V. I.

Lenin

In previous articles (see Nevskaya Zvezda Nos. 3 and

6) [1]

we have cited the basic data on landownership in European Russia and
described the nature of the agrarian question in Russia. The main point of
this question is to abolish medievalism in landownership .

The contradiction between capitalism, which prevails throughout the
world, including Russia, and medieval landownership , as embodied
both in the landed estates and in the peasant allotments, is
irreconcilable. The old, medieval system of landownership is bound to be
broken up, and the more drastic, ruthless and bold this break-up, the
better for the entire development of Russia and the better for the workers,
and for the peasants, who are today crushed and oppressed by innumerable
survivals of medievalism, as well as by capitalism.

The question may be asked: Such being the situation, how can one
compare the Stolypin and the Narodnik agrarian programmes? Are they not in
direct opposition to each other?

Yes, they are, but this opposition does not remove the one fundamental
point which the two programmes have in common , namely, the fact
that both recognise the necessity of breaking up the old
system of landownership. The old has to be broken up—as early and
thoroughly as possible, say those in charge of Stolypin’s “land
distribution”; but it has to be broken up in such a way as to ensure that
the whole burden of it falls on the shoulders of the majority of the peasants—of the most ruined and most disinherited of them. The landlords
should Lose nothing in the process. If it is inevitable that they should
lose part of their land, then the land should be alienated exclusively by
the freely given consent of the landlords, and at a price considered
“fair” by the landlords. The well-to-do peasants should be supported, and
there is no reason to shrink from the ruin of the mass of “weak”
peasants.

Such is the meaning of the Stolypin agrarian programme. The Council of
the United Nobility, which entrusted Stolypin with drafting it, behaved as
a true representative of the reactionaries—not of those who make fine
speeches but of those who mean business. The Council was perfectly loyal to
its class interests when it banked on the strong. And indeed, after 1905 it
became obvious that the police and the bureaucracy alone were inadequate as
a protection against the peasants.

Where else was the Council of the United Nobility to seek for allies?
Only among the insignificant minority of the well-to-do peasants—the
kulaks. It could not have found any other allies in the countryside. And to
win over the “new landlords” to their side, the reactionaries did not
shrink from delivering the whole countryside into their hands
literally to be sacked and plundered.

If a break-up is inevitable, then let us break up allotment
landownership in our favour and for the benefit of the new landlords —that is the gist of the agrarian policy which the council
of the United Nobility dictated to Stolypin.

But, speaking in purely theoretical terms, it has to be admitted that a
break-up—a no less, and indeed much more, drastic one—is also possible
from the other side . It cuts both ways. If, for instance, the 70
million dessiatines of land belonging to 30,000 landlords were to pass to
10 million peasant households in addition to the 75 million dessiatines
they already own, and if the two categories of land were merged
and then distributed among the well-to-do and middle peasants (the poor
peasants could not use the land any way, because they have nothing to
plough, sow, fertilise and cultivate it with), what would be the result of
the reform?

Pose this question from a purely economic standpoint. Consider this
fundamental possibility from the angle of the general conditions of
capitalist economy throughout the world. You will see that our suggested
reform would result in a more consistent , drastic and ruthless
break-up of medieval landownership than the Stolypin programme
envisages.

Why medieval and none but medieval? Because capitalist landownership cannot be abolished, by its very nature, through any
transfer of the land, not even through the transfer of all the land to the
state (i.e., through what the science of political economy calls land
“nationalisation”). Capitalist landownership is the holding of land by
those who have capital and adapt themselves best to the market. Regardless
of whether the land is still owned by the landlord, or by the state or the
allotment peasant, it is bound to have a master , who can always
rent it. The renting of land is increasing in all capitalist
countries, under the most diverse forms of landownership. No bans whatever
can prevent the capitalist, the master who has capital and knows the
market, from laying his hands on the land, since the market dominates the
whole of social production, i.e., since this production remains capitalist.

Nor is that all. The renting of land is even more convenient
for pure capitalism, for the fullest, freest, and most “ideal” adaptation
to the market, than is ownership of land. Why? Because private ownership of
land hampers its transfer from hand to hand, hinders the
adaptation of land tenure to the conditions of the market,
perpetuates ownership of the land by a particular family or person
and his heirs, even if they are bad farmers. Renting is a more flexible
form, under which the adaptation of land tenure to the market takes place
most simply, most easily and most rapidly.

That, incidentally, is why Britain is not an exception among the
capitalist countries, but is the country that, from the point of view of
capitalism, has the most perfect agrarian system, as Marx pointed out in
his criticism of

Rodbertus. [3] And what is Britain’s agrarian system? It is the old
system of landownership, landlordism, with the new, free, purely capitalist
renting of land.

And what if that landlordism were to exist without land lords, i.e., if
the land, were owned, not by landlords,, but by the state? That, from the
point of view of capitalism, would be a still more perfect
agrarian system, with still greater freedom of adaptation of land tenure to
the market, with still greater ease in the mobilisation of the land as an
object of economy, with still greater freedom, breadth, clarity and
definiteness in the class struggle characteristic of every form of
capitalist landownership.

And the more a country is lagging behind world capitalism, the greater
the effort it must make to overtake its neighbours, the more it has
“neglected” its “disease”, the disease of medieval landownership and
small-scale bondage farming, and the more imperative that country’s need
for a radical break-up of all its relations of landownership, of a]l its agrarian system, the more natural will be the
rise and wide dissemination in that country, among its agricultural
population, of all sorts of ideas and plans of land nationalisation.

Both the year 1905 and the two first Dumas proved beyond question—and
the Third Duma confirmed it indirectly, through its “peasant” deputies
(sifted through a landlord sieve)—that all sorts of ideas and plans for
nationalising the land are extremely widespread among Russia’s agricultural
population. Before approving or condemning these ideas, one should ask
oneself why they have become wide spread and what economic necessity has evoked them.

It is not enough to criticise those ideas from the stand point of their
inner logic and harmony or of their theoretical correctness. They should be
criticised from the standpoint of the economic necessity reflected in them,
however “fanciful”, inaccurate or “twisted” this reflection may some
times be.

The economic necessity which at the beginning of the twentieth century
gave rise among the Russian peasantry to ideas of nationalising the land is
the necessity of a drastic break-up of the old system of landownership. The
ideas of “equalised division” of all the land are ideas of
equality , necessarily born of the struggle against the survivals
of serfdom and inevitably transplanted to the land in a situation
where 30,000 “residual serf-owners” possess 70 million dessiatines, while 10 million bond peasants possess 75 million
dessiatines.

There is nothing utopian about the transfer of the first category of
land into the second category, or rather to the owners of this second
category. What is utopian is merely the dream of equality among the masters
of the land while the market dominates; it is utopian to dream of the
“ right to land” for all “citizens, men and women” (including
those who have no household) under capitalism. But the utopian character of
these ideas should not allow us to forget the very true, living
reality which is actually behind them.

There is nothing utopian about the abolition of all medieval
distinctions of landownership—landlord, allotment, etc. There is nothing
utopian about breaking up the old relations in regard to the land. On the
contrary, the development of capitalism most imperatively demands
this break up. There can be neither “equalised division” of the land nor “socialisation” of it under
capitalism. That is utopia.

Land nationalisation is quite feasible economically under capitalism,
and its real significance would consist in any case—that is, no
matter how it was effected, by whom and on what conditions, whether stably
and for a long time or unstably and for a short time—in the maximum
elimination of all that is medieval in Russian landownership and Russia’s
agrarian system; it would consist in the freest adaptation of the
new system of land tenure and landownership to the new conditions
of the world market.

Let us imagine for a moment that the Left Narodniks’ plan was put into
practice, say, through the equal division of all the lands among all
citizens, men and women. Such division under capitalism is the greatest
absurdity. Under capitalism, it would not and could not last even a
year. But does this imply that its results would be zero or negative?

Not in, the least! Its results would be of tremendous ad vantage —not the kind the Left Narodniks expect, but a most real
advantage. That advantage would consist in all distinctions between the
present social-estate and category forms of landownership being broken
up. It would be a tremendous gain for the whole national economy, for capitalism, for the proletariat,
because nothing could be more harmful to the development of Russia than our
old, present-day, landownership. Both landlordism and allotment land
ownership are thoroughly feudal forms of landownership.

An equalised redivision of the land could not last, but it would be
impossible to go back to the old system ! No “restoration” could
revive the boundaries once they had been removed. No political force on
earth could prevent the establishment of such new boundaries,
limits, and forms of land tenure as would correspond to the new
requirements of the market.

“ Departition the land,” I recall a Left Narodnik saying in the Second
Duma. He fancied that the result would be “equalised land tenure”. He was
mistaken. But speaking through him was, as the irony of history
would have it, the most consistent and fearless radical bourgeois ,
who is aware of the absurdity of the old , medieval “partitions”
of our “allotment”, “nobility”, “church”, etc., etc., landowner ship,
and is aware of the necessity of breaking down all those
partitions to make way for a new distribution of the land. Only,
this distribution would have to be not “per capita”, which is the
Narodnik’s dream, but per capital , as imposed by the market .

The Narodniks’ constructive plans are utopia. But their constructive
plans have an element that is destructive in relation to medievalism. And
that element is by no means utopia. It is the most living reality. It is
the most consistent and progressive reality from the standpoint of
capitalism and the proletariat.

Let us briefly sum up our views. The real similarity between the
Stolypin and the Narodnik agrarian programmes lies in the fact that
both advocate a radical break-up of the old, medieval system of landownership. And that is very good. That system deserves no
better than to be broken up. The most reactionary of all
are those Cadets of Rech and Russkiye Vedomosti who reproach Stolypin for causing a break-up, instead of proving the need for a
still more consistent and resolute break-up. We shall see in a following
article that the Stolypin type of break-up cannot do away with bondage and labour service, while the Narodnik type can . [2]

For the time being we shall note that the only entirely real result of
the Stolypin break-up is a famine among 30 million people. And it remains
to be seen whether the Stolypin break-up may not teach the Russian people
how they should carry out a more thorough break-up. It is
no doubt teaching that. But will it succeed in it? Time will tell.

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Notes:
[1]
See pp. 32–35 and 73–77 of this volume— Ed .

[2]
See pp. 243–53 of this volume.— Ed .

[3]
See Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value , Vol. II, Part Two. These propositions of Marx’s were set forth and explained by
Lenin in “The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the
Nineteenth Century” (see present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 139–42).