V. I.

Lenin

Capitalism in Agriculture

I

In Chapter IX of his book (“The Growing Difficulties of Commercial
Agriculture”) Kautsky proceeds to analyse the contradictions
inherent in capitalist agriculture. From the objections which Mr. Bulgakov
raises against this chapter, which we shall examine later, it is evident
that the critic has not quite properly understood the general significance
of these “difficulties.” There are “difficulties” which,
while being an “obstacle” to the full development of rational
agriculture, at the same time stimulate the development of
capitalist agriculture. Among the “difficulties” Kautsky
points, for example, to the depopulation of the countryside. Undoubtedly,
the migration from the countryside of the best and most intelligent
workers is an “obstacle” to the full development of rational
agriculture; but it is equally indubitable that the farmers combat this
obstacle by developing technique , e.g., by introducing machinery.

Kautskyinvestigates the following “difficulties”: a) ground
rent; b) right of inheritance; c) limitation of right of inheritance;
entailment ( fideicommissum, Anerbenrecht ) [15] ;

d) the exploitation of the
countryside by the town; e) depopulation of the countryside.

Groundrent is that part of surplus-value which remains after the average
profit on invested capital is deducted. The monopoly of landed property
enables the landowner to appropriate this surplus, and the price of land
(=capitalised rent) keeps rent at the level it has once
reached. Clearly, rent “hinders” the complete rationalisation
of agriculture: under the tenant farmer system the incentive to
improvements, etc., becomes weaker, and under the mortgage system the major part of the
capital has to be invested, not in production, but in the purchase of
land. In his objection Mr. Bulgakov points out, first, that there is
“nothing terrible” in the growth of mortgage debts. He forgets, however, that Kautsky, not “in another sense,” but
precisely in this sense, has pointed to the necessary increase in
mortgages even when agriculture is prospering (see above, First Article,
II). Here, Kautsky does not raise the question as to whether an increase
in mortgages is “terrible” or not, but asks what difficulties
prevent capitalism from accomplishing its mission. Secondly, in
Mr. Bulgakov’s opinion, “it is hardly correct to regard increased
rent only as an obstacle.... The rise in rent, the possibility of raising
it, serves as an independent incentive to agriculture, stimulating
progress of technique and every other form” of progress
(“process” is obviously a misprint). Stimuli to progress in
capitalist agriculture are:

population growth, growth of competition, and growth of, industry; rent,
however, is a tribute exacted by the landowner from social development,
from the growth of technique. It is, therefore, incorrect to state, that
the rise in rent is an “ independent incentive” to progress. Theoretically, it is possible for capitalist production to
exist in the absence of private property in land, i.e., with the land
nationalised (Kautsky, S. 207), when absolute rent would not exist at
all, and differential rent would be appropriated by the state. This
would not weaken the incentive to agronomic progress; on the contrary,
it would greatly increase it.

“Therecan be nothing more erroneous than to think that it is in the
interest of agriculture to force up ( in die Höhetreiben ) the
prices of estates or artificially to keep them at a high level,” says
Kautsky. “This is in the interest of the present ( augenblicklichen ) landowners, of the mortgage banks and the real
estate speculators, but not in the interest of agriculture, and least of
all in the interest of its future, of the future generation of
farmers” (S. 199). As to the price of land, it is capitalised rent.

Thesecond difficulty confronting commercial agriculture is that it
necessarily requires private property in land. This leads to the
situation in which the land is either split up on passing to heirs (such
parcellisation even leading in some places to technical retrogression) or is burdened
by mortgages (when the heir who receives the land pays the co-heirs money
capital which he obtains by a mortgage on the land). Mr. Bulgakov
reproaches Kautsky for “overlooking, in his exposition, the positive
side” of the mobilisation of the land. This reproach is absolutely
ground less; for in the historical part of his book (in particular Chapter
III of Part I, which deals with feudal agriculture and the reasons for its
supersession by capitalist agriculture), as well as in the practical part, [1]

Kautsky clearly pointed out to his readers the positive side and the
historical necessity of private property in land, of the subjection of
agriculture to competition, and, consequently, of the mobilisation of the
land. The other reproach that Mr. Bulgakov directs at Kautsky, namely,
that he does not investigate the problem of “the different degrees
of growth of the population in different places,” is one that we simply
cannot understand. Did Mr. Bulgakov really expect to find studies in
demography in Kautsky’s book?

Withoutdwelling on the question of entailment, which, after what has been
said above, represents nothing new, we shall proceed to examine the
question of the exploitation of the countryside by the town. Mr. Bulgakov’s assertion that Kautsky “does not contrapose the
positive to the negative sides and, primarily, the importance of the town
as a market for agricultural produce,” is in direct contradiction to the
facts. Kautsky deals very definitely with the importance of the town as a
market for agriculture on the very first page of the chapter
which investigates “modern agriculture” (S. 30, et seq.). It
is precisely to “urban industry” (S. 292) that Kautsky ascribes the principal role in the transformation of agriculture, in its
rationalisation, etc. [2]

Thatis why we cannot possibly understand how Mr. Bulgakov could repeat in
his article (page 32, Nachalo , No. 3) these very ideas as i/in opposition to Kautsky! This is a particularly striking example of this stern critic’s false exposition of
the book he is subjecting to criticism. “It must not be forgotten,”
Mr. Bulgakov says to Kautsky admonishingly, that “part of the values
[which flow to the towns] returns to the countryside.” Anyone would think
that Kautsky forgets this elementary truth. As a matter of fact Kautsky
distinguishes between the flow of values (from the countryside to the
town) with or without an equivalent re turn much more clearly than
Mr. Bulgakov attempts to do. In the first place, Kautsky examines the
“flow of commodity values from the country to the town without
equivalent return ( Gegenleistung )” (S. 210) (rent which is spent
in the towns, taxes, interest on loans obtained in city banks) and justly
regards this as the economic exploitation of the countryside by the
town. Kautsky further discusses the question of the efflux of values with
an equivalent return, i.e., the exchange of agricultural produce for
manufactured goods. He says: “From the point of view of the law of
value, this efflux does not signify the exploitation of agriculture [3]

;

actually, however, in the same way as the above-mentioned factors, it
leads to its agronomic (stofflichen ) exploitation, to the
impoverishment of the land in nutritive substances” (S. 211).

Asfor the agronomic exploitation of the countryside by the town, here too
Kautsky adheres to one of the fundamental propositions of the theory of
Marx and Engels, i.e., that the antithesis between town and country
destroys the necessary correspondence and interdependence between
agriculture and industry, and that with the transition of capitalism to a
higher form this antithesis must disappear. [4]

Mr. Bulgakov thinks that Kautsky’s opinion on the agronomic exploitation
of the country by the town is a “strange” one; that, “at
all events, Kautsky has here stepped on the soil of absolute
fantasy” (sic!!!). What surprises us is that Mr. Bulgakov
ignores the fact that Kautsky’s opinion, which he criticises, is identical
with one of the fundamental ideas of Marx and Engels. The reader would be
right in concluding that Mr. Bulgakov considers the idea of the abolition
of the antithesis between town and country to be “absolute fantasy.”
If such indeed is the critic’s opinion, then we emphatically disagree with
him and go over to the side of “fantasy” (actually, not to the
side of fantasy, of course, but to that of a more profound criticism of
capitalism). The view that the idea of abolishing the antithesis between
town and country is a fantasy is not new by any means. It is the ordinary
view of the bourgeois economists. It has even been borrowed by several
writers with a more profound outlook. For ex ample, Dühring was of
the opinion that antagonism between town and country “is inevitable
by the very nature of things.”

Further,Mr. Bulgakov is “astonished” (I) at the fact that
Kautsky refers to the growing incidence of epidemics among plants and
animals as one of the difficulties confronting commercial agriculture and
capitalism. “What has this to do with capitalism...?” asks
Mr. Bulgakov. “Could any higher social organisation abolish the
necessity of improving the breeds of cattle?” We in our turn are
astonished at Mr. Bulgakov’s failure to understand Kautsky’s perfectly
clear idea. The old breeds of plants and animals created by natural
selection are being superseded by “improved” breeds created by
artificial selection. Plants and animals are be coming more susceptible
and more demanding; with the present means of communication epidemics
spread with astonishing rapidity. Meanwhile, farming remains individual,
scattered, frequently small (peasant) farming, lacking knowledge and
resources. Urban capitalism strives to provide all the resources of modern
science for the development of the technique of agriculture, but it leaves
the social position of the producers at the old miserable level; it does
not systematically and methodically transplant urban culture to the rural
districts. No higher social organisation will abolish the necessity of improving the breeds of cattle (and Kautsky, of
course, did not think of saying anything so absurd); but the more
technique develops, the more susceptible the breeds of cattle and plants [5] become, the more the present capitalist social organisation suffers from
lack of social control and from the degraded state of the peasants and
workers.

Thelast “difficulty” confronting commercial agriculture that
Kautsky mentions is the “depopulation of the countryside,” the
absorption by the towns of the best, the most energetic and most
intelligent labour forces. Mr. Bulgakov is of the opinion that in its
general form this proposition “is at all events incorrect,” that
“the present development of the urban at the expense of the rural
population in no sense expresses a law of development of capitalist
agriculture,” but the migration of the agricultural population of
industrial, exporting countries overseas, to the colonies. I think that
Mr. Bulgakov is mistaken. The growth of the urban (more generally:
industrial) population at the expense of the rural population is
not only a present-day phenomenon but a general phenomenon which expresses
precisely the law of capitalism. The theoretical grounds of this
law are, as I have pointed out elsewhere, [6] first, that the growth of social division of labour wrests from primitive
agriculture an increasing number of branches of industry, [7] and, secondly, that the variable capital required to work a given plot of land,
on the whole, diminishes (cf. Das Kapital , III, 2, S. 177;
Russian translation,

p. 526, [16]
which I quote In my hook, The Development of Capitalism , pp. 4 and

444 [8]

).

We have indicated above that in certain cases and certain periods we observed an increase in the
variable capital required for the cultivation of a given plot of land; but
this does not affect the correctness of the general law. Kautsky, of
course, would not think of denying that not in every case does the
relative diminution of the agricultural population become absolute
diminution; that the degree of this absolute diminution is also determined
by the growth of capitalist colonies. In relevant places in his book
Kautsky very clearly points to this growth of capitalist colonies which
flood Europe with cheap grain. (“The flight from the land of the
rural population (Landflucht ) which leads to the depopulation of
the European countryside, constantly brings, not only to the towns, but
also to the colonies, fresh crowds of robust country dwellers...” S. 242.)
The phenomenon of industry depriving agriculture of its strongest, most
energetic, and most intelligent workers is general, not only in
industrial, but also In agricultural, countries; not only in Western
Europe, but also in America and in Russia. The contradiction between the
culture of the towns and the barbarism of the countryside which capitalism
creates inevitably leads to this. The “argument” that “a decrease in the agricultural population side by side with a
general increase in the population is inconceivable without the
importation of large quantities of grain” is, in Mr. Bulgakov’s
opinion, “obvious.” But in my opinion this argument is not only not
obvious, but wrong. A decrease in the agricultural population side by side
with a general increase in the population (growth of the towns) is quite
conceivable without grain imports (the productivity of agricultural labour
in creases and this enables a smaller number of workers to produce as much
as and even more than was formerly produced). A general increase in the
population parallel with a decrease in the agricultural population and a decrease (or a
disproportionate increase) in the quantity of agricultural products is
also conceivable —“conceivable” because the nourishment
of the people has deteriorated under capitalism.

Mr. Bulgakov asserts that the increase of the medium- sized peasant farms
in Germany in the period 1882-95, a fact established by Kautsky, which he
connected with the other fact that these farms suffer least from a
shortage of labour, “is capable of shaking the whole structure” of Kautsky’s argument. Let us examine Kautsky’s
statements more closely.

Accordingto agricultural statistics, the largest increase in area in the
period 1882-95 occurred in the farms of from 5 to 20 hectares. In 1882
these farms occupied 28.8 per cent of the total area of all farms and in
1895, 29.9 per cent. This increase in the total area of medium-sized
peasant farms was accompanied by a decrease in the area of big peasant
farms (20 to 100 hectares; 1882—31.1 per cent, 1895—30.3 per
cent). “These figures,” says Kautsky, “glad den the hearts of
all good citizens who regard the peasantry as the strongest bulwark of the
present system. ’And so, it does not move, this agriculture,’ they exclaim
in triumph; ’Marx’s dogma does not apply to it."’ This increase in the
medium-sized peasant farms is interpreted as the beginning of a new era of
prosperity for peasant farming.

“Butthis prosperity is rooted in a bog,” Kautsky replies to these
good citizens. “It arises, not out of the well-being of the
peasantry, but out of the depression of agriculture as a
whole” (230). Shortly before this Kautsky said that, “not
withstanding all the technical progress which has been made, In some places [Kautsky’s italics] there is a decline in agriculture; there
can be no doubt of that” (228). This decline is leading, for
example, to the revival of feudalism—to attempts to tie the workers
to the land and impose certain duties upon them. Is it surprising that
backward forms of agriculture should revive on the soil of this
“depression”? That the peasantry, which in general is distinguished
from workers employed in large-scale production by its lower level of
requirements, greater ability to starve, and greater exertion while at
work, can hold out longer during a crisis? [9] “The agrarian crisis affects all agricultural classes that produce
commodities; it does not stop at the middle peasant” (S. 231).

Onewould think that all these propositions of Kautsky are so clear that
it is impossible not to understand them. Nevertheless, the critic has
evidently failed to understand them. Mr. Bulgakov does not come forward
with an opinion:
he does not tell us how he explains this increase in the medium-sized peasant farms, but he ascribes to Kautsky the opinion that “the
development of the capitalist mode of production is ruining agriculture.”
And Mr. Bulgakov exclaims angrily:

“Kautsky’s assertion that agriculture is being destroyed is wrong,
arbitrary, unproved, and contradicts all the main facts of reality,” etc.,
etc.

Tothis we can only say that Mr. Bulgakov conveys Kautsky’s ideas altogether incorrectly. Kautsky does not state that the development
of capitalism is ruining agriculture; he says the opposite. Only by
being very inattentive in reading Kautsky’s book can one deduce from his
words on the depression (=crisis) in agriculture and on the technical
retrogression to be observed in some places ( nota bene ) that he speaks of the “destruction,” the
“doom” of agriculture. In Chapter X, which deals especially
with the question of over seas competition (i.e., the main reason for
the agrarian crisis), Kautsky says: “The impending crisis, of
course (natürlich ), need not necessarily (braucht nicht ) ruin the industry which it affects. It does so only in very
rare cases. As a general rule, a crisis merely causes a change in the
existing property relations in the capitalist sense” (273-74). This observation made in connection with the crisis in the
agricultural industries clearly reveals Kautsky’s general view of the
significance of a crisis. In the same chapter Kautsky again expresses
the view in relation to the whole of agriculture: “What has been
said above does not give one the least right to speak about the doom of
agriculture (Man braucht deswegen noch langenlcht von einem Untergang der Landwirtschaft zu sprechen ), but where the modern
mode of production has taken a firm hold its conservative character has
disappeared for ever. The continuation of the old routine (das Verharren beim Alten ) means certain ruin for the farmer; he must
constantly watch the development of technique and continuously adapt his
methods of production to the new conditions.... Even in the rural
districts economic life, which hitherto has with strict uniformity moved
in an eternal rut, has dropped into a state of constant
revolutionisation, a state that is characteristic of the capitalist mode
of production” (289).

Mr. Bulgakov “does not understand” how trends toward the
development of productive forces in agriculture can be combined with trends that increase the difficulties of commercial agriculture. What
is there unintelligible in this? Capitalism in both agriculture and
industry gives an enormous impetus to the development of productive
forces; but it is precisely this development which, the more it proceeds,
causes the contradictions of capitalism to become more acute and creates
new “difficulties” for the system. Kautsky develops one of the
fundamental ideas of Marx, who categorically emphasised the progressive
historical role of agricultural capitalism (the rationalisation of
agriculture, the separation of the land from the farmer, the emancipation
of the rural population from the relations of master and slave, etc.), at
the same time no less categorically pointing to the impoverishment and
oppression of the direct producers and to the fact that capitalism is
incompatible with the requirements of rational agriculture. It is very
strange indeed that Mr. Bulgakov, who admits that his “general
social-philosophic world outlook is the same as

Kautsky’s,” [10] should fail to note that Kautsky here develops a fundamental idea of Marx. The readers
of Nachalo must inevitably remain in perplexity over
Mr. Bulgakov’s attitude towards these fundamental ideas and wonder how, in
view of the identity of their general world outlook, he can say:
“De principiis non est disputandum ”!!? [11]

We permit ourselves not to believe Mr. Bulgakov’s statement; we consider that an
argument between him and other Marxists is possible precisely because of
the community of these “ principia .” In saying that capitalism rationalises agriculture and that industry provides machinery
for agriculture, etc., Mr. Bulgakov merely repeats one of these
“ principia .” Only he should not have said “quite the opposite” in this connection. Readers might think that Kautsky holds
a different opinion, whereas he very emphatically and definitely develops
these fundamental ideas of Marx in his book. He says: “It is
precisely industry which has created the technical and scientific
conditions for new, rational agriculture. It is precisely industry which
has revolutionised agriculture by means of machines and artificial fertilisers, by means of the microscope and the chemical
laboratory, giving rise in this way to the technical superiority of
large-scale capitalist production over small- scale, peasant
production” (S. 292). Thus, Kautsky does not fall into the
contradiction in which we find Mr. Bulgakov bogged: on the one hand,
Mr. Bulgakov admits that “capitalism [i.e., production carried on
with the aid of wage- labour, i.e., not peasant, but large-scale
production?] rationalises agriculture,” while on the other, he argues that
“it is not large-scale production which is the vehicle of this
technical progress”!

II

ChapterX of Kautsky’s book deals with the question of overseas
competition and the industrialisation of agriculture. Mr. Bulgakov treats
this chapter in a very offhand manner: “Nothing particularly new or
original, more or less well-known main facts,” etc., he says, leaving in
the background the fundamental question of the conception of the agrarian
crisis, its essence and significance. And yet this question is of enormous
theoretical importance.

Theconception of the agrarian crisis inevitably follows from the general
conception of agrarian evolution which Marx presented and on which Kautsky
enlarges in detail. Kautsky sees the essence of the agrarian crisis in the
fact that, owing to the competition of countries which produce very cheap
grain, agriculture in Europe has lost the opportunity of shifting to the
masses of consumers the burdens imposed on it by the private ownership of
land and capitalist commodity production. From now on agriculture in
Europe “ must itself bear them [these burdens], and this is what the present agrarian crisis amounts to” (S. 239,
Kautsky’s italics). Ground rent is the main burden. In Europe, ground rent
has been raised by preceding historical development to an extremely high
level (both differential and absolute rent) and is fixed in the
price of land. [12]

On the other hand, in the colonies (America, Argentina, and others), insofar as they remain
colonies, we see free land occupied by new settlers, either
entirely gratis or for an insignificant price; more over, the virginal
fertility of this land reduces production costs to a minimum. Up to now,
capitalist agriculture in Europe has quite naturally transferred the
burden of excessively high rents to the consumer (in the form of high
grain prices); now, however, the burden of these rents falls upon the
farmers and the landowners themselves and ruins them. [13]

Thus, the agrarian crisis has upset, and continues to upset, the prosperity which capitalist
landed property and capitalist agriculture formerly enjoyed. Hitherto
capitalist landed property has exacted an ever-increasing tribute from
social development; and it fixed the level of this tribute in the price of
land. Now it has to forego this tribute. [14]

Capitalist agriculture has now been reduced to the state of instability that is characteristic of
capitalist industry and is compelled to adapt itself to new market
conditions. Like every crisis, the agrarian crisis is ruining a large
number of farmers, is bringing about important changes in the established
property relations, and in some places is leading to technical
retrogression, to the revival of medieval relations and forms of
economy. Taken as a whole, however, it is accelerating social
evolution, ejecting patriarchal stagnation from its last refuge, and
making necessary the further specialisation of agriculture (a principal
factor of agricultural progress in capitalist society), the further
application of machinery, etc. On the whole, as Kautsky shows by data for several countries, in Chapter IV of his book, even in Western
Europe, instead of the stagnation in agriculture in the period 1880-90, we
see technical progress. We say even in Western Europe, because in
America, for example, this progress is still more marked.

Inshort, there are no grounds for regarding the agrarian crisis as an
obstacle to capitalism and capitalist development.

---
Notes:
[1]
Kautsky emphatically expressed his opposition to every medieval
restriction upon the mobilisation of the land, to entailment
(fideicommissum, Anerbenrecht ), and to the preservation of the
medieval peasant commune (S. 332), etc.
— Lenin

[2]
Cf. also S. 214, where Kautsky discusses the role urban capital plays in
the rationalisation of agriculture.
— Lenin

[3]
Let the reader compare Kautsky’s clear statement as quoted above with the
following “critical” remark by Mr. Bulgakov: “If Kautsky
regards the giving of grain to the non-agricultural population by direct
grain p reducers as exploitation,” etc. One cannot believe that a critic
who has read Kautsky’s book at all attentively could have written that
“if”!
— Lenin

[4]
It goes without saying that the opinion that it is necessary to abolish
the antithesis between town and country in a society of associated
producers does not in the least contradict the admission that the
attraction of the population to industry from agriculture plays a
historically progressive role. I had occasion to discuss this
elsewhere ( Studies , p. 81, footnote 69). (See present edition,
Vol. 2, p. 229.— Ed .)
— Lenin

[5]
That is why in the practical part of his book Kautsky recommends the
sanitary inspection of cattle and of the conditions of their maintenance
(S. 397).
— Lenin

[6]
The Development of Capitalism in Russia , Chapter I, Section II,
and Chapter VIII, Section II. (See present edition, Vol. 3.— Ed .)
— Lenin

[7]
Pointing to this circumstance, Mr. Bulgakov says that “the
agricultural population may diminish relatively [his italics]
even when agriculture is flourishing.” Not only “may,” but
necessarily must in capitalist society.... “The relative
diminution [of the agricultural population] merely (sic! )
indicates here a growth of new branches of people’s labour,” concludes
Mr. Bulgakov. That “merely” is very strange. New branches of
industry do actually withdraw “the most energetic and most
intelligent labour forces” from agriculture. Thus, this simple
reason is sufficient to enable one to accept Kautsky’s general thesis as
being fully correct: the relative diminution of the rural population sufficiently confirms the correctness of the general
thesis (that capitalism withdraws the most energetic and most intelligent
labour forces from agriculture).
— Lenin

[8]
See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 40, 561.— Ed .

[9]
Kautsky says elsewhere: “The small farmers hold out longer in a
hopeless position. We have every reason to doubt that this is an advantage
of small-scale production” (S. 134).

Inpassing, let us mention data fully confirming Kautsky’s view that are
given by Koenig in his book, in which he describes in detail the condition
of English agriculture in a number of typical counties (Die Lage der englischen Landwirtschaft, etc. [The Condition of English Agriculture, etc.] , Jena, 1896, von Dr. F. Koenig). In this book we find any amount of evidence of overwork and under-consumption on the part of
the small farmers, as compared with hired labourers, but no evidence of
the opposite. We read, for instance, that the small farms pay
“because of immence (ungeheuer )

diligence and frugality” (88); the farm buildings of the small
farmers are inferior (107); the small landowners ( yeoman farmers
[these words are in English in the original.— Ed .])are worse
off than the tenant farmers (149); “their conditions are very
miserable (in Lincolnshire), their cottages being worse than those of the
labourers employed on the big farms, and some are in a very bad state. The
small landowners work harder and for longer hours than ordinary labourers,
but they earn less. They live more poorly and eat less meat ... their sons
and daughters work without pay and are badly clothed” (157). “The small farmers work like slaves; in the sum mer they
often work from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m.” (a report of the Chamber of Agriculture
in Boston, S. 158). “Without a doubt,” says a big farmer, “the
small man ( der kleine Mann ), who has little capital and on whose
farm all the work is done by members of his family, finds it easier to cut
down housekeeping expenses, while the big farmer must feed his labourers
equally well in bad years and good” (218). The small farmers (in
Ayrshire) “are extraordinarily ( ungeheuer ) diligent; their
wives and children do no less, and often more, work than the day
labourers; it is said that two of them will do as much work in a day as
three hired labourers” (231). “The life of the small tenant
farmer, who must work with his whole family, is the life of a slave”
(253). “Taken as a whole... the small farmers have evidently
withstood the crisis better than the big farmers; but this does not imply
that the small farm is more profitable. The reason, in our opinion, is
that the small man ( der kleine Mann ) utilises the unpaid
assistance of his family.... Usually ... the whole family of the small
farmer works on the farm.... The children are fed and clothed, and only
rarely do they get a definite daily wage” (277-78), etc., etc.
— Lenin

[10]
As for the philosophic world outlook, we do not know whether what
Mr. Bulgakov says is true. Kautsky does not seem to be an adherent of the
critical philosophy, as Mr. Bulgakov is.
— Lenin

[11]
In matters of principle there is no disputing.— Ed .

[12]
For the process of inflating and fixing rent see the apt remarks of Parvus in The World Market and the Agricultural Crisis. Parvus shares Kautsky’s main views on the crisis and on the
agrarian question generally.
— Lenin

[13]
Parvus, op. cit., p. 141, quoted in a review of Parvus’ book in
Nachalo , No. 3, p. 117. (See present volume,
p. 66.— Ed. ) We should add that the other
“difficulties” of commercial agriculture confronting Europe
affect the colonies to an incomparably smaller degree.
— Lenin

[14]
Absolute rent is the result of monopoly. “Fortunately, there is a
limit to the raising of absolute rent.... Until recent times it rose
steadily in Europe in the same way as differential rent. But overseas
competition bas undermined this monopoly to a very considerable extent. We
have no grounds for thinking that differential rent in Europe has suffered
as a result of overseas competition, except for a few counties in
England.... But absolute rent has dropped, and this has benefited ( zu gute gekommen ) primarily the working classes” (S. 80; cf. also
S. 328).
— Lenin

[15]
Fideicommissum —entailment of an estate. Under this system a
landed estate passed to the eldest son of the testator and could not be
mortgaged; divided, or sold in parte or in toto .

Anerbenrecht —apeasant variant of fideicommissum which gave the landed proprietor a somewhat greater right in respect of
the inherited estate but which forbade the division of the
inheritance. p. 146

[16]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, p. 622.