The Agrarian Question in Marx and His Successors, Vol. I

Contents: Introduction/Utsa Patnaik. I. The primitive accumulation of capital: 1. The secret of primitive accumulation/Karl Marx. 2. Expropriation of the agricultural population from the land/Karl Marx. 3. Bloody legislation against the expropriated, from the end of the 15 the century. Forcing down of wages by acts of parliament/Karl Marx. 4. Genesis of the capitalist farmer/Karl Marx. 5. Reaction of the agricultural revolution on industry. Creation of the home-market for industrial capital/Karl Marx. 6. Pre-capitalist relationships/Karl Marx. II. The theory of ground rent: 7. Differential rent: general remarks/Karl Marx. 8. First form of differential rent (differential rent I)/Karl Marx. 9. Second form of differential rent (differential rent II)/Karl Marx. 10. Absolute ground-rent/Karl Marx. 11. Building site rent. Rent in mining. Price of land/Karl Marx. 12. Ricardo's Denial of absolute rent--a result of his error in the theory of value/Karl Marx. 13. The inadequacy of the Ricardian definition of rent/Karl Marx. 14. Ricardo's criticism of Adam Smith's and Malthus's views on rent/Karl Marx. 15. Richard Jones/Karl Marx. III. The development of capitalist relations in agriculture: 16. The capitalist character of modern agriculture/Karl Kautsky. 17. Large and small farms/Karl Kautsky. 18. Review (of Kautsky's Die Agrafrage)/V.I. Lenin. 19. Capitalism in agriculture (Kautsky's book and Mr. Bulgakov's article)/V.I. Lenin. Index.

"Modern economic writings do not possess a correct theory of rent arising specifically from ownership of landed property. This conceptual famine has seriously affected the analysis of agriculture in developing economies, where agriculture employs two-thirds of the work force, and where three-fifths of the land is owned by less than a tenth of the landowners. It also hampers us in understanding the agrarian crisis that is engulfing many countries the Third World.

The selection of readings put together in this volume is in three parts. The first part deals with Marx's writings on pre-capitalist relationships, and that aspect of the primitive accumulation of capital which relates to the formation of a propertyless labour force. The second part is devoted to the Marxist theory of rent, in particular to understanding the crucial distinction made by Marx between what he termed 'absolute ground rent', and Ricardo's concept, which he termed 'differential rent'. The third part relates to the process of capitalist development in agriculture and the formation of a class of capitalist producers.

The editor's erudite and lucid introduction lays out the terrain of the argument and makes Marx's theory of rent more accessible and comprehensible to the lay reader." (jacket)