Agrarian socialism

Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural (with an emphasis on decentralization and non-state forms of collective ownership), locally focused, and traditional. Governments and political parties seeking agrarian socialist policies have existed throughout the world, in regions including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Africa. Examples of agrarian socialist parties in Europe include the Socialist Revolutionary Party (the SRs). The SRs were a prominent agrarian socialist political party in early 20th-century Russia during the Russian Revolution. The SRs garnered much support among Russia's rural peasantry, who in particular supported their program of land socialization as opposed to the Bolshevik program of land nationalization—division of land among peasant tenants rather than collectivization in authoritarian state management. Examples in Asia include the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Throughout the mid-20th century, the CCP pursued an agrarian socialist policy agenda in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Inspired by the CCP’s Great Leap Forward and beginning in 1975, the CPK and the Khmer Rouge implemented agrarian socialist policies, resulting in mass starvation and famine. Examples in North America include the Socialist Party of Oklahoma and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). In the United States, the Socialist Party of Oklahoma enjoyed local political significance in the first 20 years of the twentieth century as an agrarian socialist party. In 1944, the CCF, an agrarian socialist political party, formed North America’s first democratic socialist government. Examples in Latin America include the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil, the Communist Party of Cuba, and the Mexican Huasteca.