Marxism & Agrarian Issues
Although Karl Marx's economic and political thought focused on industrial capitalism creating the conditions for a socialist society that abolished social classes and freed workers from exploitation, agricultural issues held an important place as well. In their writings in the late 19th and early 20th century, Marx and V.I. Lenin, who led the Russian Revolution of 1917 that ushered in communism, wrote about agrarian issues and their place in Marxist and communist thought.
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Marx's Theories
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For early Marxist thinkers, the agrarian question centered on political rather than economic issues, according to the Centre for Social Anthropology at the University of Kent in England. Specifically, Marx and his followers wondered if the peasant farmers of the time would ally themselves with industrial workers in a revolution to abolish capitalism, or if they would offer armed resistance, delaying the achievement of a socialist system. In the third volume of his work, "Das Kapital," Marx speculated that peasant farming was not fully compatible with the development of industrial capitalism and that it would not survive in the long run. Over time, he argued, poverty would drive peasant farmers into the ranks of the industrial workers.
Lenin's Theories
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Lenin applied Marx's ideas to Russian agrarian society. Lenin took Marx's ideas about agrarian issues further in his book, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." Lenin studied peasant farmers and landlords in Russia, a predominantly agricultural country in his time, and found continuous domination by landlords. Like Marx, Lenin agreed that peasant agriculture was not compatible with the development of industrial capitalism. Unlike Marx, Lenin saw a growing peasant class as fostering development of commercial farming through production of new farming implements and increasing personal consumption.
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Significance
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Lenin also saw a political alliance between peasant farmers and industrial workers as necessary, given the small size of Russia's industrial worker class. Further, Russian Marxist thinkers believed that agriculture could provide resources to finance national industrial growth, according to the Centre for Social Anthropology at Kent.
Effects
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Lenin and other Marxist and socialist thinkers saw agriculture following a pattern of capitalist development similar to that in industry. In his work, Lenin identified three strata in Russia's agrarian society: the wealthy peasants, or kulaks; the middle peasants; and the poor peasants. He contended that kulaks were becoming a wealthy capitalist class, buying up land and hiring poor peasants to farm it. The middle peasants, meanwhile, were being squeezed out of existence into the poor as the agrarian economy developed.
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