Agrarian reform as a model of accumulation: The case of Nicaragua since 1979

Abstract

Despite the fact that the historical experience of the construction of socialism has taken place in predominantly agrarian societies, it is notorious that the ‘agrarian question’ remains unresolved and constrains their progress to a greater or lesser degree. This is all the more crucial for those revolutions of the second half of the twentieth century which, generated in the Third World by the ‘liberation struggle’, not only seek an increased food supply as the basis for raising popular living standards, but also greater exports from the primary sector to secure imports of producer goods. Thus the agrarian question becomes central to the accumulation model, not only as a source of investible surplus but also as part of the articulation between the different forms of production which underlie the inherited social structure. An account of the Nicaraguan experience of agrarian reform in its first five years (1980–84) should have some intrinsic interest; it also serves to illustrate this central problem of the economics of the transition to socialism.

Notes

Professor of Development Economics, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. The author would like to thank colleagues, particularly at the CIERA, for stimulating discussions on this topic. The views expressed here should not be taken to reflect those of the Nicaraguan government, which the author has served as economic adviser.