Peasants

This book represents two great genres of world literature – a kind of propaedeutic ‘ABC of Cooperation’ and a kind of ‘Cooperative Manifesto’. In these insightful works, written and published a hundred years ago, Chayanov presents a fascinating vision of the struggle of the Russian, and international, cooperative movement for a new, just, social world. Chayanov repeatedly mentioned that peasant cooperation had to constantly overcome the element of the capitalist market and the element of state bureaucracy. He argued that the free, vertical cooperation of autonomous economies ‘from below’ was more socially and economically efficient than the horizontal, bureaucratic collectivization ‘from above’. Chayanov considered the world (national) economy not as a single whole, like in the classical, political economy, but as a conglomerate of various economic forms based on different organizational principles. However, he recognized that in the 19th and 20th centuries, capitalism played a leading role in the development of the world economy despite its serious flaws. Chayanov considered the peasant family-cooperative and socialist movements to be the two most important anti-capitalist phenomena. Chayanov's explanation of the necessity of a model of diverse and parallel economies is consistent with the contemporary desire to organize an effective and fair social life ‘from below’ (through the initiatives of individuals, families, and communities) with the solidarity of cooperatives and local, public organizations that contribute to the further expansion of the cultural diversity of large and small social worlds. The works of Chayanov, which have never been published in English before now, present many valuable answers and practical recommendations for the contemporary agricultural consulting and rural development activists.