Agriculture

This chapter examines Soviet agriculture, with a notable emphasis on the importance of the private sector consisting in the small plots of the kolkhozniks and later sovkhozniks , showing it was indispensable to the Soviet economy. This shows that the Soviet economy was not completely encompassed by the state, contrary to the claims of various non-Marxist and Marxist theories about the Soviet economy, even theories of ‘state capitalism’. This chapter also shows that Stalin’s policy of so-called ‘collectivisation’ was akin to primitive accumulation of capital. This resulted in agricultural production taking the form of the kolkhozes and the small commodity production of the private plots, which kept Soviet agriculture back and had disastrous consequences not only short term in terms of deaths but also for the Soviet economy’s sustainability in the long term. This chapter also puts forward that one of the long-term consequences of Soviet agriculture’s weakness was that it stopped providing labour-power for industry but kept labour-power tied up in agricultural production, thus amplifying the USSR’s labour shortage and accumulation crisis. The chapter also delves into the class composition of Soviet society, with a working class subjected to wage labour and capital taking private, cooperative, and state forms.