The Collectivised Peasantry

Abstract

The progressive incorporation of the peasantry within the framework and functioning of industrial society has induced trends common to both East and West: the rural exodus, the expansion of part-time farming, the development of a more capital-intensive agriculture markedly influenced by science and technology and the rise in rural living standards. In the neo-capitalist economies the impact and consequences of this progressive incorporation have varied markedly according to the status of the different socio-economic groups that make up the rural-farm population. As noted, the process has tended to strengthen the position of the middle and large family farmer and to alter the status of the small family farmer to that of a part-time operator. In the East, by contrast, the effect of the process has been to change, and change with great frequency, the status of the rural-farm population as a whole.