The socialist system collapsed. Today, in all areas, private property. The collective-state farm system of agricultural production has gone down in history. More than 15 years have passed since that time. Modern people who did not live in the Soviet Union no longer understand how the state farm differed from the collective farm, what is the difference. We will try to answer this question.
How was the collective farm different from the state farm? The difference is only in the name?
As for the differences, from a legal point of view the difference is huge. Speaking with modern legal terminology, these are completely different legal forms. About as much as what is the difference today between the legal forms of LLC (limited liability company) and MUP (municipal unitary enterprise).
The state farm (Soviet economy) is a state-owned enterprise, all the means of production of which belonged to it. The chairman was appointed by the local district executive committee. All workers were government employees, received a certain salary under the contract, and were considered public sector employees.
A collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although it sounds paradoxical in a state in which there was no private property. It was formed as a joint farm of many local peasants. Future collective farmers did not want, of course, to give their property into common use. There was no question of voluntary entry, except for those peasants who had nothing. On the contrary, they happily went to collective farms, as this was the only way out for them at that time. The director of the collective farm was appointed nominally by the general meeting, in fact, like on the state farm, by the district executive committee.
Were there real differences?
If you ask an employee living at that time about how the collective farm differs from the state farm, the answer will be unequivocal: absolutely nothing. At first glance, it’s hard to disagree. Both collective farms and state farms sold their agricultural products to only one buyer - the state. Rather, the state farm simply handed over all the products to him, and they were bought from the collective farm.
Was it possible not to sell goods to the state? It turned out that no. The state distributed the volume of compulsory purchases and the price of goods. After the sales, which sometimes turned into free change, the collective farms had almost nothing left.
State Farm - Budget Enterprise
We will simulate a situation. Imagine that today the state is again creating both economic and legal forms. The state farm is a state enterprise, all workers are state employees with official wages. The collective farm is a private association of several producers. What is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm? Legal property. But there are several nuances:
- The state itself determines how much it will buy goods. Besides him, it is forbidden to sell to anyone else.
- The cost is also determined by the state, that is, it can buy products at a price below cost at a loss to collective farms.
- The government is not obliged to pay salaries to collective farmers and to take care of their well-being, as they are considered owners.
We ask the question: "Who will actually live easier in such conditions?" In our opinion, farm workers. At least they are limited from the arbitrariness of the state, since they fully work for it.
Of course, under the conditions of market ownership and economic pluralism, collective farmers are actually turning into modern farmers — those very “kulaks” who were liquidated at one time by forming new socialist enterprises on their economic ruins. Thus, the answer to the question “how is the collective farm different from the state farm” (or rather, it was different earlier) is this: the formal form of ownership and the sources of formation. We will tell you more about this later.
How were collective and state farms formed
To better understand the difference between a collective farm and a state farm, it is necessary to find out how they formed.
The first state farms were formed due to:
- Large former landowners. Of course, serfdom was abolished, but large enterprises - a legacy of past times, worked by inertia.
- Due to the former kulak and middle peasant farms.
- From large farms that were formed after dispossession.
Of course, the process of dispossession took place before collectivization, but it was then that the first communes were created. Most of them, of course, went broke. It is understandable: in the place of hardworking and zealous “fists” and middle peasants, workers from the poor who did not want and did not know how to work were recruited. But of those who still survived the process of collectivization, the first state farms were formed.
In addition to them, there were large farms at the time of collectivization. Some miraculously survived the dispossession process, others have already managed to develop after these tragic events in our history. Both those and others came under a new process - collectivization, that is, the actual expropriation of property.
Collective farms were formed due to the "unification" of many small private farms into a single large. That is, nominally no one has canceled property. However, in fact, people with their property have become a state object. We can conclude that the almost communist system returned serfdom in a slightly modified form.
"Collective farms" today
Thus, we answered the question of how the collective farm differs from the state farm. Since 1991, all these forms have been eliminated. However, you should not think that they are actually absent. Many farmers also began to unite in single farms. And this is the same collective farm. Only, unlike the socialist predecessors, such farms are formed on a voluntary basis. And they are not obliged to sell to the state all products at low prices. But today, on the contrary, another problem is that the state does not interfere in their life, and without real help from it, many enterprises cannot get out of debt on credit obligations for years.
We definitely need to find a middle ground when the state will help farmers, but not rob them. And then food crises will not threaten us, and prices in grocery stores will be acceptable.