ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the position of land and landownership relations in the development of capitalist agriculture. It is based on research which examined the significance of the growth of institutional landownership in British agriculture. The chapter considers the significance of institutional landownership in terms of a Marxist analysis of the historical development of agricultural production and landownership relations in Britain. K. Marx’s conception of the rent relation presents a considerably more complex picture of the essential contradiction between private property and capital than that of rent as a simple subtraction from surplus profits, with solely negative effects on accumulation. Owner occupation has since grown to become the dominant tenure in British agriculture. Outwardly, owner occupation appears to combine the interests and roles of capitalist and landowner, thereby resolving the contradictions of the rent relation. In fact it has only been transformed through the mechanism of the land market.
