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The problem of the connexions between agriculture and capitalism resurfaces at regular intervals, and gives rise to controversies between researchers claiming, directly or indirectly, to follow Marx and his successors. On both sides of the Channel, the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s constituted an important moment of rediscovery, discussion and reinterpretation of Marxist work on the peasant and agrarian question. However, the debate in France at this time contrasts sharply with that which can be observed within the “peasants seminar” at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. This renewed interest in the peasantry and agriculture was accompanied in England by a rereading of the classic theses of Marx, Engels, Lenin and even Kautsky. It was not a question of “throwing out the Marxist baby with the bath water”, as was the case in France, but of extending and enriching classic Marxist analysis and updating it in a context marked by anti-colonial struggles, the questioning of “productivism”, and the questioning of the Soviet model.