General Knowledge
What kinds of peasants does the term, 'peasant economy' refer to?
A) Poor peasants
B) Rich peasants
C) Middle peasants
D) Landless labourers
C) Middle peasants
Where was Karl Marx born?
Germany
Who gave countering views to Chayanov on the future of agriculture in Russia at the time?
V.I. Lenin
According to Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, there are three periods/ types of agriculture, chronologically starting with?
Shifting cultivation
Which of these key Marxian propositions is false?
A) Rural society is not homogenous but unequal: there are class contradictions and conflicts of interests
B) Capitalist relations of production and commodity production are decreasing everywhere
C) Relationships of exploitation: appropriations of rents, debt, surplus value, market
B) Capitalist relations of production and commodity production are decreasing everywhere
Name two scientists, as given in the lecture that have built (some of) their work on the work of Chayanov.
J.M. Mariategu, T. Shanin, J. Martinez- Alier, V. Toledo, J.C.Scott, R. McM. Netting, E. Boserup, H. Friedmann
Give three characteristics of the middle peasant family farm.
Farm as unit of both production/consumption-> centrality of family labor
Privately owned fields
Partially self-sufficient(enough land)-> market as opportunity (not as dependence)
Division of labour (gender, age) but low level of specialisation and labour intensive
Not hiring labour (or little) and limited capital -> often temporray enrolment in wage labor
Ceremonial expenses (e.g. in life-cycle)
What are the four key questions in the Marxian political economy tradition?
1) Who owns what?
2) Who does what?
3) Who gets what?
4) What do they do with it?
Name the two key Chayanovian balances of the family farm.
Labor/consumer balance
Utility/drudgery balance
What does the term 'axe right' refer to?
This is when productive investment creates ownership in many ‘traditional’ peasant economies.
According to Bernstein there are three "problematics" that comprise the contemporary understanding of the classical agrarian question. What are those three "problematics?"
the effects of the deployment of capitalism into the
rural sphere (‘production’)
–the role of agriculture in capitalist industrialisation (‘accumulation’)
–the role of agrarian classes in the struggle for
democracy and socialism (‘politics’)
Fill in the blank of this statement made by Chayanov (1925):
“Among the [many] differences in the farm’s organizational plan, the most basic one which determines the whole character of the farm’s structure is ___________________________–the development of commodity production in it”
the degree to which the farm is linked with the market
What do all six lines of research on the Agrarian Question have in common?
A focus on the dynamic relations between classes, locally, nationally and internationally.
Name three key Marxian propositions as summarized in the lecture.
What does the balance of scale and intensity refer to?
Scale refers to the number of labour objects (units of land, animals, etc.) per unit of labour force. Intensity refers to the production per object of labour. In an international comparison Hayami and Ruttan (1985) argue that there are two contrasting ways to increase incomes in agriculture. These are intensification and scale enlargement (although, of course, all kind of combinations and intermediate positions are possible).