Concentration and Centralization of Capital in Agriculture

The concentration and centralization of capital is one of the fundamental general tendencies of the capitalist mode of production. This tendency applies, in Marx's view, to the agricultural as well as the industrial sector.' In Lenin's words: "The fundamental and principal trend of capitalism is the displacement of small-scale production by large-scale production, both in industry and in agriculture." There seems to be no question about the realization of this tendency in the industrial sectors of modern mature capitalist economies. However, the same economies have not experienced such a rapid substitution of small-scale by large-scale production in their agricultural sectors. Although "where capitalist agriculture in the strict sense has been able to develop in the pure state, the tendency towards concentration and centralization of capital has clearly shown itself in agriculture," it appears that "there have been no obvious manifestations of centralization in agriculture." A similar view is expressed by the writers of Political Economy of Capitalism at the Moscow Institute of Marxism-Leninism: