What Happened to the Agrarian Bourgeoisie and Rural Proletariat under Monopoly Capitalism?

The classical conception of the development of capitalism in agriculture maintains that, as in industry, the agrarian class-structure will tend to polarize, the petty commodity producer will tend to disappear, and a capitalist relation of production will develop between an agrarian bourgeoisie and a rural proletanat. Farms will be big estates, managed by capitahst farmers, run with machinery and landless labourers. This con ception has proved to be unjustified. The classics of Marxism are discus sed in order to find out the assumptions underlying this conception of agricultural development. The findings are used in a discussion of the prospects of a development in accordance with the classical conception in contemporary peripheral agriculture.