Referring to the author's article on the concept of primitive accumulation of capital in Volume 1 Chapter 24 of The Capital, one critic argued that in one aspect, the primitive accumulation of capital created unpropertied working classes, whereas in another aspect, it must have contributed to the accumulation of monetary wealth enough to be converted into industrial capital. In this article, the author sets Marx's concept of primitive accumulation of capital against the critic's arguments, examines what is behind these arguments, and extracts the two other concepts of the period of primitive accumulation of capital and its various opportunities while studying the relationships between Marx's concept of primitive accumulation of capital and his other descriptions in Chapter 24.

View full abstract

First, by analyzing the results of surveys of actual market conditions conducted in Miyada and Nakagawa Villages in Nagano Prefecture and Omonogawa Town in Akita Prefecture's Yokote City, this study puts forward the hypothesis that in recent years, there has been a trend of convergence in the regional labor market structure. Seconod, based on the results of analyses, this study examines regional disparities in wage level using data on men's wages in each prefecture, which were obtained from the 2016 Basic Survey on Wage Structure. The contrast between relatively low wage areas in the Tohoku, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa regions and relatively high wage areas in the Kanto, Tosan, Tokai, and Kinki regions was clarified.

View full abstract

The status of agricultural land sale was investigated by conducting a case study in Iga City, Mie Prefecture. Most of the surveyed sales had begun from an offer from sellers. In most cases, both seller and buyer were elderly farmers who lived in the same village. Given the continuous reduction of agricultural profit, it seemed that agricultural land purchase was not reasonable from an economic aspect. Most of the cases were additional acquisitions of small plots by elderly farmers. If machinery cost were not considered and labor cost were estimated to be lower than the normal cost, the land sale would be economical for the buyers.

View full abstract

In Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture, excellent results were obtained after agricultural land was integrated for use by leading farmers who made the most of the cropland intermediary management program. In this study, we clarified the development process of large-scale paddy farm management and the integration process of agricultural land as recently seen in Niigata City. We found that （1） the development of large-scale paddy farm management took place as a result of collaborations among small and medium-sized farms in rural communities covered by the program and the support of various agriculture-related organizations, and （2） integration of agricultural land was achieved because the collaborating farms' corporation had a large share of agricultural land in rural communities, forcing the communities to conform to agricultural land use adjustments made by the corporation.

View full abstract