V. I. Lenin

Plans for an Article “The Peasantry and Social-Democracy” {2}

The Peasantry and Social-Democracy

[SQUIGLY]

Marxist Theory and the Social-Democratic Programme

{ 1.

The agrarian question in
West-European Social-Democracy. David, etc.

{ 2.

” ” in Russia: both the old Narodniks and the liberals and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries.
Practical importance during reforms.

3.

Large- andsmall- scaleproduction .

Auhagen

Klawki

etc. Conclusions concerning maintenance of labourers, cattle and land .

Denmark (David).

4.
Co-operatives . David , etc. French reactionaries:

Rocquigny

Goltz

Buchenberger.

5. Russia’s specific features.

Together with the peasant bourgeoisie against the land owners.

” ” the urban proletariat against the peasant bourgeoisie.

6.

The importance of Social-Democratic agitation among the peasants,
especially in periods of political revival. Development of
class-consciousness, democratic and Social-Democratic thinking among the
peasants.

1.

Marxist theory (α) on the condition, evolution and role of the
peasantry—and (β) the Social-Democratic programme. Closely
bound up.

2. The urgency of the peasant question. The agrarian pro grammes of the
Social-Democratic parties: the French (petty-bourgeois character. Engels’s
critique {3} ), the German (1895. Breslau, opportunist and revolutionary wings), Russian...
(Critics. “ David .”). (Bulgakov)....

3. It is the Russian agrarian programme of the Social-Democrats that
especially distinguishes them from the Narodniks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries .

4. The principles of Marxist theory concerning th& peasantry (cf. The Development of Capitalism , {1} quotations from Marx). (1) the role of
large-scale production; (2) the peasant’s petty-bourgeois character;
(3) his past (—) and future (+). Add K. Kautsky, The Social Revolution .

5. Large- and small-scale production in agriculture....

Stumpfe. Souchon . }}

From MS. : Hecht , Auhagen, Klawki, Baden, German statistics....

6. Conclusion: the importance of the maintenance of labourers, cattle and land.

7. Add: Huschke, Haggard, Baudrillart, Lecouteux, Prussian Inquiry ,
Bavarian and Hessen inquiries, Hubach.

8. Debt. Prussian statistics .

9. Co-operatives. General statement of the question. Rocquigny, Goltz,
Buchenberger, Haggard.

Statistical data: German and Russian (communal lease).

Denmark .

10. Conclusions concerning the West.

11. Russia’s specific features.... On two flanks.

The peasant bourgeoisie and the rural proletariat. Relics of serfdom ,
and the struggle against the bourgeoisie.

12.

Together with the peasant bourgeoisie against the landowners, etc.

” ” the urban proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

}} connect with cut-off lands.

13.

Practical importance of the agrarian question in the possibly immediate
future:

Exposure of class contradictions in the countryuide. Democratic and
Social-Democratic agitation and propaganda.

---
Notes:
{1}
See present edition, Vol. 3.— Ed .

{2}
There is no information about Lenin’s having either written the work or
given a lecture on the subject. The date has been approximated from the
fact that the MS. is on the reverse of the MS. of Lenin’s remarks to Rosa
Luxemburg’s article “The Organisational Questions of Russian
Social-Democracy”, which was published in No. 69 of Iskra on
July 10, 1904.

The material on the study of the works by authors whom Lenin mentions
in-the two plans is published in Lenin Miscellany XXXII . This
material was also used by Lenin for his lectures on “Marxist Views of the
Agrarian Question in Europe and Russia”, which he gave at the Russian
Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris from February 10 to 13 (23 to
26), 1903 (see Lenin Miscellany XIX , pp. 225–48).

p. 129

{3}
Engels criticised the agrarian programmes of the French and German
Social-Democratic parties in his work The Peasant Question in France and Germany (see Marx and Engels, Selected Works , Vol. II,
Moscow, 1962, pp. 420–40).

p. 130