Sharecropping System

(Russian, izdol’shchina), a type of land lease in which part of the harvest is paid to the landowner as rent. The sharecropping system on the whole characterizes precapitalist and underdeveloped capitalist forms of the exploitation of small agricultural producers. With regard to the origin of capitalist relations, the sharecropping system was a transitional form between the feudal and the capitalist land lease. It is still retained as a vestige of feudalism in some developed capitalist countries (the USA, Italy, Spain, and southwestern France). In many Oriental countries the sharecropping system is the chief form of tenant relations.