With a view to eradicating the survivals of the serf-owning system, which are a direct and heavy burden upon the peas ants, and for the purpose of facilitating the free development of the class struggle in the countryside, the Party demands:
(1) the confiscation of all church, monastery, crown, state, and landlord estates;
(2) the establishment of peasant committees for the purpose of immediately abolishing all traces of landlord power and privilege, and of actual disposal of the confiscated lands, pending the establishment of a new agrarian system by a constituent assembly of the whole people;
(3) the abolition of all taxes and services at present exacted from the peasantry, as the tax-paying social-estate;
(4) the repeal of all laws that restrict the peasants in disposing of their land;
(5) the authorisation of the courts elected by the people to reduce exorbitant rents and to annul all contracts that entail an element of bondage.
If, however, the decisive victory of the present revolution in Russia brings about the complete sovereignty of the people, i.e., establishes a republic and a fully democratic state system, the Party will[1] seek the abolition of private ownership of land and the transfer of all the land to the whole people as common property.
Furthermore, the object of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in all circumstances, and whatever the situation of democratic agrarian reform, is steadily to strive for the independent class organisation of the rural proletariat; to explain that its interests are irreconcilably opposed to those of the peasant bourgeoisie; to warn it against being tempted by small-scale ownership, which cannot, so long as commodity production exists, abolish poverty among the masses; and lastly, to urge the necessity for a complete socialist revolution as the only means of abolishing all poverty and all exploitation.
[1]
Variant A.
... the Party will support the striving of the
revolutionary peasantry to abolish private ownership of land and seek the
transfer of all the land to the state.—Lenin
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