies, upon which we are not going to dwell
here. Let us only note that it happens when there is an interruption of the life-
lasting transfer of income between generations. Lower natality asserts itself
when the transfer is made at the social or national level by retirement funds
or by, for example, national social security. But the decrease in demographic
reproduction can have much more dramatic causes when it is the result of the
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desocialization of the proletarian population, as with the reserves of South

Africa, for instance. When the working conditions of the male adults compel
them to live far from their families for long periods of time, or when they
can only enjoy short stays with their family, the income of the wage-earners
tends to be diverted outside of the conventional family framework towards
uses aimed at immediately attenuating the harshness of their urban living con-
ditions. The instability of income due to unemployment, delinquency, police
harassment, have the effect of interrupting and eventually stopping the transfer
of income towards the wife and children, thus leading the woman to look for
a job and to abandon her children (by entrusting them to a relative, who is
very often incapable of performing the task) in the worst material and moral
conditions. One then observes a decomposition of the family which goes along
with a degradation of the population, both physical (malnutrition, generalized
illegitimacy leading to the abandonment of children or infanticide) and social
(delinquency, illegitimate births by illegitimate adults, creating a generation
of unsocialized, violent and hopeless adults) (see FAO [1979]).
The interruption of the income flow is not any more between adult gener-
ations only, but within the same generation, between spouses, with the result
that it touches the next generation before it reaches the age of production.
The demographic and social consequences of this situation are intensified.

6. CONCLUSION
The examination of the modes of circulation of income in the domestic com-
munity and its transformations or its diversion under the effect of wage-
earning, shows how the organic ties of solidarity among its members, which
had assured in the domestic community a structural reconstitution from
generation to generation, have been broken. A rupture which first provokes
a global economic transfer towards the capitalist sector of a fraction of the
labour-power produced in the domestic sector, which, submitted to the ef-
fect of this tapping, experiences a severe degradation: a rupture which is
perpetuated from generation to generation in the proletarian classes of rural
origin, provoking social decomposition which can only be checked by a public
aid programme. Since this rupture gives rise to a demographic explosion, it
creates in international affairs circles fear of social dissipation, fear of a
 60 The Journal of Peasant Studies
mounting and costly overpopulation, which inspires today the so-called
'monetary' policy imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, the dramatic social effects of which can only result in a severe impair-
ment of the physical and moral conditions of the proletarian population of
underdeveloped countries. The UNICEF report concerning the circumstances
of death caused by illness and malnutrition of 12 million children in the Third
World in 1979 tragically illustrates the effects of this policy.
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NOTES

1. The theoretical background of this article is developed in Meillassoux [1979a, 1979b, 1981]
and in Seddon [1978: 127-158, 159-171, 289-3301.
2. I use 'puberty' as covering the whole duration of a woman's fecund period.
3. According to A. Retel-Laurentin [1974:19]: 'Women who have on the average 7 to 8 children
during their reproductive span have a "satisfactory" fecundity. However, since some have
had more than 20 this fecundity is limited for one reason or another.' The author cites some
biological and social causes, but no economic ones. She adds: 'In Africa, taking into account
the rate of mortality, it is necessary for women to have an average of about 4 surviving children
for the population to increase.'
4. All pension plans are based on the labour of succeeding generations. The difference is that
here the migrant worker relies on his own children, while the insured pensioner is covered
by younger generations at the national level, over which he has had no demographic control.

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