Mode de production et systèmes de culture et d'élevage

The author intends to show how the theory of Marx can be used to explain the development of farm production systems. The unequal development which characterizes the economic and social capitalistic system results precisely in an unequal integration of the farms into a market economy and consequently in a unequal access to modern production techniques. In order to remain competitive, or at least to delay their elimination, the small farms underpay their labour which is possible in a family-farm system with a subsistence economy. The big farms, on the contrary, which are solidly integrated in the market economy dispose of the capital necessary to conciliate the use of high productivity techniques and the employment of hired labour. In countries where an agrarian reform has been carried out, for instance in the DRG or in Hungary, the main preoccupation has been the uniform development of the farms and has resulted in a homogenization of the production systems, each farm practising both market and non-market activities.