ABSTRACT

Summary To what does the change from high collectivism to contractual collectivism amount to? What manner of beast is this new set of productive relations? Let us first say what it is not, in order to clear the air of simplistic analyses which have been advanced in various quarters. Contractual collectivism is not capitalist: it has not created unadulterated or primary private ownership (although it has expanded it within continuing collective ownership), and it has not separated the producers from the means of production. Nor does it spell the end of collectivism. It is not a return either to feudalism or to a private economy of independent smallholders. Rather, it forms a complex articulation of collective and private elements under reduced but still continuing state regulation.