ABSTRACT
In most capitalist countries, the development of industrial capitalism did actually oust the buyer-up and the putting-out system, but it did not lead to the formation of capitalist agriculture. An agrarian economy of small- and medium-scale farm holdings was formed, with large capitalist agrarian enterprises being the only exception. Lenin celebrated Karl Kautsky's analysis as a major breakthrough in Marxist theory, providing the following arguments: Kautsky's book is the most important event in present-day economic literature since the third volume of Capital. Kautsky concurs with Marx's analysis that large-scale capitalist cultivation possesses clear competitive advantages over small-scale cultivation. Agrarian reform is put forward by an already dominant bourgeois strategy, as capitalism prevails in the non-agrarian sectors of the economy and shapes a corresponding capitalist state apparatus. Capitalist relations are 'positively articulated' with the form of simple commodity production, which enables small- and medium-scale agrarian production to be easily embedded in capitalism.
