formation of agricultural production cooperatives

Robert Owen - British entrepreneur and social activist. He is regarded as the founder of the cooperative movement. Following Owen, a number of sociologists, political and social activists, such as Charles Fourier (French), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Germans), and V.I. Lenin (Russian), also developed ideas for establishing cooperatives and viewed this as a means of improving society. In North Vietnam and the GDR, many agricultural cooperatives were established in the 1950s and 1960s based on this idea, viewed as part of the social revolution in the countryside. In reality, it became apparent that, alongside some initial successes, there were many shortcomings that limited the development of agricultural production. In 1988, when we wrote this work, we were already partially aware of these real-world conditions. Today, looking back 30 years later, we see this even more clearly. We are very grateful to the publisher for making our work more accessible to readers.