ABSTRACT
In 1899, two remarkable books were published, one in Stuttgart and one in Moscow: The Agrarian Question by Karl Kautsky and The Development of Capitalism in Russia by V.I.Lenin. Although written without the knowledge of the other, both books shared a similar concern. Kautsky expressed this concern thus: ‘is capital, and in what ways is capital, taking hold of agriculture, revolutionizing it, smashing the old forms of production and of poverty and establishing the new forms which must succeed?’ (Kautsky 1980, p. 46). In examining the central processes underpinning the development of capitalist relations of production in agriculture, and thus the development of agriculture in capitalist societies, Kautsky and Lenin together defined an issue known as the ‘agrarian question’. This issue has been a major concern within political economy for a century.
