NEO-POPULISM AND MARXISM 35 1 Lenin, "Capitalism in Agriculture", Collected Works, Vol 4, pp 137-138. 2 There is a large literature by now on the "inverse relation of farm size and yield per acre" question, mainly dealing with the purely statistical aspects or with the technical components of yield differences. The only analytical explanation put forward so far remains A K Sen's, in "An Aspect of Indian Agriculture", Economic Weekly, Annual Number, February 1962, developed further in "Peasant and Dualism with or without Surplus Labour", Journal of Political Economy, 1966. 3 Krishna Bharadwaj (Production Conditions in Indian Agriculture, Cambridge University Press, 1974) finds that for individual crops there is no significant inverse relation between size and per acre output value in most cases; indeed, no systematic relation at all. But for the farm as a whole output per acre and area operated do seem to be inversely related in most cases though not significantly so except in a few. Higher intensity of land use and a cropping pattern with proportionately more irrigated and higher output per acre of the smallest holdings. 4 The categories, rich peasant, small-scale tiller and semi-proletarian, are used in the sense discussed by Lenin in his "Preliminary Draft Theses on the Agrarian Question" (presented to the Second Congress of the Comintern, 1920), Collected Works, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1975, Volume III, pp 378-388. 5 If we deflate the 1961 "poverty line" estimate of Rs 18 per month per capita / by the estimated price rise between 1956 and 1961, we obtain Rs 185 per annum as the income required to meet basic food consumption need in 1956. 6 R S Rao and S Brahme, "Capitalism in Indian Agriculture: An Enquiry", mimeo, paper presented to the seminar on Political Economy of Agriculture, Calcutta, 1973. 7 Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 4 (review of Die Agrarfrage and "Capitalism in Agriculture", Reply to Bulgakov), pp 97, 113, 134. 8 Georgescu-Roegen, "Economic Theory and Agrarian Reforms", Oxford Economic Papers 12 (February 1960). Reprinted in summary in C E'cher and L Winte (eds). Agriculture in Economic Development, McGraw Hill (Indian reprint, Vora, Bombay, 19^0), p 149. 9 Lenin, Vol 4, pp 119-131. Quoting Kautsky (p 124): "If the agricultural production of the small-peasant is not drawn into the sphere of commodity production; if it is merely a part of household economy, it also remains outside the centralising tendencies of the modern mode of production. However irrational his parcellised economy may be, no matter what waste of effort it may lead to, he clings to it tightly, just as his wife clings to her wretched household economy, which likewise produces infinitely miserable results with an enormous expenditure of labour power but wirch represents the only sphere in which she is not subject to another's rule and is free from exploitation". 10 Ibid, p 136. 11 Ibid, p 132. 12 NKChandra, "Farm Efficiency under Semi-feudalism: A Critique of Marginalist Theories and Some Marxist Formulations", Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, August 1974. 3 3 Lenin, Vol 4, p 132. 14 Loc cif, p 132. 15 Ibid, p 133. 16 Ibid, pp 137-145. 17 Georgescu-Roegen, op cit, p 149-150. is Lenin, Vol 4, p 134.