Landowner tenancy policies deliberately fragmented the Po valley workforce

Evidence

Even in recent times, however, the existence of an acute problem of the agricultural labourers in the Po valley was partly due to extra-economic causes: 1. over-population, which did not find an outlet in emigration as in the South, and was artificially maintained through the policy of public works; 2. policy of the landowners, who did not wish to consolidate the working population into a single class of agricultural labourers and share-croppers [mezzadri ]; they alternated sharecropping with leaseholding, utilising this alternation in order to bring about a better selection of privileged sharecroppers who would be their allies: in every congress of landowners from the Po region, there was always a discussion on whether sharecropping or direct tenancy was more advantageous, and it was clear that the choice was made for motives of a socio-political character. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 468

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Directly parallels the divide-and-rule mechanisms Gramsci describes for leadership in 2—this is a concrete instance of paternalistic division of the ruled.
• DEEPTHINKING: Shows a socioeconomic condition (pauperism) being produced deliberately—not by economics but by class strategy choosing tenancy arrangements for their divisive political effects. Dense mechanism of manufactured fragmentation.