Collective farming: Difference between revisions

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== Pre-20th century history ==
{{main|Communal land|Property|Commons}}
A small group of farming or herding families living together on a jointly managed piece of land is one of the most common living arrangements in all of human history, having co-existed and competed with more individualistic forms of ownership (as well as organized state ownership) since the beginnings of agriculture.
 
Private ownership came to predominate in much of the Western world and is therefore better studied. The process by which Western Europe's communal land and other property became private is a fundamental question behind views of property. [[Karl Marx]] believed that the system he called [[primitive communism]] (joint ownership) was unjustly ended by exploitative means he called [[primitive accumulation]]. By contrast, capitalist thinkers posit that by the [[homestead principle]] whoever is first to work on the land is the rightful owner.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}
 
=== Case studies ===
==== Mexico ====
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== Collectivization under state socialism ==
The Soviet Union introduced collective farming in its constituent [[Republics of the Soviet Union|republic]]s between 1927 and 1933. The [[Baltic states under Soviet rule (1944–1991)|Baltic states]] and most of the [[Eastern Bloc]] (except [[Polish People's Republic|Poland]]) adopted collective farming after [[World War II]], with the accession of [[communist regimes]] to power. In Asia ([[People's Republic of China]], [[North Korea]], [[Laos]], and [[Vietnam]]) the adoption of collective farming was also driven by communist government policies.
 
=== Soviet Union ===
{{main|Collectivization in the Soviet Union|Collectivization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic}}
[[File:Famine en URSS 1933.jpg|thumb|right|[[Soviet famine of 1932–33]]. Areas of most disastrous famine marked with black.]]
[[Leon Trotsky]] and the Opposition bloc had originally advocated a programme of industrialization which also proposed [[agricultural cooperatives]] and the formation of collective farms on a [[volunteering|voluntary]] basis.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kemp |first1=Tom |title=Industrialisation in the Non-Western World |date=14 January 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90133-4 |pages=1–150 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rjWtAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+progressive+tax+left+opposition&pg=PT67 |language=en}}</ref> According to [[Sheila Fitzpatrick]], the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as [[industrialisation]] and [[collectivisation]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |author-link=Sheila Fitzpatrick |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref> Other scholars have argued the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced [[Stalinism|policy of collectivisation]] implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=59}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=195 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rubenstein |first1=Joshua |title=Leon Trotsky : a revolutionary's life |date=2011 |publisher=New Haven : Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13724-8 |page=161 |url=https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization}}</ref>
[[File:Trotskyist Left Opposition-1927.jpg|left|thumb|Trotsky and Left Opposition supported an alternative programme to Stalin which proposed a [[progressive taxation|voluntary tax-based approach]] to collectivization.]]
[[Leon Trotsky]] and the Opposition bloc had originally advocated a programme of industrialization which also proposed [[agricultural cooperatives]] and the formation of collective farms on a [[volunteering|voluntary]] basis.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kemp |first1=Tom |title=Industrialisation in the Non-Western World |date=14 January 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-90133-4 |pages=1–150 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rjWtAgAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+progressive+tax+left+opposition&pg=PT67 |language=en}}</ref> According to Fitzpatrick, the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as [[industrialisation]] and [[collectivisation]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=The Old Man |journal=London Review of Books |date=22 April 2010 |volume=32 |issue=8 |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n08/sheila-fitzpatrick/the-old-man |language=en |issn=0260-9592}}</ref> Other scholars have argued the economic programme of Trotsky differed from the forced [[Stalinism|policy of collectivisation]] implemented by Stalin after 1928 due to the levels of brutality associated with its enforcement.{{sfn|Mandel|1995|p=59}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Daniels |first1=Robert V. |title=The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia |date=1 October 2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |page=195 |isbn=978-0-300-13493-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27JGzAoMLjoC |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rubenstein |first1=Joshua |title=Leon Trotsky : a revolutionary's life |date=2011 |publisher=New Haven : Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-13724-8 |page=161 |url=https://archive.org/details/leontrotskyrevol0000rube/page/160/mode/2up?q=forced+collectivization}}</ref>
 
As part of the [[first five-year plan]], forced collectivization was introduced in the [[Soviet Union]] by [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|general secretary]] [[Joseph Stalin]] in the late 1920s as a way, according to the policies of socialist leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into large-scale collective farms ([[kolkhoz]]y). At the same time, Joseph Stalin argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the ''[[kulak]]s'' (farmland owners).
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Collectivization throughout the [[Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic]] was not aggressively pursued until the early 1960s because of the Soviet leadership's focus on a policy of [[Russification]] of [[Moldovans|Moldavians]] into the Russian way of life{{No source|date=April 2020}}. Much of the collectivization in Moldova had undergone in [[Transnistria]], in [[Chişinău]], the present-day capital city of Moldova. Most of the directors who regulated and conducted the process of collectivization were placed by officials from Moscow.{{No source|date=April 2020}}
 
The efficiency of collective farms in the USSR is debatable. A Soviet article in March 1975 found that 27% of the total value of Soviet agricultural produce was produced by privateprivately farmsfarmed plots despite the fact that they only consisted of less than 1% of arable land (approximately 20 million acres), making them roughly 40 times more efficient than collective farms.<ref>{{cite book | last =Smith | first =Hedrick |title =The Russians | publisher =[[Times Books|Quadrangle/New York Times Book Company]]| location=New York|year =1976 | page=201 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K_poAAAAMAAJ&q=March%201975 |isbn=9780812905212|oclc=1014770553}}</ref> In 1935, the establishment of Personal Subsidiary Farms (LPH) on collective land was allowed- in the range of .25-1 hectare. <ref>{{Citation |title=Подсобное хозяйство |date=2022-12-12 |work=Википедия |url=https://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8F%D0%B9%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE&oldid=127213366 |access-date=2024-06-02 |language=ru}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tarkhanov |first=O |date=2022-01-29 |title=The agricultural sphere of production in the USSR: from the practice of socialism to the farmstead and the market |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.37468/2307-1400-2022-2021-4-38-58 |journal=National Security and Strategic Planning |volume=2021 |issue=4 |pages=38–58 |doi=10.37468/2307-1400-2022-2021-4-38-58 |issn=2307-1400}}</ref> Private cattle ownership existed after 1935, but was severely restricted by decree in 1956. <ref>{{Citation |title=Подсобное хозяйство |date=2022-12-12 |work=Википедия |url=https://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8F%D0%B9%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE&oldid=127213366 |access-date=2024-06-02 |language=ru}}</ref>
 
=== Romania ===
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=== China ===
{{main|People's commune|Production brigade|Production team (China)}}
At the end of the [[Land Reform Movement (China)|Land Reform movement]], individual families in China owned the land they farmed, paid taxes as households, and sold grain at prices set by the state.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Harrell |first=Stevan |title=An Ecological History of Modern China |date=2023 |publisher=[[University of Washington Press]] |isbn=978-0-295-75171-9 |location=Seattle}}</ref>{{Rp|page=109}} the [[People's Republic of China]] experienced an era of collectivization. Rural collectivization began soon after the CCP announced its 1953 "general line for the transition to socialism.".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Lin |first=Chun |url= |title=The Transformation of Chinese Socialism |date=2006 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8223-3785-0 |location=Durham [N.C.] |pages=78–79 |oclc=63178961}}</ref> Over the next six years, collectivization took several incrementally progressing forms: mutual aid groups, primitive cooperatives, and people's communes.<ref name=":1" /> As London School of Economics and Political Science Professor Lin Chun notes, researchers agree that communization proceeded on a largely voluntary basis that avoided both the violence and sabotage that occurred during the Soviet collectivization.<ref name=":1" /> Like Professor [[Barry Naughton]], she observes that China's collectivization proceeded smoothly in part because, unlike the Soviet experience, a network of state institutions already existed in the countryside.<ref name=":1" /> Similarly, Professor Edward Friedman describes China's collectivization process as a "miracle of miracles.".<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/956466048 |title=The transition to socialism in China |date=1982 |publisher=Routledge |others=Mark Selden, Victor D. Lippit, Association for Asian Studies. Meeting |isbn=978-1-315-62791-5 |location=Abingdon, Oxon |pages=205 |oclc=956466048}}</ref>
 
During 1954–1955, farmers in many areas began pooling their land, capital resources, and labor into beginning-level agricultural producers' cooperatives (''chuji nongye hezuoshe'').<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=109}} In the complex system of beginning-level agricultural producers' cooperatives, farmers received a share of the harvest based on a combination of how much labor and how much land they contributed to the cooperative.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|pages=109–110}}
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By June 1956, over 60% of rural households had been collectivized into higher-level agricultural producers' cooperatives (''gaoji nongye hezuoshe''), a structure that was similar to Soviet collective farmering via ''kolkhozy''.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} In these cooperatives, tens of households pooled land and draft animals.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} Adult members of the cooperative were credited with work points based on how much labor they had provided at which tasks.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} At the end of the year, the collective deducted taxes and fixed-price sales to the state, and the cooperative retained seed for the next year as well as some investment and welfare funds.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} The collective then distributed to the households the remainder of the harvest and some of the money received from sales to the state.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} The distribution was based partly on work points accrued by the adult members of a household, and partly at a standard rate by age and sex.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=110}} These cooperatives also lent small amounts of land back to households individually on which the households could grow crops to consume directly or sell at market.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|pages=110–111}} Apart from the large-scale communization during the Great Leap Forward, higher-level agricultural producers' collective were generally the dominant form of rural collectivization in China.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=111}}
 
During [[The Great Leap Forward]], the [[Mao Zedong]]-led Communist Party rapidly convert the [[Economy of China|Chinese economy]] to a socialist society through rapid industrialization and large scale collectivization.<ref>[https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/mao-and-great-leap-forwardf] {{Dead link|date=July 2019|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}</ref> Later, the country was hit by massive floods and droughts. This, combined with the usage of severely flawed policies of [[Lysenkoism]] and the [[Four Pests Campaign]], caused "[[The Great Chinese Famine]] of 1959," where nearly 30 million people died of hunger. The party officially blamed floods and droughts for the famine; however, it was clear to the party members at the party meetings that famine was caused mostly by their own policies.<ref>Sue Williams "China: A Century of Revolution. Part 2", 1994</ref> Recent studies also demonstrate that it was career incentives within the politburo system as well as political radicalism that led to the great famine.<ref>Kung, James Kai-Sing, and Shuo Chen. "The tragedy of the nomenklatura: Career incentives and political radicalism during China's Great Leap famine.". American Political Science Review 105, no. 1 (2011): 27-45.</ref>
 
Collectivization of land via the commune system facilitated China's rapid industrialization through the state's control of food production and procurement.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |title=CPC Futures The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics |date=2022 |publisher=[[National University of Singapore Press]] |isbn=978-981-18-5206-0 |editor-last1=Pieke |editor-first1=Frank N |location=Singapore |pages=55 |doi=10.56159/eai.52060 |oclc=1354535847 |editor-last2=Hofman |editor-first2=Bert |doi-access=free}}</ref> This allowed the state to accelerate the process of [[capital accumulation]], ultimately laying the successful foundation of physical and [[human capital]] for the economic growth of China's [[reform and opening up]].<ref name=":12" /> During the early and middle 1950s, collectivization was an important factor in the major change in [[History of agriculture in China|Chinese agriculture]] during that period, the dramatic increase in irrigated land.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=111}} For example, collectivization was a factor that contributed to the introduction of [[Double-cropping|double cropping]] in the south, a labor-intensive process which greatly increased agricultural yields.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=116}}
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Both land reform movement and collectivization largely left in place the social systems in the [[Ethnic minorities in China|ethnic minority group]] areas of Chinese [[Central Asia]] and [[Zomia]].<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=118}} These areas generally underwent collectivization in the form of agricultural producers' cooperatives during winter of 1957 through 1958, having skipped the small peasant landholder stage that had followed land reform elsewhere in China.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=122}} Central Tibet was under the joint administration of the [[People's Liberation Army]] and the Dalai Lama's theocracy until 1959, and consequently did not experience land reform or collectivization until 1960 in agricultural areas and 1966 in pastoral areas.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=119}}
 
After the [[death of Mao Zedong]], [[Deng Xiaoping]] reformed the collective farming method. From this time, nearly all Chinese crops began to blossom, not just grain. The reform included the removal of land from rich land owners for use of agricultural land for peasants, but not ownership. This policy increased production and helped reverse the effects of The Great Leap Forward. The two main reasons why China succeeded was because 1) the government chose to make gradual changes, which kept the monopoly of the [[Chinese Communist Party]] and 2) because the reform process began from the bottom and later expanded to the top. Throughout the reform process, the Communist Party reacted positively to the bottom-up reform initiatives that emerged from the rural population. Deng Xiaoping described the reform process as, "fording the river by feeling for the stones"." This statement refers to the Chinese people who called for the reforms they wanted, by "placing the stones at his feet" and he would then just approve the reforms the people wanted. The peasants started their own "household responsibility system" apart from the government. After Chinese trade was privately deemed successful, all Deng had to do was approve its legalization. This increased competition between farmers domestically and internationally, meaning the low wage working class began to be known worldwide, increasing the Chinese FDI.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hoover.org/research/how-china-won-and-russia-lost?_sm_au_=iVVk5Rjq7ZW33QN6|title=How China Won and Russia Lost|website=hoover.org|access-date=27 March 2018}}</ref>
 
A 2017 study found that Chinese peasants slaughtered massive numbers of draft animals as a response to collectivization, as this would allow them to keep the meat and hide, and not transfer the draft animals to the collectives.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Chen|first1=Shuo|last2=Lan|first2=Xiaohuan|date=2017|title=There Will Be Killing: Collectivization and Death of Draft Animals|journal=American Economic Journal: Applied Economics|language=en|volume=9|issue=4|pages=58–77|doi=10.1257/app.20160247|issn=1945-7782|doi-access=free}}</ref> The study estimates that "the animal loss during the movement was 12 to 15 percent, or 7.4-9.5 million dead. Grain output dropped by 7 percent due to lower animal inputs and lower productivity."<ref name=":0" />
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=== India ===
In Indian villages a single field (normally a plot of three to five acres) may be farmed collectively by the villagers, who each offer labour as a devotional offering, possibly for one or two days per cropping season. The resulting crop belongs to no one individual, and is used as an offering. The labour input is the offering of the peasant in their role as priests. The wealth generated by the sale of the produce belongs to the Gods and hence is [[Apauruṣeyā|Apaurusheya]] or impersonal. ''Shrambhakti'' (labour contributed as devotional offering) is the key instrument for generation of internal resources. The benefits of the harvest are most often redistributed in the village for common good as well as individual need – not as loan or charity, but as divine grace (''prasad''). The recipient is under no obligation to repay it and no interest need be paid on such gifts.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}}
Also Farmer interest groups are seen in the states of Assam and Tamil Nadu
 
=== Israel ===
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In the 2021 [[Telugu cinema|Telugu film]] ''[[Sreekaram]]'', the main protagonist encourages people for a community farming.
 
The 1929 Soviet film ''[[The General Line]]'' features Martha and a group of peasants organizing a kolkhoz. The film began production as a promotion of the [[Trotskyism|TrotskyiteTrotskyist]] [[Left Opposition]] viewpoint on collectivization. After the [[rise of Joseph Stalin]] and expulsion of his rival [[Leon Trotsky]], it was heavily re-edited into the pro-[[Stalinism|Stalinist]] film ''The Old and the New''.
 
The 1930 Soviet Ukrainian film [[Earth (1930 film)|''Earth'']] features a peasant encouraging his village in the [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic]] to embrace collectivization, which they do after he is killed by [[kulak]]s.