Lenin described The Agrarian Question as the first systematic Marxist study of capitalism and agriculture and the most important event in economic literature since the third volume of Capital. This great work is regarded as Kautsky's main achievement and is a classic work of analysis.Kautsky's pariah status in the eyes of revolutionary Marxists resulted in many years of neglect, but his role and work are now commanding great attention. The analysis of the transformation of peasant economies by capital in The Agrarian Question is now seen as particularly relevant to contemporary Third World peasant economies.This remarkable translation, which brings out the humanity - and the humour - in Kautksy's writing, is more than a work of economic analysis: in a manner ahead of his time, Kautsky integrates questions of political strategy, ecology, sexuality and the family.The illuminating reassessment of The Agrarian Question in the introduction by Professor Teodor Shanin and Hamza Alavi examines in detail the political context, Kautsky's own life, the development of Kautsky's ideas within the work, and its contribution to our understanding of the world

This volume collects some of Lenin's most important writings on the topic of the agrarian question, offering a Marxist analysis of the relationship between land, labor, and capital in pre-revolutionary Russia. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A survey of the main influences on the development of modern development economics.

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 of 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.he 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.