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Lenin Collected Works:
Volume 40
Preface by
Progress Publishers
The present Volume contains Lenin's Notebooks on the Agrarian
Question, which is preparatory material for his works
analysing capitalist agriculture in Western Europe, Russia and the
United States, and criticising bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
theories, and reformism and revisionism in the agrarian question.
The material in this volume relates to the period from 1900
to 1916. In the new conditions, with capitalism at its
highest and final stage—the stage of
imperialism—Lenin worked out and substantiated the
agrarian programme and agrarian policy of the revolutionary
proletarian party, and took Marxist theory on the agrarian
question a step forward in its view of classes and the class
struggle in the country side, the alliance of the working
class and the peasantry under the leadership of the
proletariat, and their joint struggle against the landowners
and capitalists, for democracy and socialism. The success of
the revolution depended on whom the peasantry would follow,
for in many European countries it constituted the majority
or a sizable section of the population. In order to win over
the peasantry, as an ally of the proletariat in the coming
revolution, it was necessary to expose the hostile parties
which claimed leader ship of the peasantry, and their
ideologists.
In the new epoch, these questions became especially pressing
and acquired international significance. That is why
bourgeois economists, reformists and revisionists fiercely
attacked Marxism. It was subjected to criticism by bourgeois
apologists, the ideologists of petty- bourgeois parties, and
opportunists among the Social Democrats. They all rejected
Marx's theory of ground-rent,
and the law of concentration of production in agriculture,
and denied the advantages of large- over small-scale
production; they insisted that agriculture developed
according to special laws, and was subject to the inexorable
“law of diminishing returns”. They said it was
not, human labour and the implements of labour, but the
elemental forces of nature that were decisive in
agriculture. These “critics of Marx” juggled
with the facts and statistics, in an effort to show that the
small-scale peasant economy was “stable” and had
advantages over large-scale capitalist production.
Lenin's great historical service in working out the agrarian
question lies in the fact that he defended Marx's
revolutionary teaching against the attacks of his
“critics”, and further developed it in
application to the new historical conditions and in
connection with the working out of the programme, strategy
and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian party of the
new type; he proved the possibility, and the necessity, of
an alliance between the working class and the peasantry
under the leadership of the proletariat at the various
stages of the revolution, and showed the conditions in which
this could be realised.
It was of tremendous importance to produce a theoretical
elaboration of the agrarian question so as to determine the
correct relations between the working class and the various
groups of peasantry as the revolutionary struggle went
forward. Under capitalism, the peasantry breaks up into
different class groups, with differing and antithetical
interests; the “erosion” of the middle peasantry
yields a numerically small but economically powerful rich
peasant (kulak) top section at one pole, and a mass of poor
peasants, rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, at the
other. Lenin revealed the dual nature of the peasant as a
petty commodity producer—the dual nature of his
economic and political interests: the basic interests of the
toiler suffering from exploitation by the landowner and the
kulak, which makes him look to the proletariat for support,
and the interests of the owner, which determine his
gravitation towards the bourgeoisie, his political
instability and vacillation between it and the working
class. Lenin emphasised the need for an alliance between the
working class and the peasantry, with the leading role
belonging to the proletariat,
as a prerequisite for winning the dictatorship of the
proletariat and building socialism through a joint effort by
the workers and peasants.
* *
*
The first part of the volume contains the plans and
out lines of Lenin's writings on the agrarian question, the
main being the preparatory materials for “The Agrarian
Question and the 'Critics of Marx"' (see present edition,
Vols. 5 and 13). The variants of the plan for this work give
a good idea of how Lenin mapped out the main line and the
concrete points for his critique of reformist bourgeois
theories and of revisionism. Lenin defined a programme for
processing the relevant reliable material from numerous
sources to refute the arguments of the “critics of
Marx” concerning the dubious “law of diminishing
returns” and the Malthusian explanation of the root
causes of the working man's plight, and to ward off their
attacks on the Marxist theory of ground-rent, etc.
In preparing “The Agrarian Question and the 'Critics
of Marx"' and his lectures on the agrarian question, Lenin
made a thorough study of the most important sources, and
utilised European agrarian statistics to give Marxist
agrarian theory a sound basis. He verified, analysed and
summed up a mass of statistical data, and drew up tables
giving an insight into the deep-going causes, nature and
social significance of economic processes. Lenin's analysis
of agrarian statistics shows their tremendous importance as
a tool in cognising economic laws, exposing the
contradictions of capitalism, and subjecting it and its
apologists to scientific criticism.
The writings in the first part of the volume show the direct
connection between Lenin's theoretical inquiry, his
elaboration of Marxist agrarian theory and the practical
revolutionary struggle of the working class.
The preparatory materials for his lectures on the
“Marxist Views of the Agrarian Question in Europe and
Russia”, and on “The Agrarian Programme of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and of the
Social-Democrats”, both included in this volume, are a
reflection of an important stage of Lenin's struggle against
the petty-bourgeois party of Socialist-
Revolutionaries and opportunists within the
Social-Democratic movement, in working out and
substantiating a truly revolutionary agrarian programme and
tactics for the Marxist working-class party in Russia.
Russia was then on the threshold of her bourgeois-democratic
revolution. In Russia, capitalism had grown into
imperialism, while considerable survivals of serfdom still
remained in the country's economy and the political system
as a whole. The landed estates were the main relicts of pre-
capitalist relations in the economy; the peasant allotment
land tenure, adapted to the landowners' corvée
system, was also shackled with relicts of serfdom. These
tended to slow down the development of the productive forces
both in Russia's industry and agriculture, widen the
technical and economic gap separating her from the leading
capitalist countries of the West, and create the conditions
for indentured forms of exploitation of the working class
and the peasantry. That is why the agrarian question was
basic to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia and
determined its specific features.
Lenin laid special emphasis on the importance of theory in
working out the Party programme: “In order to make a
comparison of the programmes and to assess them, it is
necessary to examine the principles, the theory,
from which the programme flows” (see p. 53). Lenin's
theoretical analysis of the economic nature of the peasant
economy enabled him to determine correctly the community or
the distinction of class interests between the proletariat
and the various sections of the peasantry in the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, and to map out the Party's
policy towards the peasantry. The main task of the agrarian
programme during the bourgeois-democratic revolution was to
formulate the demands that would secure the peasantry as the
proletariat's ally in the struggle against tsarism and the
landowners. “The meaning of our agrarian programme:
the Russian proletariat (including the rural) must support
the peasantry in the struggle against serfdom” (see
p. 62). Lenin subjected the agrarian programme of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries to withering criticism and proved
that their theoretical unscrupulousness and eclecticism had
induced them to say nothing of the historical task of the
period—destruction of the
relicts of serfdom—to deny the stratification of the
peasantry along class lines, and the class struggle in the
countryside, to invent all manner of projects for
“socialisation of land”,
“equalisation”, etc.
While Lenin aimed his criticism against the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, he also exposed the anti-Marxist
stand on the agrarian issue in Russia and the peasantry
taken by P. P. Maslov, A. S. Martynov, D. B. Ryazanov and
other Mensheviks-to-be, who denied that the peasantry had a
revolutionary role to play, and who regarded it as a solid
reactionary mass. By contrast, Lenin emphasised the dual
nature of Narodism: the democratic side, inasmuch as they
waged a struggle against the relicts of serfdom, and the
utopian and reactionary side, expressive of the urge on the
part of the petty bourgeois to perpetuate his small farm. In
this context, Lenin pointed to the need to take account of
the two sides of Narodism in evaluating its historical
importance.
The first part ends with two plans for “The Peasantry
and Social-Democracy” (see pp. 69-70). These plans
warrant the assumption that Lenin had the intention of
writing a special work on the subject to sum up his studies
of agrarian relations and the experience gained by socialist
parties abroad in working out agrarian programmes, and to
substantiate the R.S.D.L.P.'s policy towards the
peasantry. With his usual insight, he points to the
“practical importance of the agrarian question in the
possibly near future” (see p. 70), and notes the
specific nature of class relations in the Russian
countryside, and the need for the rural proletariat to fight
on two flanks: against the landowners and the relicts of
serfdom, and against the bourgeoisie. Lenin marked out the
guiding principles which were to serve the Marxist party as
a beacon in the intricate conditions of the class struggle
in the countryside: “Together with the peasant
bourgeoisie against the landowners. Together with the urban
proletariat against the peasant bourgeoisie” (see
p. 69).
The writings in the second part of the present
volume are a reflection of his critical processing of a
great mass of facts and statistical data from bourgeois and
petty- bourgeois agrarian works and official sources. Of
special
interest in this part is the material on the study and
processing of the results of special statistical inquiries
into the state of agriculture, especially the peasant
economy, in a number of European countries.
Lenin gives a model of scientific analysis of agrarian
relations, application of the Marxist method in processing
social and economic statistics, and critical use of
bourgeois sources and writings. Lenin adduces reliable data
to refute the assertions of bourgeois economists, reformists
and revisionists, and shows that in agriculture as well
large-scale capitalist production is more effective than
small-scale production and tends inevitably to supplant it,
that small peasant farms are being expropriated by big
capital, and that the toiling peasantry is being ruined and
proletarised. That is the general law governing the
development of agriculture on capitalist lines, although it
may differ in form from country to country.
In his critical remarks on the works of S. Bulgakov,
F. Hertz, M. Hecht, E. David, and K. Klawki, Lenin refutes
the bourgeois reformist theories which extol small farming
and assert that it is “superior” to large-scale
production. He exposes the tricks used by bourgeois and
petty-bourgeois economists to minimise the earnings of the
big farms and exaggerate those of the small. Lenin counters
the false eulogies to the “viability” of the
small farms—due allegedly to the small farmer's
industry, thrift and hardiness, by showing that small-scale
production in agriculture is sustained by the back-breaking
toil and poor nutrition of the small farmer, the dissipation
of his vital forces, the deterioration of his livestock, and
the waste of the soil's productive forces.
Lenin has some particularly sharp words for the reformists
and revisionists who “fool others by styling
themselves socialists”, and put more into prettifying
capitalist reality than the bourgeois apologists
themselves. Lenin makes a detailed analysis of E. David's
Socialism and Agriculture— the main
revisionist work on the agrarian question—and shows it
to be a collection of bourgeois falsehood and bias wrapped
up in “socialist” terminology.
At the same time, Lenin takes pains to sift and examine any
genuine scientific data and correct observations and
conclusions which he finds in bourgeois sources and
writings. He makes the following extract from
O. Pringsheim's article: “Modern large-scale
agricultural production should be compared with the
manufacture (in the Marxian sense)" (see
p. 108), and repeatedly makes such comparisons in his works
(see present edition, Vol. 5, p. 141 and Vol. 22, p. 99). On
F. Maurice's book, Agriculture and the Social
Question. Agricultural and Agrarian France, Lenin makes
this remark: “The author has the wildest ideas of the
most primitive anarchism. There are some interesting factual
remarks” (see p. 173).
Lenin devotes special attention to an analysis of statistics
on the agrarian system in Denmark, which the apologists of
capitalism liked to present as the “ideal”
country of small-scale peasant production. He exposes the
trickery of bourgeois economists and revisionists and
demonstrates the capitalist nature of the country's
agrarian system. The basic fact which bourgeois political
economists and revisionists try to hush up is that the bulk
of the land and the livestock in Denmark is in the hands of
landowners running farms on capitalist lines (see p. 225 and
pp. 376-82). “The basis of Danish agriculture is
large-scale and medium capitalist farming. All the
talk about a 'peasant country' and 'small-scale farming' is
sheer bourgeois apologetics, a distortion of the facts by
various titled and untitled ideologists of capital”
(see present edition, Vol. 13, p. 196). Lenin castigates the
“socialists” who try to obscure the fact that
production is being concentrated and that the petty producer
is being ousted by the big producer, and the fact that the
prosperity of capitalist agriculture in Denmark is based on
the massive proletarisation of the rural
population.
The third part of the volume contains material for'
a study of the capitalist agriculture of Europe and the
United States from 1910 to 1916, including the material
relating to Lenin's New Data on the Laws Governing the
Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part
One. Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of
America.
In this work, Lenin stresses that the United States,
“a leading country of modern capitalism”, was of
especial interest for the study of the social and economic
structure of agriculture, and of the forms and laws of its
development
in modern capitalist conditions. “In America,
agricultural capitalism is more clear-cut, the
division of labour is more crystallised; there are
fewer bonds with the Middle Ages, with the
soil-bound labourer; ground-rent is not so burden some;
there is less intermixing of commercial agriculture and
subsistence farming” (see p. 420). The important thing
is that the United States is unrivalled in the vastness of
territory and diversity of relationships, showing the
greatest spectrum of shades and forms of capitalist
agriculture.
Bourgeois economists, reformists and revisionists distort
the facts in an effort to prove that the U.S. farm economy
is a model of the “non-capitalist evolution” of
farming, where the “small family farm” is
allegedly supplanting large-scale production, where most
farms are “family-labour farms”, etc. N. Himmer,
who gave his views in an article on the results of the
U.S. Census of 1910, epitomises those who believe that
agriculture in capitalist society develops along
non-capitalist lines. Lenin makes this note: “Himmer
as a collection of bourgeois views. I n t h i s
r e s p e c t, his short article is worth
volumes” (see p. 408). The opponents of Marxism based
their conclusions on facts and figures, major and minor,
which were isolated from “the general context of
politico-economic relations”. On the strength of
massive data provided by the U.S. censuses, Lenin gives
“a complete picture of capitalism in American
agriculture” (present edition, Vol. 22, p. 18). Lenin
notes that through their agricultural censuses, bourgeois
statisticians collect “an immense wealth of complete
information on each enterprise as a unit” but because
of incorrect tabulation and grouping it is reduced in value
and spoiled; the net result is meaningless columns of
figures, a kind of statistical game of digits”.
Lenin goes on to work the massive data of agricultural
statistics into tables on scientific principles for grouping
farms. The summary table compiled by Lenin (pp. 440-41) is a
remarkable example of the use of socio-economic statistics
as an instrument of social cognition. He brings out the
contradictions and trends in the capitalist development of
U.S. agriculture through a three-way grouping of farms: by
income, that is, the value of the product, by acreage, and
by specialisation (principal source of income).
Lenin's analysis of the great volume of facts and massive
agrarian statistics proves that U.S. agriculture is
developing the capitalist way. Evidence of this is the
general increase in the employment of hired labour, the
growth in the number of wage workers, the decline in the
number of independent farm owners, the erosion of the middle
groups and the consolidation of the groups at both ends of
the farm spectrum, and the growth of big capitalist farms
and the displacement of the small. Lenin says that
capitalism in U.S. agriculture tends to grow both through
the faster development of the large-acreage farms in
extensive areas, and through the establishment of farms with
much larger operations on smaller tracts in the intensive
areas. There is growing concentration of production in
agriculture, and the expropriation and displacement of small
farmers, which means a decline in the proportion of owners.
In his book, Lenin shows the plight of the small and Lenant
farmers, especially Negroes, who are most ruthlessly
oppressed. “For the 'emancipated' Negroes, the
American South is a kind of prison where they are hemmed in,
isolated and deprived of fresh air” (present edition,
Vol. 22, p. 27). Lenin notes the remarkable similarity
between the economic status of the Negroes in America and
that of the one-time serfs in the heart of agricultural
Russia.
An indicator of the ruin of small farmers in the United
States is the growth in the number of mortgaged farms, which
“means that the actual control over them is
transferred to the capitalists”. Most farmers who fall
into the clutches of finance capital are further
impoverished. “Those who control the banks,
directly control one-third of America~ s farms, and
indirectly dominate the lot” (ibid., pp. 92, 100).
Lenin's study of the general laws governing the capitalist
development of agriculture and the forms they assumed in the
various countries shed a strong light on the whole process
of displacement of small-scale by large-scale
production. This complex and painful process involves not
only the direct expropriation of toiling peasants and
farmers by big capital, but also the “ruin of the
small farmers and a worsening of conditions on their farms
that may go on for years and decades” (Vol. 22,
p. 70), a process which may assume a variety of forms, such
as the small farmer's
overwork or malnutrition, heavy debt, worse feed and poorer
care of livestock, poorer husbandry, technical stag nation,
etc.
Lenin analysed the capitalist agriculture of Europe and the
United States decades ago. Since then, considerable changes
have taken place in the agriculture of the capitalist
countries. However, the objective laws governing capitalist
development are inexorable. The development of capitalist
agriculture fully bears out the Marxist-Leninist agrarian
theory, and its characteristic of classes and the class
struggle in the countryside. The Programme of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union emphasises that the agriculture of
the capitalist countries is characterised by a further
deepening of the contradictions inherent in the bourgeois
system, namely, the growing concentration of production, and
ever greater expropriation of small farmers and
peasants. The monopolies have occupied dominant positions in
agriculture as well. Millions of farmers and peasants are
being ruined and driven off the soil.
In the decades since Lenin made his analysis, there have
been major changes in the technical equipment of
agricultural production. But, as in the time of Marx and
Lenin, the machine not only raises the productivity of human
labour but also leads to a further aggravation of the
contradictions in capitalist agriculture.
The mechanisation of production on the large capitalist
farms is accompanied by intensification of labour, worsening
of working conditions, displacement of hired labour and
growing unemployment. At the same time, there is increasing
ruin of small peasants and farmers, who are unable to buy
and make rational use of modern machinery, and who are
saddled with debts and taxes; the small and middle farmers,
who are supplanted by the large farms, become tenants, or
wage workers; and the dispossessed tenant farmers are driven
off the land. This is borne out by the massive statistics
furnished by agricultural censuses in the United States,
Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany and other
capitalist countries.
But in the teeth of these facts present-day bourgeois
economists, reformists and revisionists of every stripe keep
coming up with the theories long since refuted by
Marxism-Leninism and upset by practice
itself—asserting that under capitalism the small farm
is “stable”, that it offers
“advantages” over the large farm, and that under
capitalism the toiling peasant can enjoy a life of
prosperity.
Modern reformists and revisionists try to revive the old
theories of the “non—capitalist evolution of
agriculture" through the co-operatives. However, the
marketing co-operatives extolled by the bourgeoisie and
their “socialist” servitors fail to save the
small farmers from privation and ruin. Modern reality fully
bears out Lenin's analysis of co-operatives under
capitalism. Lenin adduced concrete facts on associations for
the marketing of dairy produce in a number of capitalist
countries to show that these consist mainly of large
(capitalist) farms, and that very few small farmers take
part in them (see pp. 207, 209-10). In the capitalist
countries, today, co-operative societies, which are under
the control of banks and monopolies, are also used mainly by
capitalist farmers and not by the small farmers.
Lenin's critique of bourgeois reformist and revisionist
views on the agrarian question is just as important today as
a brilliant example of the Party approach in science, and of
irreconcilable struggle against a hostile ideology,
bourgeois apologetics, and modern reformism and
revisionism. With capitalism plunged in a general crisis,
and class contradictions becoming more acute, the
bourgeoisie and its ideologists have been trying very hard
to win over the peasantry, by resorting to social demagogy,
propounding reformist ideas of harmonised class interests,
and promising the small farmer better conditions under
capitalism. Lenin s guiding statements on the agrarian
question teach the Communist and Workers' Parties of the
capitalist and colonial countries to take correct decisions
on the working-class attitude towards the peasantry as an
ally in the revolutionary struggle against capitalism and
colonialism, for democracy and socialism.
Lenin stressed that, in contrast to those bourgeois pundits
who sow illusions among the small peasants about the
possibility of achieving prosperity under capitalism, the
Marxist evaluation of the true position of the peasantry in
the capitalist countries “inevitably leads to the
recognition
of the small peasantry's blind alley and hopeless position
(hopeless, outside the revolutionary struggle of the
proletariat against the entire capitalist system)" (present
edition, Vol. 5, p. 190).
The historic example of the Soviet Union and other socialist
countries has shown the peasants of the world the advantages
of the socialist way of farming; they are coming to realise
that only the establishment of truly popular power and
producers' co-operatives can rid the peasants of poverty and
exploitation, and assure them of a life of prosperity and
culture. The experience of the U.S.S.R. and the People's
Democracies has toppled the theories spread by the servants
of the bourgeoisie which say that the peasantry is basically
hostile to socialism. There is now practical proof of the
correctness of the Marxist-Leninist proposition that the
peasant economy must and can be remodelled on socialist
lines, and that the toiling peasants can be successfully
involved in the construction of socialism and communism.
* *
*
The bulk of the material contained in the present volume was
first published from 1932 to 1938, in Lenin Miscellanies
XIX, XXXI and XXXII. Seven writings were
first publish ed in the Fourth Russian edition, among them:
remarks on M. E. Seignouret's book, Essays on Social and
Agricultural Economics; a manuscript containing an
analysis of data from the Agricultural Statistics of
France; remarks on G. Fischer's The Social
Importance of Machinery in Agriculture; a manuscript
containing extracts from Hand and Machine Labor;
and remarks on E. Jordi's Electric Motor in
Agriculture.
The publishers have retained Lenin's arrangement of the
material, his marks in the margin and underlinings in the
text. The underlinings are indicated by type variations:
a single underlining by
italics,
a double underlining by
s p a c e d
i t a l i c s,
three lines by heavy
Roman type,
and four lines by
s p a c e d
h e a v y
R o m a n
t y p e.
A wavy underlining is indicated by
heavy italics,
if double—by
s p a c e d
h e a v y
i t a l i c s.
In the Fourth Russian edition the entire text of this volume
was verified once again with Lenin's manuscripts and
sources.
All statistical data were checked again, but no corrections
were made where the totals or percentages do not tally,
because they are the result of Lenin's rounding off the
figures from the sources.
The present volume contains footnote references to Lenin's
“The Agrarian Question and the 'Critics of Marx"' and
New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of
Capitalism in Agriculture. This has been done to show
the connection between the preparatory material and the
finished works, and to give an idea of how Lenin made use of
his notes.
Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the C.P.S.U. Central
Committee
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