V. I.

Lenin

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

5. Criticism of Private Landownership from the Standpoint of the
Development of Capitalism

The erroneous repudiation of absolute rent, of the form in which private landed
property is realised in capitalist incomes, led to an important defect in
Social-Democratic literature and in the whole of the Social-Democratic position
on the agrarian question in the Russian revolution. Instead of taking the
criticism of private landownership into their own hands, instead of basing this
criticism on an economic analysis, an analysis of definite economic evolution,
our Social-Democrats, following Maslov, surrendered this criticism to the
Narodniks. The result was an extreme theoretical vulgarisation of Marxism and
the distortion of its propagandist tasks in the revolution. The criticism of private
landownership in speeches in the Duma, in propaganda and agitational
literature, etc., was made only from the Narodnik, i.e., from the
petty-bourgeois, quasi-socialist, point of view. The Marxists were unable
to pick out the real core of this petty-bourgeois ideology, having failed
to understand that their task was to introduce the historical element into
the examination of the question, and to replace the point of view of the
petty bourgeois (the abstract idea of equalisation, justice, etc.) by the
point of view of the proletariat on the real roots of the struggle against
private ownership of land in developing capitalist society. The Narodnik
thinks that repudiation of private landownership is repudiation of
capitalism. That is wrong. The repudiation of private landownership
expresses the demands for the purest capitalist development. And we have to
revive in the minds of Marxists the, “forgotten words” of Marx,
who criticised private landownership from the point of view of the
conditions of capitalist economy.

Marx directed such criticism not only against big land ownership, but
also against small landownership. The free ownership of land by the small
peasant is a necessary concomitant of small production in agriculture under
certain historical conditions. A. Finn was quite right in emphasising this
in opposition to Maslov. But the recognition of this historical necessity,
which has been proved by experience , does not relieve the Marxist
of the duty of making an all-round appraisal of small landownership. Real
freedom of such landownership is inconceivable without the free purchase
and sale of land. Private ownership of land implies the necessity of
spending capital on purchasing land. On this point Marx, in Volume III of
Capital , wrote:

“One of the specific evils of small-scale agriculture, where it is combined
with free landownership, arises from the cultivator’s investing capital
in the purchase of land” (III, 2, 342). “The expenditure of
capital in the price of the land withdraws this capital from cultivation” (ibid., 341). [1] “ The expenditure of money-capital for the purchase of land, then, is not an
investment of agricultural capital. It is a decrease pro tanto in the
capital which small peas ants can employ in their own sphere of production. It reduces pro tanto the size of their means of production and thereby
narrows the economic basis of reproduction. it subjects the small peasant to the
money-lender, since credit proper occurs but rarely in this sphere in
general. It is a hindrance to agriculture, even where such purchase
takes place in the case of large landed estates. It contradicts in fact the
capitalist mode of production, which is on the whole indifferent to whether the
landowner is in debt, no matter whether he has inherited or purchased his estate” (344-45). [2]

Thus, both mortgage and usury are, so to speak, forms of
capital’s evasion of the difficulties which private land
ownership creates for the free penetration of capital into agriculture. In
commodity production society it is impossible to conduct economy without
capital. The peasant, and his ideologist the Narodnik, cannot help
realising this. Hence, the question boils down to whether capital can be
freely invested in agriculture directly, or through the medium of the
usurer and the credit institutions. The peasant and the Narodnik, who,
partly, are not aware of the complete domination of capital in modern
society, and, partly, pull the cap of illusions and dreams over their eyes
in order to shut out the unpleasant reality, turn their thoughts towards
outside financial aid. Clause 15 of the Land Bill of the 104 reads as
follows: “Persons receiving land from the national fund and lacking
sufficient means to acquire the necessary agricultural equipment must be
given state assistance in the form of loans and grants.” Without a
doubt, such financial assistance would be necessary if Russian agriculture
were reorganised by a victorious peasant revolution. Kautsky, in his book
The Agrarian Question in Russia , quite rightly emphasises
this. But what we are discussing now is the social-economic significance of
all these “loans and grants”, which the Narodnik overlooks. The
state can only be an intermediary in transferring the money from the
capitalists; but the state itself can obtain this money only from the
capitalists. Consequently, even under the best possible organisation of
state assistance, the domination of capital is not removed in the least,
and the old question remains: what are the possible forms of investment of
capital in agriculture?

And that question inevitably leads to the Marxist criticism of the
private ownership of land. That form of ownership is a hindrance to the free investment of capital in
the land. Either complete freedom for this investment— in which case:
abolition of private landownership, i.e., the nationalisation of the land;
or the preservation of private landownership—in which case:
penetration of capital by roundabout ways, namely, the mortgaging
of land by landlords and peasants, the enslavement of the peasant by the
usurer, the renting of land to tenants who own capital.

Marx says: “Here, in small-scale agriculture, the price of land, a form
and result of private landownership, appears as a barrier to production
itself. In large-scale agriculture, and large estates operating on a capitalist
basis, ownership likewise acts as a barrier, because it limits the tenant farmer
in his productive investment of capital, which in the final analysis benefits
not him, but the landlord.” ( Das Kapital , III. Band,
2. Teil,

S. 346-47.) [3]

Consequently, the abolition of private landownership is the maximum
that can be done in bourgeois society for the removal of all obstacles to
the free investment of capital in agriculture and to the free flow of
capital from one branch of production to another. The free, wide, and rapid
development of capitalism, complete freedom for the class struggle, the
disappearance of all superfluous intermediaries who make. agriculture
something like the “sweated” industries—that is what nationalisation of the land implies under the capitalist system of
production.

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Notes:
[1]
Ibid., p. 787.

[2]
Ibid., p. 790.

[3]
Ibid., p. 792.