V. I.

Lenin

To the Rural Poor

An Explanation for the Peasants of What the Social-Democrats Want

5. What Improvements are the Social-Democrats Striving to Obtain for the
Whole People and for the Workers?

The Social-Democrats are fighting for the liberation of all the working
people from all robbery, oppression, and in justice. To become free the
working class must first of all become united. And to become united it
must have freedom to unite, have the right to unite, have political liberty. We have already said that autocratic government means
enslavement of the people by the officials and the police. Political
liberty is therefore needed by the whole people, except a handful of
courtiers and a few money-bags and high dignitaries who are received at Court. But most of all, political liberty
is needed by the workers and the peasants. The rich can escape the
self-will and the tyranny of officials and the police by buying them
off. The rich can make their complaints heard in the highest places. That
is why the police and the officials take much fewer liberties with the
rich than with the poor. The workers and the peasants have no money to buy
off the police or the officials; they have no one to complain to and are
not in a position to sue them in court. The workers and the peasants will
never rid themselves of the extortions, tyranny, and insults of the police
and the officials as long as there is no elective government , as
long as there is no national assembly of deputies. Only such a
national assembly of deputies can free the people from enslavement by the
officials. Every intelligent peasant must support the Social-Democrats,
who first and foremost demand of the tsarist government the convocation of a national assembly of deputies. The deputies must be
elected by all, irrespective of social-estate, irrespective of wealth or
poverty. The elections must be free, without any interference on the part
of the officials; they must be carried out under the supervision of such
that enjoy the people’s confidence, and not of police officers or the
rural superintendents. Under such conditions, deputies representing the
entire people will be able to discuss all the needs of the people, and
introduce a better state of affairs in Russia.

The Social-Democrats demand that the police be deprived of the power to
imprison anyone without trial. Officials must be severely punished for
arbitrarily arresting anyone. To put an end to their self-assumed power,
they must be chosen by the people, and everyone must have the right to
lodge a complaint against any official directly in a court. What is the
use of complaining to the rural superintendent about a police officer, or
to the governor about the rural superintendent? The rural superintendent
will, of course, always protect the police officer and the governor will
always protect the rural superintendent, while the complainant will get
into trouble. He runs a fair chance of being put into prison or deported
to Siberia. The officials will be curbed only. when everyone in Russia (as
in all other countries) has the right to complain both to the national
assembly and to the elected courts, and to speak freely of his needs, to write about them in
the newspapers.

The Russian people are still in feudal dependence upon the
officials. Without permission from the officials the people cannot call
meetings, or get books and newspapers printed. Is that not feudal
dependence? If meetings cannot be freely called, or books freely printed,
how can one obtain redress against the officials, or against the rich? Of
course, the officials suppress every book, every utterance that tells the
truth about the people’s poverty. The present pamphlet, too, has to be
printed by the Social-Democratic Party secretly and circulated secretly:
anyone who is found in possession of this pamphlet will make the
acquaintance of courts and prisons. But the Social-Democratic workers are
not afraid of this: they print more and more, and give the people more and
more truthful books to read. And no prisons, no persecution can halt the
fight for the people’s freedom!

The Social-Democrats demand that the social-estates be abolished, and that
all the citizens of the state enjoy exactly the same rights. Today the
social-estates are divided into tax-paying and non-tax-paying, into
privileged and non-privileged; we have blue blood and common blood; even
the birch has been retained for the common people. In no other country are
the workers and peasants in such a position of inferiority. In no country
except Russia are there different laws for different social-estates. It is
time the Russian people, too, demanded that every muzhik should possess
all the rights possessed by the nobility. Is it not a disgrace
that the birch should still be used and that a tax paying social-estate
should be in existence more than forty years after the abolition of
serfdom?

The Social-Democrats demand that the people shall have complete freedom of
movement and occupation. What does freedom of movement mean? It
means that the peasant should be free to go wherever he pleases, to move
to whatever place he wants to, to live in any village or town he chooses
with out having to ask for permission from anyone. It means that passports
should be abolished in Russia too (in other countries passports were
abolished long ago), that no local police officer or rural superintendent
should dare to hinder any peasant from settling or working wherever he pleases. The Russian peasant
is still so much the serf of the officials that he is not free to move to
a town, or to settle in a new district. The minister issues orders that
the governors should not allow unauthorised settlement! A
governor knows better than the peasant what place is good for the peasant!
The peas ant is a little child and must not move without permission of the
authorities! Is that not feudal dependence? Is it not an insult to the
people when any profligate nobleman is allowed to lord it over grown-up
farmers?

There is a book called Crop Failure and the Distress of the People (famine), written by the present “Minister of
Agriculture” Mr. Yermolov. This book says in so many words: the
peasant must not change residence as long as their worships the landlords
need hands. The minister says this quite openly, without the least
embarrassment: he thinks the peas ant will not hear what he is saying and
will not understand. Why allow people to go away when the landlords need
cheap labour? The more crowded the people are on the land the more that is
to the landlords’ advantage; the poorer the peasants are, the more cheaply
can they be hired and the more meekly will they submit to oppression of
every kind. Formerly, the bailiffs looked after the landlord’s interests,
now the rural superintendents and governors do that. Formerly, the
bailiffs ordered the flogging of peasants in the stables; now the rural
superintendent in the volost administration office orders the flogging.

The Social-Democrats demand that the standing army be abolished and that a
militia be established in its stead, that all the people be armed. A
standing army is an army that is divorced from the people and trained to
shoot down the people. If the soldier were not locked up for years in
barracks and inhumanly drilled there, would he ever agree to shoot down
his brothers, the workers and the peasants? Would he go against the
starving peasants? A standing army is not needed in the least to protect
the country from attack by an enemy; a people’s militia is sufficient. If
every citizen is armed, Russia need fear no enemy. And the people would be
relieved of the yoke of the military clique. The upkeep of this clique
costs hundreds of millions of rubles a year , and all this money
is collected from the people; that is why the taxes are so heavy and why it becomes increasingly difficult to live. The
military clique still further increases the power of the officials and
police over the people. This clique is needed to plunder foreign peoples,
for instance, to take the land from the Chinese. This does not ease but,
on the contrary, increases the people’s burden because of greater
taxation. The substitution of the armed nation for the standing army would
enormously ease the burden of all the workers and all the peasants.

Similarly, the abolition of indirect taxation , which the
Social-Democrats demand, would be an enormous relief. Indirect taxes are
such taxes that are not imposed directly on land or on a house but are
paid by the people indirectly , in the form of higher prices for
what they buy. The state imposes taxes on sugar, vodka, kerosene, matches,
and all sorts of articles of consumption; these taxes are paid to the
Treasury by the merchant or by the manufacturer, but, of course, he does
not pay it out of his own pocket, but out of the money his customers pay
him. The price of vodka, sugar, kerosene, and matches goes up, and every
purchaser of a bottle of vodka or of a pound of sugar has to pay the tax
in addition to the price of the goods. For instance, if, say, you pay
fourteen kopeks for a pound of sugar, four kopeks (approximately)
constitute the tax: the sugar-manufacturer has already paid the tax to the
Treasury and is now exacting from every customer the sum he has
paid. Thus, indirect taxes are taxes on articles of consumption, taxes
which are paid by the purchaser in the form of higher prices for the
articles he buys. It is sometimes said that indirect taxation is the
fairest form of taxation: you pay according to the amount you buy. But
this is not true. Indirect taxation is the most unfair form of taxation,
because it is harder for the poor to pay indirect taxes than it is for the
rich. The rich many s income is ten times or even a hundred times as large
as that of the peasant or worker. But does the rich man need a hundred
times as much sugar? Or ten times as much vodka, or matches, or kerosene?
Of course not! A rich family will buy twice, at most, three times as much
kerosene, vodka, or sugar as a poor family. But that means that the rich
man will pay a smaller part of his income in taxes than the poor
man. Let us suppose that the poor peasant’s income is two hundred rubles a year; let us suppose he buys sixty rubles’ worth of such
goods as are taxed and which are consequently dearer (the tax on sugar,
matches, kerosene, is an excise duty , i.e., the manufacturer pays
the duty before placing the goods on the market; in the case of vodka, a
state monopoly, the State simply raises the price; cotton goods, iron and
other goods have risen in price because cheap foreign goods are not
admitted into Russia unless a heavy duty is paid on them). Of these sixty
rubles twenty rubles will constitute the tax. Thus, out of every
ruble of his income the poor peas ant will pay ten kopeks in
indirect taxes (exclusive of direct taxes, land redemption payments,
quit-rent, land tax, Zemstvo, volost and mir taxes). The rich
peasant has an income of one thousand rubles; he will buy one hundred and
fifty rubles’ worth of taxed goods and pay fifty rubles in taxes
(included in the one hundred and fifty rubles). Thus, out of every ruble
of his income the rich peasant will pay only five kopeks in
indirect taxes. The richer the man, the smaller Is the share of
his income that he pays in indirect taxes. That is why indirect taxation
is the most unfair form of taxation. Indirect taxes are taxes on
the poor. The peas ants and workers together form nine-tenths of the
population and pay nine-tenths or eight-tenths of the total indirect
taxation. And, in all probability, the income of the peasants and workers
amounts to no more than four-tenths of the whole national income! And so,
the Social-Democrats demand the abolition of indirect taxation and the
introduction of a progressive tax on incomes and inheritances. That means that the higher the income the higher the
tax. Those who have an income of a thousand rubles must pay one kopek in
the ruble; if the income is two thousand, two kopeks in the ruble must be
paid, and so on. The smallest incomes (let us say incomes of under four
hundred rubles) do not pay anything at all. The richest pay the highest
taxes. Such a tax, an income-tax , or more exactly, a progressive income-tax , would be much fairer than indirect
taxes. And that is why the Social-Democrats are striving to secure the
abolition of indirect taxation and the introduction of a progressive
income-tax. Of course, all the property-owners, all the bourgeoisie,
object to this measure and resist it. Only through a firm alliance between
the rural poor and the urban workers can this improvement be won from the
bourgeoisie.

Finally, the free education of children, which the
Social-Democrats demand, would be a very important improvement for the
whole of the people, and for the rural poor in particular. Today there are
far fewer schools in the country side than in the towns, and everywhere it
is only the rich classes, only the bourgeoisie, who are in a position to
give their children a good education. Only free and compulsory education
for all children can get the people, at least to some extent, out
of their present state of ignorance. The rural poor suffer most from this
ignorance and stand in particular need of education. But, of course, we
need real, free education, and not the sort the officials and the priests
want to give.

The Social-Democrats further demand that everybody shall have full and
unrestricted right to profess any religion he pleases. Of the European
countries Russia and Turkey are the only ones which have retained shameful
laws against persons belonging to any other faith than the Orthodox, laws
against schismatics, sectarians, and Jews. These laws either totally ban a
certain religion, or prohibit its propagation, or deprive those who belong
to it of certain rights. All these laws are as unjust, as arbitrary and as
disgraceful as can be. Everybody must be perfectly free, not only to
profess whatever religion he pleases, but also to spread or change his religion. No official should have the right even to ask anyone about
his religion: that is a matter for each person’s conscience and no one has
any right to interfere. There should be no “established” religion or church. All religions and
all churches should have equal status in law. The clergy of the various
religions should be paid salaries by those who belong to their religions,
but the state should not use state money to support any religion whatever,
should not grant money to maintain any clergy, Orthodox, schismatic,
sectarian, or any other. That is what the Social-Democrats are fighting
for, and until these measures are carried out without any reservation and
without any subterfuge, the people will not be freed from the disgraceful
police persecution of religion, or from the no less disgraceful police
hand-outs to any one of those religions.

*     * *
We have seen what improvements the Social-Democrats are out to achieve for
all the people, and especially for the poor. Now let us see what
improvements they strive to achieve for the workers; not only for factory
and urban workers, but for agricultural workers too. The factory workers
live in more cramped conditions; they work in large workshops, so it is
easier for them to avail themselves of the assistance of educated
Social-Democrats. For all these reasons the urban workers started the
struggle against the employers much earlier than the others and have
achieved more considerable improvements; they have also obtained the
passing of factory laws. But the Social-Democrats are fighting for the
extension of these improvements to all the workers: to handicraftsmen both in town and country, who work for employers at home;
to the wage-workers employed by petty masters and artisans; to workers in
the building trades (carpenters, bricklayers, etc.); to lumbermen and
unskilled labourers, and also the agricultural labourers. All
over Russia, all these workers are now beginning to unite, following the
example of, and aided by, the factory workers, to unite for the struggle
for better conditions of life, for a shorter working day, for higher wages. And the Social-Democratic Party has set itself the task of
supporting all workers in their struggle for a better life, of
helping them to organise (to unite) the most resolute and reliable workers
in strong unions, of helping them by circulating pamphlets and leaflets,
by sending experienced workers to those new to the movement, and in
general helping all the workers in every possible way. When we have won
political liberty, we shall have our people in a national assembly of
deputies, worker deputies, Social-Democrats, and, like their comrades in
other countries, they will demand laws for the benefit of the workers.

We shall not enumerate here all the improvements the
Social-Democratic Party is striving to obtain for the workers: they have
been set out in our programme and explained in detail in the pamphlet,
The Workers’ Cause in Russia. Here it will be sufficient to
mention the most important of those improvements. The, working day must
not be longer than eight hours. One day a week must always be a day of rest. Overtime
must be absolutely banned, and so must night-work. Children up to the age
of sixteen must he given free education and, consequently, must not be
allowed to work for hire until that age. Women must not work in trades
injurious to their health. The employer must compensate the workers for
all injury caused during work, for example, for injury caused when working
on threshing-machines, winnowing-machines, and so forth. All wage-workers
must always be paid weekly , and not once in two months or once in
a quarter as is often the case with agricultural labourers. It is very
important for the workers to be paid regularly every week and, moreover,
to be paid in cash, and not in goods. Employers are very fond of making
the workers accept all sorts of worthless goods at exorbitant prices in
payment of wages; to put an end to this disgraceful practice. the payment
of wages in goods must be absolutely prohibited by law. Further, aged
workers must receive state pensions. By their labour the workers maintain
all the rich classes, and the whole state, and that gives them as much
right to pensions as government officials, who get pensions. To prevent
employers from taking advantage of their position to disregard regulations
introduced to protect the workers, inspectors must be appointed to
supervise, not only the factories, but also the big landlord farms and, in
general, all enterprises where wage-labour is employed. But those
inspectors must not be government officials, or be appoint ed by ministers
or governors, or be in the service of the police. The inspectors must
be elected by the workers; the state must pay salaries to persons
who enjoy the confidence of the workers and whom they have freely
elected. These elected deputies of the workers must also see to it that
the workers’ dwellings are kept in proper condition, that the employers
dare not compel the workers to live in what is like pigsties or in mud
huts (as is often the case with agricultural labourers), that the rules
concerning the workers’ rest are observed, and so on. It must not be
forgotten, however, that no elected workers’ deputies will be of any use
as long as there is no political liberty, as long as the police are
all-powerful, and are not responsible to the people. Everyone knows that
at present the police will arrest without trial, not only workers’ deputies but any worker who will dare
speak in the name of all his fellow workers, expose breaches of the law,
or call on the workers to unite. But when we have political liberty, the
workers’ deputies will be of very great use.

All employers (factory owners, landlords, contractors, and rich peasants)
should be absolutely forbidden to make any arbitrary deductions
from the wages of their workers, for example, deductions for defective
goods, deductions in the form of fines, etc. It is unlawful and tyrannical
for employers arbitrarily to make deductions from workers’
wages. The employer must not reduce a worker’s wage by means of any
deductions, or in any way whatsoever. The employer should not be allowed
to pass and execute judgement (a fine sort of judge, who pockets the
deductions from the worker’s wages!); he should appeal to a proper court , and this court must consist of deputies elected by the workers
and the employers in equal numbers. Only such a court will be able to
judge fairly all the grievances of the employers against the workers and
of the workers against the employers.

Such are the improvements the Social-Democrats are striving to obtain for
the whole of the working class. The workers on every landed estate, on
every farm, in the employ of every contractor, must meet and discuss with
trustworthy persons what improvements they must strive to obtain and what
demands they should advance (for the demands of the workers will, of
course, be different at different factories, on different estates, and
with different con tractors).

All over Russia Social-Democratic committees are helping the
workers to formulate their demands in a clear and precise way, and are
helping them to issue printed leaflets where these demands are set out, so
that they may be known to all workers, and to the employers and the
authorities. When the workers unite as one man in support of their
demands, the employers always have to give way and agree to them. In the
towns the workers have already obtained many improvements in this way, and
now handicraftsmen, artisans, and agricultural labourers are also
beginning to unite (to organise) and fight for their demands. As long as
we have no political liberty, we carry on the fight in secret, hiding from the police, who prohibit the publication of all
leaflets and associations of workers. But when we have won political
liberty, we shall carry on the fight on a wider scale and openly, so that
working people all over Russia may unite and defend themselves more
vigorously from oppression. The larger the number of workers who unite
in the workers’ Social-Democratic Party , the stronger will they
be, the sooner will they be able to achieve the complete emancipation of
the working class from all oppression, from all wage-labour, from all toil
for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

*     * *
We have already said that the Social-Democratic Labour Party is striving
to obtain improvements, not only for the workers, but also for all the peasants. Now let us see what improvements it is striving to obtain
for all the peasants.

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