ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the writings of several authors on the nature of the transformation from simple commodity production to capitalist production, focusing on agriculture. It considers Karl Marx's discussion of the position of the simple commodity producer in the economic structure and his views on the simple commodity producers' role in the class struggle. Agriculture, with the application of scientific innovations, is not immune to economic rationalization. Arthur Stinchcombe's focus on property systems as the point of differentiation in rural class structure yields a typology of five property systems of which only two, the family-size tenancy and the family smallholding, are generally found in the Midwestern region under investigation. Marxist analysis often contains, explicitly or implicitly, a teleology concerning the destruction of simple commodity production and the movement of the producers toward a polarized class structure where the capitalist class faces only the proletariat.
