Society for the Joint Cultivation of the Land

Society for the Joint Cultivation of the Land 

the simplest form of a production association of peasants.

A society for the joint cultivation of the land is a form of collective farming based on the voluntary socialization of land and labor, while private ownership of the means of production is retained. Only the machines and implements acquired with funds of the association are socialized. Productive livestock and implements owned by the peasants are used communally, with the consent of the owners, only for the duration of the work. The earnings are distributed according to the quantity and quality of the labor invested in the communal economy, the proportion of the means of production made available for communal use, and, sometimes, the number of household members.

Such societies arose in the USSR in the early years of Soviet power. On the eve of the full collectivization of agriculture (1929), they accounted for more than 60 percent of the total number of collective farms. Beginning in the early 1930’s they gradually developed into agricultural artels (kolkhozes), which became the basic and, later, the only form of collective farming.

Similar production cooperatives exist in several other socialist countries, including the Hungarian People’s Republic, the German Democratic Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (See alsoAGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION COOPERATIVE.)