Impresa coltivatrice e poteri monopolistici: categorie chiave del pensiero economico-agrario di Emilio Sereni (The agricultural enterprise and monopolistic powers as key notions in Emilio Sereni's agriculotural economic thought)

The present paper claims that the Emilio Sereni’s ideas concerning the peasant farm and monopolistic powers provided insights for important schools of agricultural economic thought in Italy and still maintain today a remarkable interpretative power. The categories of peasant farm and monopolistic powers are analysed from a new perspective. Firstly, Sereni observed that new social relationships emerged between capitalistic formations and peasant farms in the Italian agriculture. The penetration of capitalism not only involved single agricultural units of production, but implied the formation of big trusts that created linkages upstream (suppliers of means of production) or downstream (food industry) of agricultural production. Secondly, the monopolistic stage of capitalism favoured the socialization of the productive forces and allowed the transition from peasant farms to small agricultural enterprises. Groups of small agricultural enterprises could associate themselves in networks where a democratic control of the development processes could take place