NEOLIBERAL PROLETARIZATION ALONG THE URBAN-RURAL DIVIDE IN POSTSOCIALIST ROMANIA
NEOLIBERAL PROLETARIZATION ALONG THE URBAN-RURAL DIVIDE IN POSTSOCIALIST ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: Based on five cities and their hinterlands in Romania (Călărași, Cluj-Napoca, Ploiești, Miercurea Ciuc and Târgu-Mureș) I compare actually-existing-socialist and neoliberal capitalist strategies in integrating labour reproduction in the accumulation strategies. The cost and availability of the labour force needed in the circuits of production are strongly dependent on the cost of reproducing labourers. Availability and the costs of the means of subsistence have a major impact on the wage level. The combined income-strategy as partial proletarization (i.e. combining minimum wage with informal resources generated by the household) did not lose its actuality during neoliberal capitalism and is as wildly use as during socialism. Yet the capitalist imperative of accumulation may produce new types of enclosure that run against the benefits of partial proletarization. Intensive agriculture with highly mechanized tools and animal husbandry for industrial purpose, while in need of land, makes redundant important parts of the rural labour force. It is a population that has increasingly less access to combine income strategies, both because the land is integrated in global circuits of agricultural exploitation and because of capital’s hopping strategies from one place to another to exploit reproduction costs differentials without redistributive constraints.

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