Agricultural commune

Last updated

An agricultural commune is a commune based on agricultural labor. It is usually differentiated from other forms of collective agriculture by near-complete collective ownership of capital assets and collective consumption of the products of agriculture.

Contents

Karl Marx

In his 1881 letter to Vera Zasulich, Karl Marx wrote that historically the "agricultural commune" is the most recent type of archaic forms of societies. Marx wrote that the following features distinguish the agricultural commune from more archaic forms of commune. [1]

Marx regarded the ideal agricultural commune as utopian and not practical in the society of his time or the foreseeable future. [2]

Agricultural communes in the Soviet Union

The "agricultural commune" or "agricommune" (Russian : Сельскохозяйственная коммуна, сельхозкоммуна) was a form of agricultural cooperation in the early Soviet Union. They began to form spontaneously following the 1917 revolution but had their roots in much older Russian traditions of communal life in agricultural settings. The agricultural communes of the 1920s were often religious in nature, either explicitly (as was common in the North Caucasus) or strongly influenced by non-conformist and sectarian religion. [2]

The commune was the most collectivist of the agricultural structures to appear following the revolution. In agricultural communes, land and tools were communal property and the product was distributed per capita ("per mouth"). Often, the commune would house and feed its members, sometimes caring for their children communally. The commune typically had near-complete collective ownership of its capital assets, compared to other collective organisations operating at the time. [2]

Revolutionary intellectuals had often favoured the formation of agricultural communes around the time of the revolution, seeing them as the embodiment of the rural ideal, but the Bolsheviks (who were initially not strictly opposed to private ownership and later were more concerned with solidifying State control and supporting industrialisation) never favoured them. As Soviet thought came to be more strictly controlled by the Bolsheviks, agricultural communes fell from favour. The commune where collective consumption went alongside collective ownership and production was also difficult to reconcile with the need to feed a fast-growing urban population as the Soviets pursued rapid industrialisation. [2] With the forced state collectivisation programme beginning in the late 1920s, the agricultural communes were transformed into kolkhozes, collective on paper but in practice having many of the characteristics of state-owned enterprises. [3]

Agricultural communes in non-Soviet societies

Agricultural communes have been formed in many societies. The reasons for their formation vary with the time and place and include the pursuit of religious ideals, utopianism and practical necessity. Many were formed in the USA in the 19th century, with some of these surviving into the 1960s; the kibbutzim of modern Israel are also based in agricultural communism, [2] though many have since diversified away from agriculture.

Related Research Articles

Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element. Socialism is traditionally placed on the left-wing of the political spectrum. Different types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

<i>The State and Revolution</i> 1917 book by Vladimir Lenin

The State and Revolution (1917) is a book by Vladimir Lenin describing the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intentional community</span> Planned, socially-cohesive, residential community

An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision, and typically share responsibilities and property. This way of life is sometimes characterized as an "alternative lifestyle". Intentional communities can be seen as social experiments or communal experiments. The multitude of intentional communities includes collective households, cohousing communities, coliving, ecovillages, monasteries, survivalist retreats, kibbutzim, hutterites, ashrams, and housing cooperatives.

Obshchina or mir, or selskoye obshchestvo, were peasant village communities as opposed to individual farmsteads, or khutors, in Imperial Russia. The term derives from the word obshchiy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stolypin reform</span> Anti-radicalist changes to agrarian society in 1910s Russia

The Stolypin agrarian reforms were a series of changes to Imperial Russia's agricultural sector instituted during the tenure of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin. Most, if not all, of these reforms were based on recommendations from a committee known as the "Needs of Agricultural Industry Special Conference," which was held in Russia between 1901 and 1903 during the tenure of Minister of Finance Sergei Witte.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vera Zasulich</span> Russian revolutionary (1851–1919)

Vera Ivanovna Zasulich was a Russian socialist activist, Menshevik writer and revolutionary.

The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core theoretical values of common ownership of wealth, economic enterprise, and property. Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism, a theory and method conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the 19th century. Marxism subsequently gained a widespread following across much of Europe and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of failed revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced the Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society.

The Life and Labor Commune was a Tolstoyan agricultural commune founded in 1921 and disbanded as a state run collective farm on January 1, 1939. The commune was founded near Moscow but was later resettled in central Siberia, not far from Novokuznetsk. At its peak, it reportedly had as many as 1,000 participants. Throughout its existence the members of the commune were persecuted by the Bolsheviks, both for refusing to enlist or support their war efforts as well as for organizing themselves communally outside of the approved state structure.

Communism is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.

During the 1920s, Soviet urban planning ideologies established along two competing lines: the urbanist and disurbanist schools. Whilst the proposed form of the city differed between the two ideologies, their visions of social organization for communal living overlapped.

State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or to a communist society. State socialism was first theorised by Ferdinand Lassalle. It advocates a planned economy controlled by the state in which all industries and natural resources are state-owned.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgi Plekhanov</span> Russian philosopher (1856–1918)

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary, philosopher and Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist". Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia. Plekhanov is known as the "father of Russian Marxism".

Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and organizational self-management of enterprises as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism. Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole. There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them, but social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary, how far society should intervene, and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective farming</span> Type of agricultural organization

Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective, and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kolkhoz</span> Type of agricultural cooperative in the Soviet Union

A kolkhoz was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917, as an antithesis both to the feudal structure of impoverished serfdom and aristocratic landlords and to individual or family farming.

Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused, and traditional. Governments and political parties seeking agrarian socialist policies have existed throughout the world, in regions including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Africa.

In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utopian socialism</span> Political theory concerned with imagined socialist societies

Utopian socialism is the term often used to describe the first current of modern socialism and socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet, and Robert Owen. Utopian socialism is often described as the presentation of visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, with positive ideals being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Later socialists and critics of utopian socialism viewed utopian socialism as not being grounded in actual material conditions of existing society. These visions of ideal societies competed with revolutionary and social democratic movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">House-commune</span>

A house-commune was an architectural and social movement in early Soviet Union of 1920–1930s. The purpose of the house-communes was to get rid of "the yoke of the household economy".

The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution along with the changes that it brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847-48 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed scientific socialism. In the last third of the 19th century parties dedicated to Democratic socialism arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.

References

  1. Karl Marx, First Draft of Letter To Vera Zasulich Archived January 5, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Wesson, Robert (1962-04-01). "The Soviet Communes". Soviet Studies. 13 (4): 341–361. Retrieved 2022-08-30.
  3. Article "Коммуна, сельскохозяйственная" "Large Encyclopedic Dictionary", Moscow, Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian)