POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AGRARIAN CHANGE

Abstract

This article is an abridged version of the book “Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change”. The author believes that to understand the agrarian change in the modern world we need to analyze capitalism as a system of relations between capital and labour, which alters the social character of small-scale farming, generates “subsistence commodification”, and creates not a single class of peasants or family farmers, but rather differentiated classes of small-scale capitalist farmers, petty commodity producers, and wage labour. The author uses Marx’s theory of the capitalist mode of production to make sense of diverse and complex agrarian histories of the modern world, and to propose some “very general themes” of the world-historical career of capitalism instead of simple, ideologically attractive morality tales on peasant world and its transformations. The author presents his interpretations of the concepts “production”, “productivity” and “reproduction” emphasizing the role of active subjects (agents); proposes the general logic of the historical relationships of colonialism and capitalism that determined the large-scale agrarian change on all continents; identifies new forms of the world capitalist system organization under the neo-liberal globalization; highlights the role of resistance against capitalist exploitation and land reforms in the development of modern agriculture.