ABSTRACT
After many years of theoretical neglect, the 'agrarian question' has latterly been the subject of considerable scholarly attention and debate. Perhaps the fullest treatment is Byres' authoritative Capitalism from above and capitalism from below: an essay in comparative political economy (1996). As he points out, Karl Kautskv's original work Die Agrarfrage ('The Agrarian Question') published in 1899 only received the imprimatur of a full English language translation nearly a century later, in 1988 (Byres 1996: 37, fn 5). Until then scholars wishing to work with an English language version were forced to turn to Banaji's (1976) 50-page summary of Kautsky's work. 1 In geography, Kautsky came into vogue during the 1980s, by way of rural sociology (Marsden et al. 1996: 363).
