Egalitarian and market land reforms in the context of basic human rights and public welfare

Abstract

Based on the generalization and analysis of modern scientific and applied approaches and real results of land transformations in the last century in transition economies, the article reveals the essence of the nature of market and egalitarian land reforms, as well as their goals and general economic results. Egalitarian reform has as its main priority a rapid reduction of rural poverty and development of the new landowners' skills to build their potential for its implementation in the general societal context. Market-oriented land reform aims at economic efficiency of the market based allocation of resources to ensure the growth of export-oriented agricultural production. Egalitarian land reform focuses on human and the realization of his or her basic rights, while market land reform focuses on the economy. Empirical data on land reforms in China show that their egalitarian nature was based on the creation of a society with equal opportunities of its members in the management of and access to land resources and material benefits obtained from them, and on ensuring a wide spread of the benefits from rural growth in society as a whole. Currently, China is the only country in the world that progressed from a "country of low human development" in 1990 to a "country of high human development" in 2018. The author proves that the purpose of land reform cannot be primitivized to a simple division of land into plots for transfer to private ownership based on free market turnover. Guaranteeing basic human rights and achieving public welfare from a land reform are achieved not only via obtaining land in private ownership, but also via supporting these acts with a fair distribution of control over the production process. Imposing on society a pseudo-scientific concept that land is a commodity that, like an apartment, mobile phone or bag of feed, can be freely bought and sold on market at open auctions, which will consolidate the country's economic power would inevitably lead to even greater income polarization, violation of basic human rights and, consequently, to social confrontations and significant social upheavals.