Is There an Agrarian Question in the 21st Century?

Abstract

This paper first explores the lineages and applications of the “classic” agrarian question, including its fateful adaptation in the early Soviet Union, as the agrarian question of capital. It then argues that the agrarian question of capital has been superseded in the current period of globalization. There are no longer classes of predatory pre-capitalist landed property of any major weight, nor is it useful to regard today's small farmers as “peasants” in any inherited historical sense. Struggles over land may manifest an agrarian question of (increasingly fragmented) classes of labour, but—for all their importance—do not have the same systemic (or world-historical) significance as the agrarian question of capital once had.

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