The Competitive Capacity of the Small-scale Enterprise in Agriculture

Abstract

In his instructive and interesting article published in the last issue of Die Neue Zeit, Comrade David broached a theme which is extremely important, indeed at the present moment one of the most important for our party, in view of the impending conclusion of the labours of the Agrarian Commission.* But the significance of the theme goes even beyond the agrarian sphere. If Comrade David is right we must immediately set to work to remodel our party programme,† for this will have been shown to be based on entirely incorrect foundations. The very first sentence of the programme says: ‘The economic development … leads necessarily to the disappearance of production on a small scale, the principle of which consists in the worker’s owning the means of production’. Comrade David asserts on the contrary that this is only valid for industry; in agriculture the small-scale enterprise is well able to compete with the large-scale one.