ABSTRACT
The collective farm has been the dominant form of rural organization in the socialist countries. Agricultural collectives are viewed as vehicles through which the peasants' consciousness may be transformed without waiting to be absorbed into modern sector employment. Most administratively planned economies have placed high accumulation rates at the centre of their economic programme, and it is thought that collective agriculture can raise the rural accumulation rate compared to its performance under private farming. By transferring the disposal of agricultural output from individual peasants to government-supervised collective farm managements, collectivization destroys the basis for peasants' resistance to the 'siphoning off of the economic surplus. The labour supervision problem in farms with large numbers of workers is resolved if workers are strongly self-motivated out of a commitment to the collective project. Some poor economies have been successful at rapidly improving rural 'basic needs' provision without establishing collective farms.
