V. I.

Lenin

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

8. The Mistake Made by M. Shanin and Other Advocates of Division

M. Shanin, approaching the question in his pamphlet [1] from a somewhat different angle, involuntarily provided another argument
for the nationalisation which he detests so much. By citing the example of
Ireland, by his analysis of the conditions of bourgeois reform in
the domain of agriculture, M. Shanin has proved only one thing, viz., that
the principles of private ownership of the land are incompatible with
public or state ownership of the land (but that incompatibility has to be
proved also by a general theoretical analysis, of which Shanin did not even
think). If he has proved anything else it is that private ownership must be
recognised wherever the state carries out any reforms in the sphere of
agriculture developing on capitalist lines. But all these arguments of
Shanin’s are wide of the mark: of course, under the conditions of
bourgeois reform only private ownership of land is conceivable; of
course, the preservation of private ownership of the bulk of the land in
the United Kingdom left no other way open for part of it than private ownership. But what has that to do with the
“peasant agrarian revolution” in Russia? M. Shanin has pointed
out the correct path, if you like, but it is the correct path of a Stolypin
agrarian reform, and not of a peasant agrarian revolution. [2]

The difference between the two ways is entirely lost upon M. Shanin, and
yet unless this difference is clearly realised, it is ridiculous, to talk
about a Social-Democratic agrarian programme in the Russian revolution. And
when M. Shanin, prompted, of course, by the very best motives, defends
confiscation against redemption payments, he loses all sense of historical
perspective. He forgets that in bourgeois society confiscation, i.e.,
expropriation without compensation, is as utterly incompatible with
reform as land nationalisation. To speak of confiscation while
admitting the possibility of a reformist and not a revolutionary solution
of the agrarian question is like petitioning Stolypin to abolish
landlordism.

Another aspect of Shanin’s pamphlet is its heavy emphasis on the
agricultural character of our agrarian crisis, on the absolute
necessity of adopting higher forms of economy, of improving agricultural
technique, which is so incredibly backward in Russia, and so forth. Shanin
elaborates these correct theses in such an incredibly one-bided fashion,
and he so completely ignores the abolition of the feudal latifundia and the
changing of agrarian relationships as a condition for that technical
revolution, that an utterly false perspective is drawn. For Stolypin’s agrarian reform too leads
to technical,progress in agriculture, and does so in a correct way from the
standpoint of the landlords’ interests. The forcible break-up of the
village communes by the laws of November 9, 1906, etc., the setting up of
khutors and the subsidising of otrubs , are not a mirage,
as frivolous, prattling democratic journalists sometimes declare them to
be; they are tile realities of economic progress based on the preservation
of the power and interests of the landlords. It is an incredibly slow and
incredibly painful road for the broad masses of the peasantry and for the
proletariat, but it is the only possible road for capitalist Russia
if the peasant agrarian revolution is not victorious.

Look at the question which Shanin raises from the stand point of
such a revolution. Modern agricultural technique demands that
all the conditions of the ancient, conservative, barbarous,
ignorant, and pauper methods of economy on peasant allotments be
transformed. The three-field system, the primitive implements, the
patriarchal impecuniosity of the tiller, the routine methods of
stock-breeding amid crass naïve ignorance of the conditions amid
requirements of the market must all be thrown overboard. Well, then, is
such a revolutionising of agriculture possible if the old system of
landownership is preserved? The division of the land among the present
allotment owners would mean preserving half [3] of the medieval system of landownership. Division of the land might be
progressive if it consolidated modern farming, modern agricultural methods, and scrapped the old. But division cannot give an
impetus to modern agricultural methods if it is based on the old system of
allotment ownership.

Comrade Borisov, [5] an advocate of division, said in Stockholm:

“Our agrarian programme is a programme for the period of developing
revolution, the period of the break-up of the old order and the organisation of
a new social-political order. That is its fundamental idea. Social-Democracy must not bind itself
by decisions which pledge it to support any particular form of economy. In
this struggle of the new social forces against the foundations of the old
order, it is necessary to cut the tangled knot with a decisive
stroke” (p. 125 of the Minutes). All that is quite true and
splendidly stated. And it all speaks in favour of nationalisation, because
the latter alone really “breaks up” the old medieval system of
landownership, really cuts the tangled knot, and allows full freedom for
the new farms to develop on the nationalised land.

The question arises by what criterion are we to deter mine whether the new
system of agriculture has already developed sufficiently to have the division of
the land adapt ed to it , and not to have a division that will
perpetuate the old obstacles to the new farming? There can be but one criterion,
that of practice. No statistics in the world can assess whether the elements of
a peasant bourgeoisie in a given country have “hardened”
sufficiently to enable the system of landownership to be adapted to the system
of farming. This can be assessed only by the mass of the farmers
themselves. The impossibility of assessing this at the present moment has been
proved by the fact that the mass of the peasants have come forward in
our revolution with a programme of land nationalisation. The small farmer, at
all times and throughout the world, becomes so attached to his farm (if it
really is his farm and not a piece of the landlord’s estate let
out on labour-service, as is frequently the case in Russia) that his
“fanatical” defence of private ownership of the land is inevitable
at a certain historical period and for a certain space of time. If in the present epoch the mass of the Russian peasants are not displaying the
fanaticism of private property owners (a fanaticism which is fostered by all the
ruling classes, by all the liberal-bourgeois politicians), but are putting
forward a widespread and firmly held demand for the nationalisation of the land,
it would be childishness or stupid pedantry to attribute it to the influence of
the publicists of

Russkoye Bogatstvo [6] or Mr. Chernov’s pamphlets. It is
due to the fact that the real conditions of life of the small cultivator,
of the small farmer in the village, confront him with the economic problem, not of consolidating the new agriculture, which has already taken shape, by
means of dividing the land as private property, hut of clearing the
ground for the creation of a new agriculture (out of the existing elements) upon
“free”, i. e., nationalised, land. The fanaticism of the private
property owner can and should assert itself, in due time, as a demand of the
newly-hatched free farmer for the assured possession of his
farm. Nationalisation of the land had to become the demand of the peasant masses
in the Russian revolution as the slogan of farmers who want to break
the shell of medievalism. Therefore, for Social-Democrats to preach
division of the land to the mass of the peasants, who are inclined towards
nationalisation, and who are only just beginning to enter the conditions for the
final “sorting out” that should produce free farmers capable of
creating capitalist agriculture, is glaring historical tactlessness, and reveals
inability to take stock of the concrete historical situation.

Our Social-Democratic “divisionists”—Comrades Finn, Borisov, and
Shanin—are free from the theoretical dualism of the “municipalisers”, including the latters’ vulgar criticism of
Marx’s theory of rent (with this we shall deal later on), but they make a
mistake of a different kind, a mistake of historical perspective. While
taking a generally correct stand in theory (and in this they differ from the
“municipalisers”), they repeat the mistake of our cut-off lands
programme of 1903. That mistake was due to the fact that while we correctly
defined the trend of development, we did not correctly define the
moment of that development. We assumed that the elements of capitalist
agriculture had already taken full shape in Russia, both in landlord farming
(minus the cut-off lands and their conditions of bondage—hence the demand
that the cut-off lands be re turned to the peasants) and in peasant farming,
which seemed to have given rise to a strong peasant bourgeoisie and therefore to
be incapable of bringing about a “peasant agrarian revolution”. The
erroneous programme was not the result of “fear” of the peasant
agrarian revolution, but of an over-estimation of the degree
of capitalist development in Russian agriculture. The survivals of serfdom
appeared to us then to be a minor detail, whereas capitalist agriculture on the peasant allotments and on the landlords’ estates seemed to be quite
mature and well-established.

The revolution has exposed that mistake; it has confirmed the trend of
development as we had defined it. The Marxist analysis of the classes in Russian
society has been so brilliantly confirmed by the whole course of events in
general, and by the first two Dumas in particular, that non-Marxist socialism
has been shattered completely. But the survivals of serfdom in the countryside
have proved to be much stronger than we thought: they have given rise to a
nation-wide peasant movement and they have made that movement the
touchstone of the bourgeois revolution as a whole. Hegemony in the bourgeois
liberation movement, which revolutionary Social-Democracy always assigned to the
proletariat, had to be defined more precisely as leader ship which rallied the
peasantry behind it. But leading to what? To the bourgeois revolution
in its most consistent and decisive form. We rectified the mistake by
substituting for the partial aim of combating the survivals of the old
agrarian system, the aim of combating the old agrarian system as a whole . Instead of purging landlord economy, we set the aim of
abolishing it.

But this correction, made under the impact of the imposing course of
events, did not make many of us think out to its logical conclusion our new
evaluation of the degree of capitalist development in Russian
agriculture. If the demand for the confiscation of all the landlord estates
proved to be historically correct—and that undoubtedly was The
case—it meant that the wide development of capitalism calls for new
agrarian relationships, that the beginnings of capitalism in landlord
economy can and must be sacrificed to the wide and free development of
capitalism on the basis of renovated small farming. To accept the demand
for the confiscation of the landlord estates means admitting the
possibility and the necessity of the renovation of small farming under
capitalism.

Is that admissible? Is it not a gamble to support small farming under
capitalism? Is not the renovation of small farming a vain dream?
Is it not a demagogic “trap for the peasants”, a
Bauernfang ? That, undoubtedly, was what many comrades thought. But they were wrong. The renovation of small farming is possible even under capitalism if the historical
aim is to fight the pre-capitalist order. That is the way small farming was
renovated in America, where the slave plantations were broken up in a
revolutionary manner and the conditions were created for the most rapid and free
development of capitalism. In the Russian revolution the struggle for the land
is nothing else than a struggle for the renovated path of capitalist
development. The consistent slogan of such a renovation
is—nationalisation of the land. To exclude allotment land from
nationalisation is economically reactionary (we shall deal separately with the
politically reactionary aspect of that exclusion). The “divisionists” are skipping the historical task of the
present revolution; they assume that the objectives of the peasants’ mass
struggle have already been achieved, whereas that struggle has only just
begun. Instead of stimulating the process of renovation, instead of explaining
to the peasantry the conditions for consistent renovation, they are already
designing a dressing-gown for the appeased, renovated farmer. [4] “ Everything in good season.” Social-Democracy cannot
undertake never to support division of the land. In a different historical
situation, at a different stage of agrarian evolution, this division may
prove unavoidable. But division of the land is an entirely wrong
expression of the aims of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in
Russia in 1907.

---
Notes:
[1]
M. Shanin, Municipalisation or Division for Private Property ,
Vilna, 1907. — Lenin

[2]
Shanin’s reference to the example of Ireland, showing that
private ownership preponderates over renting (and not over the
nationalisation of the whole land), is not new either. In exactly the same way , the “liberal” Professor A. I. Chuprov cites Ireland to
prove that peasant ownership of land is preferable. ( The Agrarian Question , Vol. 11, p. 11.) The real nature of this
“liberal” and even “Constitutional Democrat ” is revealed on
page 33 of his article. Here Mr. Chuprov, with incredible brazenness, the
brazenness of a liberal that is possible only in Russia, proposes that on
all the land-surveying commissions the peasants be subordinated to
a majority of landlords ! Five members representing the peasants
and five representing the landlords, with a chairman “appointed by the
Zemstvo Assembly”, i. e., by an assembly of landlords . An
allusion to Ireland was also made in the First Duma by the Right-wing deputy, Prince Drutsky-Lyubetsky, as proof of the necessity for
private ownership of land and as an argument against the Cadet
Bill. (Sitting of May 24, 1906, p 626 of Stenographic Record.) — Lenin

[3]
I have pointed out above that out of 280,000,000 dessiatins of tile
land available for distribution in European Russia, one half—-
138,800,000 dessiatins—consists of allotment land. (See p. 221 of this
volume.—Ed.) — Lenin

[4]
The advocates of division frequently cite the words of Marx:

“The free ownership of the self-managing peasant is evidently the most
normal form of landed property for small-scale operation.... Ownership of the
land is as necessary for full development of this mode of production as
ownership of tools is for free development of handicraft production”
( Des Kapital , III, 2, 341). [7] From this it merely follows that the complete triumph
of free peasant agriculture may call for private ownership. But present-day
small-scale farming is not free. State landownership is “an instrument in
the hands of the land lord rather than of the peasant, an instrument for
extracting labour rent rather than an instrument of free labour of the
peasant”. The destruction of all forms of feudal landownership and free
settlement in all parts of the country are needed for the promotion of free
small— scale farming. — Lenin

[5]
Borisov —S. A. Suvorov.

[6]
Russkoye Bogatstvo ( Russian Wealth )—a monthly magazine, published in St. Petersburg from 1876 to the middle of 1918. In
the early nineties it became the organ of the liberal Narodniks. From 1906
it was virtually the organ of the semi-Cadet Popular Socialist
Party.

[7]
Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, p. 787.