Collective Farms and Communes

Collective farms and communes have been the dominant forms of agricultural production unit in the Soviet Union since the 1930’s, and in Eastern Europe and China since the 1950’s. Collective and cooperative farms and agricultural communes are also found scattered throughout the “First” and “Third” Worlds. Although for lack of true workers’ control most collective farms fail to satisfy the full definition of self-managed enterprise or producers’ cooperative, their income-sharing procedures lend themselves to analysis in the framework of PC models. This factor, plus their importance to the overall performance of the socialist economies, has led to the development of an important sub-literature on collective farms and communes.