Land Property Regime According to the Vidovdan Constitution and the Agrarian Question in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Тhe paper discusses the attitudes of political parties on land property regimes in the context of the agrarian issue, and dynamics of the debate on this matter in the Constitutional Committee and in the Constituent National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The very notion of “agrarian question” concerns specifically small peasant landholdings in the process of development of capitalism. This question was raised in the context of the debate on socio-economic problems that were invited by, and eventually, introduced into the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Vidovdan Constitution, 1921) under the pressure of progressive opposition parties and parts of the ruling political organizations.

Why Does the ‘Provincial Propertied Class’ Remain Provincial? Reading the Agrarian Question of Capital Through Caste

While labour linkages and flows between rural and urban India have been studied, there is little discussion on the implications of the agrarian question of capital for the urban. This is particularly important given the intertwining of caste and capital accumulation in India. If there are caste barriers to entry into accumulation in the urban, what does it mean for pathways of diversification of agrarian capital out of agriculture? In this article, we address this question by comparing the trajectories of capital accumulation in the urban by two agrarian caste groups, the Kongu Vellala Gounders (KVGs) in western Tamil Nadu and the Jats in Haryana. We argue that the dominance of specific caste groups in non-agrarian accumulation erects barriers for transition of agrarian capital into the urban. Such barriers are further aggravated by the increasingly adverse conditions under which capitalist farmers produce in rural India and by new barriers to entry posed by globalising market conditions. Finally, we suggest that differences in subnational politics account for differences in transition pathways between the two agrarian castes. We therefore argue that a caste-based reading is critical to understand how caste intersects with diversification of capital from the rural to the Indian urban.

The Political and Economic Origins of the Roman Revolution

The paper considers some economic and legal aspects of the struggle for the public land in Late Republican Rome. This period is one of the most controversial in ancient history; it brought many significant changes to the socio-economic and political life of Rome and contributed much to its transformation from Republic to Principate. Nevertheless, there is no special paper examining the competition between the Romans and Italians for the ager publicus populi Romani which started with the agrarian reform of Tiberius Gracchus in modern historiography. The first episode ended after the enactment in 111 B.C. of the lex agraria, when a large amount of public land was brought into private hands by its Roman possessors. A further part of the ager publicus populi Romani was still public and remained in hands of the socii. The logic of historical process, the economic changes of the second century B.C. which led Rome from Republic to Principate, demanded the formation of a new class of landowners. The latter would be the basis of the political system of the Roman Empire instead of the nobilitas; its political power would be based on private ownership of land. This was impossible without the full privatization of public land, and it is logical that the struggle for the ager publicus populi Romani was not ended in 111 B.C. Only after privatization of that land, which was possessed by the allies, the agrarian question in Rome could be fully resolved. The latter problem is of crucial importance for the further history of Rome, because it not only caused the Social War but also radically changed both the social structure and the political balance within Roman society during the last decades of the Republic.