ABSTRACT
In the context of planned economies Ellman's recent estimate of the agricultural surplus mobilised during the Soviet First Five Year Plan shows that while there may have been a positive agricultural surplus during this period, it was clearly not a major source of financing industrial accumulation [Ellman, 1975], A similar estimate by Ishikawa for China indicates that the agricultural surplus was actually negative during the 1950s [Ishikawa, 1967]. Some of these studies would suggest that the whole question of the role of the agricultural surplus in strategies of socialist transformation may have to be re-examined in the light of recent empirical evidence. Our principal concern in this article, however, is with the role of agriculture in processes of industrialisation under capitalism. From this point of view it would be interesting to examine whether agriculture was indeed a major source of primitive accumulation, as suggested by development theory, for the first industrial revolution in England and for industrialisation elsewhere in Western Europe. Although the question has been often addressed, actual quantitative estimates of the surplus moblised from agriculture are not easily traceable.3 Such estimates are available, however, for some Asian economies, in particular India and Japan, which now allow us to say something about the role of the agricultural surplus in actual historical cases of industrialisation under capitalism.4
