> I would also dispute that there is anything inherently
> socialist/liberal/progressive about "land reform". As the modern history
> of (e.g.) France shows, what land reform produces, more than anything,
> is a class of small commodity producers dependent on state largesse and
> highly resistant to further "reform".
When was there land reform in France? The French Revolution? Are you saying you're against that? :o)
As for land reform producing a class that is dependent on state largesse and resistant to further reform -- this differs from the class of unreformed landholders exactly how? Or for that matter from non farmers. No class of any kind has ever favored reforms that looked like they would weaken or extinguish it. Have they?
The general argument about land reform being progressive is that it is redistributes power more equally in the countryside. And while it doesn't lead by itself to political democracy, if you do try to set up a political democracy, such redistribution seems like a necessary support -- countries that skip it end up being run by the same old rural oligarchies. What would you say, for example, to the argument that one of the main barriers to Pakistan ever developing a real democracy was that it never undertook the sort of Zamindar reforms that India undertook in its comparable northern territories in 1952?
Michael