Upon the 1979 victory of revolutionary forces in the Nicaraguan civil war, the Freute Sandinista de Liberation National (FSLN) initiated an agrarian reform program that remains perhaps the most comprehensive of any undertaken in the region. Pursuing poli? cies of land distribution to formerly landless peasantry, and the provision of technical and credit assistance to smallholding farmers, the Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA) has promoted voluntary association with cooperatives as a means of socializing produc? tion relations in peasant agriculture, more efficiently extending credits and services to the peasant sector, and attaining economies of scale in basic grains production. After three years of the Sandinista agrarian reform pro? gram, approximately 53 percent of all landed Nicaraguan peasantry were reported to be members of agricultural cooperatives [ 1 ]. The voluntary nature of this affiliation, and indeed the widespread participation of peasantry in the insurrection that toppled the Somoza regime, seem at first to defy conven? tional anthropological models of peasant behavior. From the presumed suspicion, inter? personal hostility and passivity attributed to peasant communities by Foster, Erasmus and many others [2], to more sophisticated models concerning the independent and self sufficient domestic organization of peasant economies [3], most anthropological theory would seem to preclude the cooperativization of production relations now developing in Nicaraguan rural areas. The very politicization of peasantry that impelled their participation in the Sandinista revolution may itself seem unlikely, given the generally reform-oriented character of past agrarian rebellions [4]. Yet models that seek to explain peasant be? havior as the consequence of values that are tradition-bound, conservative and individu? alistic, or as a derivation of an ideal-typical autonomous household unit that exists apart from the encompassing process of proletarian? ization in the Third World, overlook the class and historical determinants of social and economic behavior. The material that follows will suggest the utility of considering class membership and political-ideological factors in the determina? tion of peasant consciousness, rather than the static idealist model of value orientations or ahistorical consideration of the peasant house? hold economy. Seen in this light, the organ? ized rebellion of Nicaraguan peasants, and their subsequent affiliation with cooperatives and adoption of collective agriculture in many areas, become not an enigma, but an outcome explicable in terms of the distinctive develop? ment of rural capitalism in Nicaragua and the processes of agitation and education that politically incorporated the peasantry into the FSLN strategy of "prolonged people's war" [5]. Mark A. Moberg is a graduate student in the Department of Anthroplogy, The University of California at Los Angeles.