The political economy of credit in American agriculture

The critical sociology of agriculture has often begun with the presupposition, derived from Marxian traditions, that the indebtedness of direct producers is a step in a unilinear process of proletarianization of agricultural production. The current credit crisis is just as often interpreted as another "last gasp" of the family farm. It is hypothesized that the demise of credit-based production is more likely to be followed by rent-based production than by capitalist production in the form of wage labor. A historical cycle is postulated in which tenancy & indebtedness replace one another as dictated by the constraints of the accumulation & legitimation functions. The productive forces unleashed by credit-based production undermine the basis of this social relation of production. Tenancy emerges as an alternative form of "family farming"; however, this unstable form revives political demands for development of renewed credit-based production. Two (nonreformist) reforms are suggested as a means of breaking the domination of agriculture by landed & finance capital. 40 References. HA