Lenin’s Research on American Agricultural Capitalism and Its Contemporary Significance

“New Materials on the Laws of Capitalist Development in Agriculture” written in 1915—1916 is Lenin’s monograph on the development of capitalism in American agriculture. In this work, Lenin deeply analyzed the agricultural “new materials” disclosed by the United States, the most advanced capitalist country. He refuted the misreading of these materials by bourgeois economists and summarized some general laws regarding the development of capitalism in agriculture. This book not only develops and deepens Lenin’s early views on agricultural capitalism, but also develops Marxist political economy in multiple aspects, such as the development laws of agricultural capitalism, the economic laws of the imperialist era, the economic crisis caused by the uneven development of industry and agriculture, land rent theory, smallholder theory, etc. The current capitalist agriculture has already developed from a domestic monopoly to an international monopoly stage. The opening of the agricultural market under the guidance of neoliberal ideological trends and policies has made the global food industry increasingly concentrated, forming a monopoly of global agriculture by transnational capital. Global agricultural production under oligopoly has laid hidden dangers for the food security of sovereign countries, especially developing countries. Therefore, only by limiting and transcending the logic of capital can global agricultural resources be rationally allocated and global food security issues solved.