Capitalism and Agriculture

Abstract

The political experts seem to be unanimously agreed that the farm vote is one of the great unknowns in the political equation of 1956. Hence the spate of talk about "the farm problem" which has recently filled the press, the airwaves, and the halls of Congress. Hence, also, the frenetic competition among the politicos to come forward with new proposals to rescue "the farmer" from a fate akin to, if not worse than, bankruptcy. But in more sophisticated circles, it is no longer fashionable to indulge in such naive oversimplifications or to assume that government agricultural programs reach the segments of our rural population which are really in distress today. There has recently emerged a considerable body of literature on agriculture which is addressed not so much to the specialist as to what may be called the thinking element in the ruling class.

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