On Investigation of the Production Relations as a Basis of Institutional Forms in Agriculture

In this article some questions, which raise while undertaking an investigation of social transformation of agriculture, whose basis according to Marxian sociological theory lies in production relations, have been discussed. Agriculture has more heterogenious production relations and they, as a rule, differ from production relations in other economical sectors. The political attitude may in a specific way limit the scope of scientific investigation of production relations in agriculture. In Yugoslavia this obstacle has been succesfully avoided by the system of selfmanagement. , . . c . , The level of observing the production relations is one of the research problems because it is a methodological mistake to start from the higher level of their manifestation and apply conclusion from there to the lower levels. In fact one should start from the lower to the higher levels, that is to say, from microlevels, over the economical units to the global society. To start from the onesided concept of production relations, the concept based on only one of many aspects of their manifestation, is the further theoretical- -methodological mistake. Usually in this case the ownership in a static sense would be stressed and distribution of income together with interactions of cooperation and conflicts overlooked. Some other problems are being neglected too, such as the problem of forms of manifestation of production relations which predominantly are given by means of the state, market and direct relations of cooperation and conflict within economic units. Indicators of production relations should express the degree of cooperation and conflict in them and forms of manifestation of this interaction. These processes are taking place in all spheres of the society: political, biological, ideological. But those in the economical sphere, according to Marxism, are considered as the basic ones which in the last instance determine the other ones. It seems that considered indicators of the model of production relations might have an application both in an investigation of a social structure of agriculture and village and in a policy of their development: why agriculture is more often subordinate socially, what is the sense of measures of economic policy m agriculture — social, cultural or class-social