The political economy of credit in American agriculture.

The current credit crisis is just as often interpreted as another 'last gasp' of the family farm. It is hypothesized that the demise of credit-based production is more likely to be followed by rent-based production than by purely capitalist production in the form of wage labor. A historical cycle is postulated in which tenancy and indebtedness replace one another as dictated by the constraints of the accumulation and legitimation functions. The productive forces unleashed by credit-based production undermine the very basis of this social relation of production. Tenancy emerges as an alternative form of 'family farming'. -from Author