Land Reform and Social Structure. A Sociohistorical Survey of the Impact of 1950’s Italian Land Reform on Property Relations and Class Formation in the Mezzogiorno

Abstract This paper retraces the historical, structural, socioeconomic and political conditions of the Italian land reform, from the 1950’s, with a particular interest in the dynamic of class formation and property relations reconfiguration before and in the aftermath of the agrarian reform. We particularly discuss the class reconfiguration processes that ensued after the reform, displaying a particular interest in analysing the transformation of the class of absentee lords (latifundists) into a capitalist proprietary or entrepreneurial class, while rural landless or poor laborers - the new small owners - suffered further deterioration of their socioeconomic condition under the generalization of capitalist property forms, dissemination of market constraints and imperatives into Southern agriculture and the reconfiguration of social relations within the capitalist mode of production.