Sociology and Space, No. 105-106, 1989.
Original scientific paper
Agriculture as a Source of Accumulation
Slobodan Pokrajac
Abstract
It is increasingly obvious that
agriculture is a source of
accumulation, especially iin less
developed countries. However,
disagreements arise when
agricultural accumulation is
invested: should it be invested back
into agriculture or into some
non-agricultural activity.
At the begining of her postwar
socialist development Yugoslavia,
an agricultural and peasant country,
had to turn to industry which means
that agricultural accumulation had
to be turned towards industrial
development. Noneconomic ways
were used to draw accumulation
out of the private agricultural
sector (the dominant one).
Regardless of its characteristics of
»economic Machiavellism«, the
author considers this process a
positive one but asks himself
whether this kind of strategy and
political development should have
lasted so long.
The selection of the specific
mechanisms of appropriating and
directing agricultural accumulation
is a different methodological
problem and is not only a matter of
economics, but of politics, as well.
The author also questions the
economic status of agricultural
accumulation. Today agriculture has
lost its position of the main source
of accumulation. But, is
accumulation still leaving
agriculture or has the »return of the
debt« to agriculture begun, which
means that some other accumulation
is now being directed towards
agriculture?
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
121934
URI
Publication date:
20.7.1989.
Visits: 1.016 *