V. I.

Lenin

The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907

7. Municipalisation of the Land and Municipal Socialism

These two terms were made equivalent by the Mensheviks themselves, who secured the adoption of the agrarian programme at
Stockholm. We need only mention the names of two prominent Mensheviks,
Kostrov and Larin. “Some comrades,” said Kostrov at Stockholm,
“seem to be hearing about municipal ownership for the first time. Let
me remind them that in Western Europe there is a whole political trend
[!precisely!] called ‘municipal socialism’ [England], which advocates the
extension of ownership by urban and rural municipalities, and which is also
supported by our comrades. Many municipalities own real estate, and that
does not contradict our programme. We now have the possibility of acquiring
[!] real estate for the municipalities gratis [!!] and we should take
advantage of it. Of course, the confiscated land should be
municipalised” (p. 88).

The naive idea about “the possibility of acquiring property
gratis” is magnificently expressed here. But in citing the example of
this municipal socialism “trend” as a special trend mainly
characteristic of England, the speaker did not stop to think why this
is. an extremely opportunist trend. Why did Engels, in his letters
to Sorge describing this extreme intellectual opportunism of the English
Fabians, emphasise the petty-bourgeois nature of their “muncipalisation” schemes? [2]

Larin, in unison with Kostrov, says in his comments on the Menshevik
programme: “Perhaps in some areas the people’s local self-governing bodies will themselves be able to run these large estates,
as the horse tramways or slaughter-houses are run by municipal councils,
and then all [!!] the profits obtained from them will be placed at the
disposal of the whole [!] population” [1]

–and

not of the local bourgeoisie, my dear Larin?

The philistine illusions of the philistine heroes of West-European
municipal socialism are already making them selves felt. The fact that the
bourgeoisie is in power is for gotten; so also is the fact that only in
towns with a high percentage of proletarian population is it
possible to obtain for the working people some crumbs of benefit from
municipal government! But all this is by the way. The principal fallacy of
the “municipal socialism” idea of municipalising the land lies
in the following.

The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians,
elevate municipal socialism to a special “trend” precisely
because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to
divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic
system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor
questions of local self-government . In the sphere of questions in
the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is
the sphere which, as we have shown, affects the very foundations of the
class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the
philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is
particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local
questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the
bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but
to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich
bourgeoisie for the “ needs of the population ”. Naturally, since attention is focused on such
questions as the spending of paltry sums (in comparison with the total
surplus value and total state expenditure of the bourgeoisie), which the
bourgeoisie itself is willing to set aside for public health
(Engels pointed out in The Housing Question that the bourgeoisie
itself is afraid of the spread of epidemic diseases in the towns [3] ), or for education (the bourgeoisie must have trained workers
able to adapt themselves to a high technical level!), and so on, it is
possible, in the sphere of such minor questions, to hold forth about “social peace”, about the harmfulness of the class
struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie
itself is spending money on the “needs of the population”, on
public health, on education? What need is there for a social revolution if
it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by
step, to extend “collective ownership”, and “socialise” production:

the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses referred to so relevantly by the
worthy Y. Larin?

The philistine opportunism of that “trend” lies in the fact
that people forget the narrow limits of so-called “municipal
socialism” (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English
Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the
Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it
cannot allow any encroachment, even from the “municipal” point
of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the
bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, “municipal socialism”, it is
because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule,
does not interfere with the Important sources of its wealth, but
extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the
bourgeoisie itself allows the “population” to manage. It does riot need more than a slight acquaintance with
“municipal socialism” in the West to know that any attempt on
the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the
boundaries of their normal, i. e., minor, petty activities, which give no
substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with
capital , is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the
central authorities, of the bourgeois state.

And it is this fundamental mistake, this philistine opportunism of the
West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that Is taken over
by our advocates of municipalisation.

“ Municipal socialism” means socialism in matters of local government . Anything that goes beyond the limits of
local interests, beyond the limits of state administration , i. e., anything that affects the main sources of
revenue of the ruling classes and the principal means of securing their
rule, anything that affects not the administration of the state, but the
structure of the state, thereby goes beyond the sphere of “municipal socialism”. But our wiseacres evade
this acute national issue, this question of the land, which affects the
vital interests of the ruling classes in the most direct way, by
relegating it to the sphere of “local government questions”. In the West they municipalise horse trains and
slaughter-houses, so why should we not municipalise the best half of all
the land?—argues the Russian petty intellectual. That would serve
both in the event of restoration and in the event of incomplete
democratisation of the central government!

And so we get agrarian socialism in a bourgeois revolution, a socialism
of the most petty-bourgeois kind, one that counts on blunting the
class struggle on vital issues by relegating the latter
to the domain of petty questions affecting only local government. In fact,
the question of the disposal of one half of the best land in the country is
neither a local question nor a question of administration. It is a question
that affects the whole state, a question of the structure, not only of the
landlord, but of the bourgeois state. And to try to entice the people with
the idea that “municipal socialism” can be developed in
agriculture be fore the socialist revolution is accomplished is to practise
the most inadmissible kind of demagogy. Marxism permits nationalisation to
be included in the programme of a bourgeois revolution because
nationalisation is a bourgeois measure, because absolute rent hinders the
development of capitalism; private ownership of the land is a hindrance to
capitalism. But to include the municipalisation of the big estates in the
programme of the bourgeois revolution, Marxism must be remodelled into
Fabian intellectualist opportunism.

It is here that we see the difference between petty-bourgeois and
proletarian methods in the bourgeois revolution. The petty bourgeoisie,
even the most radical—our Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries
included—anticipates that after the bourgeois revolution
there will be no class struggle, but universal prosperity and
peace. Therefore, it “builds its nest” in advance, it introduces plans for petty-bourgeois reforms in the bourgeois revolution,
talks about various “norms” arid “regulations” with regard to landownership, about strengthening the labour principle and small
farming, etc. The petty-bourgeois method is the method of building up relations
making for the greatest possible degree of social peace. The proletarian
method is exclusively that of clearing the path of all that is
medieval, clearing it for the class struggle . Therefore, the
proletarian can leave it to the small proprietors to discuss
“norms” of landownership; the proletarian is interested only in
the abolition of the landlord latifundia, the abolition of private
ownership of land, that last barrier to the class struggle in
agriculture. In the bourgeois revolution we are interested not in
petty-bourgeois reformism, not in a future “nest” of tranquil
used small farmers, but in the conditions for the proletarian struggle
against all petty-bourgeois tranquillity on a bourgeois basis.

It is this anti-proletarian spirit that municipalisation introduces
into the programme of the bourgeois agrarian revolution; for,
despite the deeply fallacious opinion of the Mensheviks, municipalisation
does not extend and sharpen the class, struggle, but,. on the contrary,
blunts it. It blunts it, too, by assuming that local democracy is
possible without the complete democratisation of the centre. It also blunts
it with the idea of “municipal socialism”, because the latter
is conceivable in bourgeois society only away from the high road of the struggle, only in minor, local, unimportant questions on
which even the bourgeoisie may yield, may reconcile itself to
without losing the possibility of preserving its class rule.

The working class must give bourgeois society the purest, most consistent and
most thorough-going programme of bourgeois revolution, including the bourgeois
nationalisation of the land. The proletariat scornfully rejects pettybourgeois reformism in the bourgeois revolution; we are interested in freedom
for the struggle, not in freedom for philistine bliss.

Naturally, the opportunism of the intelligentsia in the workers’ party
takes a different line. Instead of the broad revolutionary programme of
bourgeois revolution, attention is focused on a petty-bourgeois utopia: to
secure local democracy with incomplete democratisation at the centre, to
secure for petty reformism a little corner of municipal activity away from
great “turmoil”, and to evade the extraordinarily acute conflict over the land by following the recipe of the anti-Semites,
i. e., by relegating an important national issue to the domain of petty,
local questions.

---
Notes:
[1]
The Peasant Question and Social-Democracy , p. 66. — Lenin

[2]
K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence , Moscow,
p. 537.

[3]
K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works , Vol. 1, 1955;
p. 578.