FROM THE EDITORS.

Lenin Miscellany XIX consists of documents relating to the agrarian question. These documents cover the period 1899–1915 and are devoted to an analysis of capitalist agriculture, an analysis of its internal contradictions, the class struggle in the countryside, and a critique of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theories on these questions. The Miscellany also contains a number of documents relating to Lenin’s struggle for a revolutionary agrarian programme for the party of the proletariat.

Three-quarters of the Miscellany is taken up by Lenin’s documents relating to the period before 1903, the period when the basic principles of the party’s agrarian programme were being established and Marxism was being defended against the revisionists, who attempted to prove that the general laws of capitalism were inapplicable to agriculture.

The remaining documents in the Miscellany contain materials for Lenin’s work *New Data on the Laws of Development of Capitalism in Agriculture* (1910–1915).

The complexity of reproducing Lenin’s notes compels us to draw the reader’s attention to the rules that guided the editors in preparing the materials of the Miscellany for publication:

1. All documents published in the Miscellany are in Lenin’s own hand. This includes Lenin’s notes on other people’s documents: 1. A lecture note (p. 242 of the Miscellany); 2. Underlinings in Socialist-Revolutionary pamphlets (p. 315); 3. Notes on a statement by peasant deputies to the Third State Duma (p. 468). An exception is the “Letter on *Otrezki*” by an unknown author on p. 350, which also contains a handwritten insertion by Lenin (a column of figures).

2. All documents that have a title given by Lenin in the manuscript are reproduced under that same title. Where the manuscript has no title, one has been supplied by the editors, but in all such cases an asterisk is placed before the title—to its left.

IV

3. Underlinings of individual words and expressions made by Lenin are rendered in print as follows: a single underline by *italics*; a double underline by *spaced italics*; a triple underline by **bold italics**; a quadruple underline by **spaced bold italics**. Further underlinings are rendered by means of ruled lines beneath the word. Underlinings with a wavy line are rendered in print by small capitals.

4. Square brackets in the text indicate that the letters enclosed in these brackets have been inserted by the editors when deciphering words abbreviated by Lenin.

5. Small type in the text indicates that the word (or phrase, paragraph, etc.) set in small type has been crossed out in the manuscript by the author himself.

6. The arrangement of the text on the page—in a single column, in two columns, indentation from the margins, enclosure in a frame or bracket, etc.—reproduces the same features of the manuscript.

7. A document’s date enclosed in square brackets indicates that the date belongs not to the author, but to the editors.

8. The New Style has been adopted as the basis for the entire Miscellany.

The Miscellany has been prepared for publication by A. F. Nikanorov and A. A. Perminov. Prepared by A. F. Nikanorov are: “Synopsis of K. Kautsky’s Book *The Agrarian Question*” (p. 25 of the Miscellany); extracts from an article by David (p. 88); a synopsis of an article by Kautsky (p. 98); a synopsis of a pamphlet by W. Liebknecht (p. 161); extracts from the book *Bäuerliche Zustände* (p. 166) and from the Baden questionnaires (p. 180); extracts from and a translation of an article by Engels (pp. 287 and 295); two notes by Lenin on pp. 303 and 304; Chapters V and VI, VIII and IX of the Miscellany (pp. 317, 339, 377, and 461). All the remaining material has been prepared for publication by A. A. Perminov.

A. S. Bondarenko took part in the editorial review of the Miscellany. He is also responsible for the editing of the translations. The technical editing of the Miscellany was carried out by N. A. Podvoiskaya, who also participated in the final processing of the text of Lenin’s documents, and by K. I. Khalabaev.

March 1932.

MATERIALS
ON THE AGRARIAN QUESTION
PART I

PREFACE.

The immense world significance of Lenin’s works on the agrarian question is universally known. Lenin’s works on the theoretical substantiation of the agrarian programme and policy of Bolshevism in relation to the peasantry and the various classes within this peasantry are of the greatest significance for the world proletariat, which is fighting under the leadership of the Comintern for the proletarian dictatorship. Hence the full importance of the Leninist legacy in the field of the agrarian question, which is being published by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.

The documents on the agrarian question available in the Institute’s archives (and, unfortunately, only a part of them has been preserved) show how deeply Lenin was acquainted with the literature in this field. From these documents it is evident that, for example, in the years 1900–1903, i.e., in the years of the struggle for a genuinely Marxist-Leninist agrarian programme for the party of the proletariat, Lenin worked through literally everything that was of any interest in the world literature on the agrarian question at that time. The Institute’s archives contain extracts from various descriptive and theoretical works on agricultural economics, monographs on agriculture and its individual branches, works on the influence of machinery on agriculture, entire notebooks of statistical data, critical remarks on a number of works in German, English, and French, plans and synopses of works and speeches intended for publication, etc. In addition to these extracts and remarks, the documents include an enormous bibliography of literature on the agrarian question in various languages, compiled by Lenin.

We would particularly like to note the documents on agricultural statistics. Lenin’s ability to make dry figures speak the language of the class struggle is universally known. And this ability of Lenin’s is based on

[ 3

his mastery of an enormous body of statistical material, both from Russian statistics and from the statistics of other countries, and on the application of the method of materialist dialectics to statistics.

The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute has at its disposal notebooks of statistical data from American, German, Austrian, Hungarian, and French agricultural statistics; extracts from the statistical questionnaires of Prussia, Baden, Bavaria, Württemberg, and so on and so forth. In the present Miscellany, of all this statistical material on the agrarian question (only from the pre-revolutionary period), only the notebook with data from American agricultural statistics is being printed; the rest will be included in one of the subsequent Miscellanies.

Let us dwell on the general content of Miscellany XIX and on some individual documents.

The main place in the Miscellany is occupied by documents relating to the period 1901–1903. These are materials for Lenin’s work *The Agrarian Question and the “Critics of Marx”*, as well as materials for Lenin’s lectures and a paper on the agrarian question in Paris in 1903, and plans for Lenin’s well-known pamphlet *To the Rural Poor*.

By this time, a united front against Marxism and Marxist views on the agrarian question had clearly taken shape in the persons of Bulgakov, Hertz, David, Maslov, Chernov, and others.

The struggle for Marxism in the agrarian question against the “gentlemen critics” in this period, i.e., the period on the eve of the 1905 Revolution, is closely linked with Lenin’s struggle for a genuinely revolutionary programme and tactics for the proletarian party in relation to the peasantry and its various social strata.

It was at this time (1899) that Kautsky’s well-known book *Die Agrarfrage* (*The Agrarian Question*) appeared, Lenin’s synopsis of which is being printed in the present Miscellany.

We consider it necessary to dwell in more detail on this synopsis of Kautsky’s book.

Lenin’s assessment of Kautsky’s *The Agrarian Question* is universally known. This assessment is positive and was repeated by Lenin more than once. And indeed, in the historical situation at that time, when revisionism, headed by Bernstein, Vollmar, Schippel, David, and others, came out as a united front against Marxism on the question of the basic laws of agricultural development in capitalist countries, Kautsky’s book had the positive significance of which Lenin spoke. These years

PREFACE

(the 1900s) are very rich in bourgeois and revisionist literature on the agrarian question: the works of Bernstein, Hertz, Bulgakov, Hecht, David, and others; a strong revisionist current emerged and took shape in the German Social-Democratic Party and other parties of the Second International; in Russia, a large quantity of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois literature against Marxism appeared (Bulgakov, Chernov, and others).

All these currents and trends, despite certain nuances between them, basically converged on a single thesis: the laws of capitalist development uncovered by Marx are inapplicable to agriculture. The laws of the concentration of capital, the displacement of small-scale production, the intensification of the class struggle, and other phenomena characteristic of capitalism do not extend to agriculture. Here, in this sphere of the economy (agriculture), the basic and decisive force is small-scale, non-capitalist (“labour”) production—such is the basic meaning of all these “theories.”

In the struggle against these “theories,” Kautsky’s book, using a large body of concrete material, showed that, despite the peculiarity of the forms of development of capitalism in agriculture, the latter not only cannot avoid the capitalist path of development, but has already embarked upon this path. Hence the attention that Kautsky’s book attracted, both from Marxists and from the enemies of Marxism, is understandable.

The latter, in their struggle against orthodox Marxism, made the questions touched upon in Kautsky’s *The Agrarian Question* the object of their attack.

And it is precisely for this reason that Lenin, in his very first works on the agrarian question, while fighting against Bulgakov, the Narodniks, David, and others, emphasised his agreement with the basic propositions in Kautsky’s book.

It would, however, be entirely insufficient, and consequently incorrect, to note only such universally known things as Lenin’s positive assessment of Kautsky’s book, without noting Lenin’s attitude towards a number of incorrect, non-Marxist propositions, of which Kautsky had quite a few even at that time, especially in the second part of *The Agrarian Question*. Let us enumerate some of them.

1. The absence in Kautsky’s book of a formulation of the question of the proletarian revolution, and consequently, of the problem of the dictatorship

LENIN MISCELLANY of the proletariat as the immediate task of revolutionary Social-Democracy, and hence the absence of preparation of the proletariat for the revolution, of an elucidation of its attitude towards the various classes of the peasantry depending on the stages of the revolution, on the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the proletarian revolution;

2. Linked with this, or rather, arising from it, is the Kautskyite theory of the “neutrality” of the proletariat and its party in the struggle of the peasants against the landlords, a theory proposing that the proletariat adopt the position of an observer in the event of such a struggle;

3. The theory of the refusal of the proletariat to support the struggle of oppressed peoples against imperialism;

4. The distortion of Marx’s teaching on absolute rent, etc.

Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the indicated passages in Kautsky, let us pose the following question: did Lenin criticise these and other incorrect passages in Kautsky? How and in what form did Lenin dissociate himself from them?

These questions can only be answered with a categorical affirmation: Lenin dissociated himself from the clearly non-Marxist passages in Kautsky, criticised them, and, in his works of that very period, counterposed a Marxist, revolutionary resolution of these problems to the Kautskyite treatment.

This affirmation would seem to contradict the fact that in these works, i.e., the works of the period when Kautsky was still in the Marxist camp, there are no open statements by Lenin against Kautsky.

But it is enough merely to compare the formulation of a number of problems and their resolution in Kautsky and in Lenin for this seeming contradiction to disappear.

It is known, for example, that for Lenin (and the Bolsheviks) the theory of the agrarian question is inseparably linked with the theory of the proletarian revolution, with the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The problems of the agrarian-peasant question are, for the Bolsheviks, a component part of the general problem of the proletariat’s struggle for its political power, for the dictatorship of the proletariat. And this link is emphasised by Lenin in all his works on the agrarian-peasant question. For Lenin, for example, the question of *otrezki* is not simply a question of the struggle against land shortage, but a question of the forms of struggle against serfdom, of the struggle against the serf-owning state. The abolition of *otrezki*, in Lenin’s opinion, is a condition for the development of the class struggle in the countryside; it is a door “for the purpose of

to go further, in order to march along the open, broad road
to the very end, to the complete emancipation of all the toiling
working people in Rus’" ("To the Rural Poor," Lenin,
Collected Works, Vol. V, p. 308).
Lenin’s formulation of support for the revolutionary measures of the peasantry, up to and including the confiscation of landed estates and other
land, put forward by Lenin as early as 1894 ("What the ‘Friends of the People’
Are?"), the problem of nationalization*, all this was examined
by Lenin from the angle of a freer unleashing of the class
struggle in the countryside, the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for socialism. "We recognize the class struggle as the central fact in the sphere of agrarian relations
in Russia as well. We build our entire
agrarian policy (and, consequently, our agrarian program) on the
steadfast recognition of this fact, with all the consequences
flowing from it. Our main immediate goal is to clear
the road for the free development of the class struggle in the
countryside, the class struggle of the proletariat, directed toward
the realization of the ultimate goal of world Social-Democracy, toward
the conquest of political power by the proletariat and the creation of
the foundations of a socialist society. By declaring the class struggle
to be our guiding thread in all ‘agrarian questions,’ we thereby
decisively and irrevocably separate ourselves from the so numerous
in Russia supporters of half-hearted and vague
theories: ‘Narodnik,’ ‘ethico-sociological,’ ‘critical,’
social-reformist, and whatever else they may be called!"
(Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. V, p. 120).
This remarkable thought of Lenin’s, expressed by him in elaborated
form at the beginning of 1902 and expressed by him more than once
earlier**, reflects the entire essence of Lenin’s policy (and
program) toward the peasantry at all stages of the
development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a proletarian one.
Naturally, such a formulation of the question already at that time posed
the task of preparing the proletariat for the struggle for the dictatorship of the
proletariat. And this required taking into account the class forces of the countryside, from the
standpoint of the possible attraction to the side of the proletarian
revolution of certain social strata of the countryside, the neutralization of
others, and a decisive struggle against still others.
* Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 185.
** E.g., "A Draft Program of Our Party" (1899), Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol. II, p. 526.

It was precisely in this way, and only in this way, that Lenin posed the question in all* his works, always taking into account, of course, the specific features of the character
and stages of the revolution in one country or another. And it was precisely this
formulation of the question that was absent in Kautsky, even when
Kautsky was fighting revisionism.
Thus, in his book against Bernstein in 1899, Kautsky, on the central question of Marxism, on the question of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, entirely surrendered his positions to Bernstein, declaring that "we can quite calmly leave the
solution of the problem of the proletarian dictatorship to the future" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXI, p. 444).
This thesis—to leave the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat
to "the future"—could, of course, be nothing other than a refusal
to prepare the proletariat for revolution. And this thesis also permeates
"Die Agrarfrage," which, incidentally, also came out in
1899. Here, in this book, Kautsky sneers at those
who imagine "the dictatorship of the proletariat approximately
in such a way that one fine day the ‘humiliated and insulted’ of the big cities seize the
ministries by violent means and, using the coercive means
of state power, go off to rob the rich" (Russian translation,
p. 293). And Kautsky, in the same place, paints the following picture, typical for a reformist,
of the "proletariat’s conquest of state power":
"The proletariat cannot successfully fight for the possession of state power without raising both itself and the state
to a higher stage of development; otherwise it would not be able to
use this power in its own interests. And only in such
a struggle does it acquire the necessary moral and intellectual
qualities that will lead it to the position of the ruling
class, which will make it possible to abolish all class rule
in general. But the proletariat’s struggle for the possession of state
power signifies not merely a simple struggle for the
conquest of the instruments of this power: as a result of the struggle, absolute
monarchy or oligarchy must necessarily be transformed
into democracy; just as surely, there will occur a reduction of the
administrative powers of the state and an increase in its cultural
tasks; in a word, the police and military state will pass
over into a cultural state" (ibid.).
And further on, Kautsky points out the advantageousness of such a "transformation" of the state not only for the "urban population,"
but even more so for the "agricultural population." (Kautsky

PREFACE

speaks there of the "population," and not of the classes of this population;
the class content of the concept of the "advantageousness" of such
a transformation is glossed over.) For Kautsky, as we see, there is no problem of the proletarian
revolution, and consequently, no problem of preparing
the proletariat for revolution: the police state will itself "necessarily"
be transformed into a cultural state.
Therefore,
Kautsky also lacks the problem of drawing the basic masses
of the peasantry into the struggle against capitalism and into the struggle against the survivals
of feudal relations. True, the survivals of feudalism
in Germany, where the capitalist development of agriculture had gone
much further than in tsarist Russia, were weaker, but nevertheless,
only an opportunist could dismiss them
from the accounts of the class struggle.
It is enough to compare Kautsky’s stated position on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat ("The Agrarian Question" and other
works of his) with Lenin’s slogan of "communist
revolution," proclaimed by Lenin in 1894 in "Friends of the People,"
to see that even then there was a whole
abyss between Kautsky and Lenin.
For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletariat is not something that can be "calmly" "left to the future," but is an urgent
task of the party of the proletariat.
In 1899, in the article "Our Program," Lenin points out that the task of the "revolutionary socialist party" is
the organization of "the class struggle of the proletariat and the leadership of this
struggle, the ultimate goal of which is the conquest of political
power by the proletariat and the organization of socialist society"**.
In 1902, Lenin resolutely fights with Plekhanov for the inclusion
in the party program of a point on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In
"What Is to Be Done?" Lenin categorically declares that "the fundamental
economic interest of the proletariat can be satisfied
only by means of a political revolution that replaces the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat"***.
For Kautsky, in his "Agrarian Question" (and other works), there exist only
two possible policies toward the peasantry: either
the policy of protecting the peasants (Bauernschutz) as small
proprietors, and consequently also the protection of small property in general,
* On the "survival of feudalism" in Germany, see p. 366 of the present
Collection.
** Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. II, p. 491.
*** Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 397.

or the policy of neutrality, of "observation," for the eventuality
when the ruined peasantry enters into a revolutionary struggle
both against the oppression of capital and against the oppression of the survivals of feudalism, which in
practice are intertwined with each other. The first policy, the
policy of protecting the peasant as a small
proprietor under the conditions of capitalism, is the reactionary policy of David and his ilk. In opposition to these views, Kautsky advanced the second
possible policy—that of "observation." It is formulated
in "The Agrarian Question" as follows:
"Social-Democracy, in relation to industrialists and
financiers, as well as to agriculturalists and landowners
(small and large), acts not in the role of an agitator who
has to urge them to protect their interests, but rather
in the role of an observer, and on occasion a guardian, concerned
that their special interests do not prevail over
general interests, that the interests of the moment do not triumph at
the expense of permanent interests" (Russian trans., p. 276).
Here Kautsky lumps together into one heap different classes—
the industrial, financial, and agricultural bourgeoisie, the entire peasantry,
including the "proletarian holding," the poor peasants, the middle
peasantry, and the rural bourgeoisie—and one and the same policy of "observation" is recommended to the proletariat
in relation to them.
Kautsky attempted to recommend this theory of "observation"
as a tactic for the RSDLP in the revolution of 1905. Thus, in
the article "The Peasants and the Revolution in Russia," Kautsky, pointing
to the bourgeois character of the revolution in Russia, continues: "The
revolutionary urban movement must remain neutral
on the question of relations between the peasant and the landlord.
It has no grounds whatsoever to stand between the peasants
and the landlord, to come out in defense of the latter against
the former; its sympathies are entirely on the side of the peasantry. But
it is by no means the task of the revolutionary urban movement
also to incite the peasants against the landlords, who in contemporary
Russia play a role quite different from that played by, say,
the French feudal nobility at the time of the ‘old order’"
(Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. VII, p. 159).
Lenin, in the article "The Proletariat and the Peasantry" (Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol. VII), objects to Kautsky’s position of "neutrality"
and, in opposition to the Kautskyan policy, advances
right there his own, Bolshevik one.

PREFACE

In tsarist Russia, the conditions of the class struggle took shape in such a way
that it fell to the task of the proletariat (and not of the "vague concept"
of the "revolutionary urban movement") precisely to "incite"
the peasants against the landlords.
"There can be only one solution to this task: together with the peasant
bourgeoisie against all feudalism and against the feudal landlords; together with the urban
proletariat against the peasant and all other bourgeoisie—such is
the ‘line’ of the rural proletarian and his ideologist, the Social-Democrat"
(ibid., p. 160).
Kautsky’s theory of neutrality served as a nourishing source
for Menshevism and its variety—Trotskyism. For
Kautskyanism (Menshevism-Trotskyism in our country), the peasant, even
the poor peasant, is merely an antagonist of the proletariat.
In Lenin’s famous theses on the agrarian question for
the Second Congress of the Comintern, point 3 gives an assessment of the position of
opportunism, the position of the Second International toward the peasantry,
and it must be said directly that the foundations of this opportunist
position were already present in Kautsky during the period when "The Agrarian
Question" appeared, insofar as Kautsky lacked a linkage of the problem
of the "agrarian question" with the problem of the proletarian revolution, the
proletarian dictatorship, which alone is capable of truly
resolving the "agrarian question," and hence—a refusal to prepare
the proletariat for direct revolutionary struggle
for political power. "Between Marx and Kautsky there is an
abyss in their attitude toward the task of the proletarian party to prepare
the working class for revolution"—this is how Lenin assesses Kautsky’s
position (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXI, p. 444).
It is precisely from this non-Marxist position of Kautsky that there follows
that "ironic" remark which Kautsky permitted himself
at the expense of the Bolsheviks on the question of the revolutionary-democratic
dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in the revolution of 1905,
calling the struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks on this question
"dividing the skin of a bear not yet killed" (Lenin, Collected Works,
Vol. VIII, p. 101). This last remark of Kautsky’s closely adjoins
the thesis that "we can quite calmly leave the solution of the problem of the proletarian dictatorship
to the future" (see above, p. 8).
In both cases—a refusal to prepare the proletariat for the role
of the vanguard of all the toilers and exploited "in the struggle for
the overthrow of the exploiters, and this is impossible without introducing

of the class struggle into the countryside, without uniting the toiling masses
of the countryside around the communist party of the urban proletariat,
without the latter educating the former."
(Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, p. 269.)
We have taken this last quotation from Lenin's theses on the agrarian question for the Second Congress of the Comintern. But one could
also refer to an earlier work, namely the concluding words of "What the 'Friends of the People' Are" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 194),
or to the quotation cited above from "The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy," and others. Lenin's fundamental position—to prepare the proletariat for the struggle for its dictatorship at various stages of the revolution—is one and the same.
The experience of the entire history of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat of our country under the leadership of Bolshevism, which led to the victory of the proletarian revolution not only in the city but also in the countryside,
has fully confirmed the correctness of Lenin's policy toward the peasantry, toward its various classes at each concrete stage of the revolution. "It has turned out exactly as we said.
The course of the revolution has confirmed the correctness of our reasoning.
First, together with 'all' the peasantry against the monarchy,
against the landlords, against medievalism (and to that extent the revolution
remains bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic). Then, together
with the poorest peasantry, together with the semi-proletariat, together
with all the exploited, against capitalism, including
against the rural rich, the kulaks, the profiteers, and to that extent
the revolution becomes socialist. To attempt to erect
an artificial Chinese wall between the one and the other, to separate
them from each other by anything other than the degree of preparation
of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the rural poor,
is the greatest distortion of Marxism, its vulgarization, its replacement
by liberalism" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXIII, p. 391).
The replacement of Marxism by liberalism in Kautsky is, of course, not
accidental, as Lenin noted in his article "Dead Chauvinism and Living
Socialism." "Kautsky, despite his enormous services, never belonged to those who, during great crises, immediately
adopted a militant Marxist position" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XVIII,
p. 77). The theoretical sources of his renegacy have already been noted above.
From the position of Lenin (and the Bolsheviks), who advanced the slogan of supporting the revolutionary movement of the peasantry against the landlords

PREFACE
13 at the stage of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, follows the
position of Bolshevism at the stage of the proletarian revolution as well. In
Lenin's theses on the agrarian question for the Second Congress of the Comintern,
it is pointed out that communist parties must not
refuse to permit the gratuitous transfer of part
of the lands of the expropriated expropriators. "The usual objection
against this, consisting in pointing to the technical
superiority of large-scale agriculture, often amounts to substituting
an indisputable theoretical truth for the most vicious opportunism and
betrayal of the revolution. For the sake of the success of this revolution, the proletariat has no right to stop short before a temporary decline in
production" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, pp. 274-275).
Kautsky, however, drew precisely from this "indisputable theoretical truth" the conclusion of the necessity of "observation," since
a "temporary decline in production" for him constitutes a violation of
the interests of "social development" (Kautsky's expression), and
the latter, for Kautsky, stands above the interests of the proletariat, the interests
of the revolution. Here one can paraphrase Lenin's words:
between Lenin and Kautsky on the question of the proletarian revolution
and the preparation of the working class for it—there is an impassable abyss.
Kautsky's opportunist theory of "observation,"
which developed into outright betrayal of the working class, found
its application in "The Agrarian Question" also in the sphere of the colonial
question. Thus, on p. 234 (Russian translation), Kautsky says
that it is a reactionary utopia to "demand of Social-Democracy that it help the natives of colonial countries in
their struggle against exploitation." In this formulation by Kautsky,
one can already clearly see the social-chauvinist, blessing his
own bourgeoisie for the role of "civilized" plunderer
of colonial peoples.
Let us cite one more example of the divergence between Lenin and Kautsky.
In Note 1 (p. 84) to the synopsis of "Agrarfrage," the character of Lenin's notes on absolute rent is noted. Here
it is also sufficient to compare (see "The Agrarian Question," Russian translation, pp. 53-54) Kautsky's treatment of the problem of absolute rent with the chapters on rent in Vol. III of Marx's "Capital," with the chapters of "Theories of Surplus Value" (Vol. II, Part 1, Part 2),
where Marx speaks of Rodbertus, to see that Kautsky,
on the question of absolute rent, is closer to Rodbertus than to Marx.

14

True, Kautsky in "The Agrarian Question" polemicizes with Rodbertus, but this is a polemic not of a proletarian ideologist-materialist,
uncovering the class content of Rodbertus's theory,
but a polemic of an objectivist, glossing over the class essence
of the views of the "Pomeranian landlord." Kautsky solidarizes
with Rodbertus, who did not consider, in the question of rent, the presence of raw materials
in agriculture; Kautsky points out that, despite Rodbertus's errors,
the latter "indicated the path by which it (absolute
rent. A. N.) can arise." In contrast to Kautsky's bowing and scraping
before Rodbertus and his historical role, Lenin,
in "The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy," polemicizing with Maslov, gives
the following assessment of this role of Rodbertus: "The comparison of Rodbertus
and Marx on the question of rent is sheer ignorance. Rodbertus's theory
is based on the assumption that the erroneous calculation
of the Pomeranian landlord ('not counting' raw product in agriculture!) is also obligatory for the capitalist farmer. In Rodbertus's theory
there is not a grain of historicism, not a grain of historical reality,
for he takes agriculture in general, outside of time and space,
the agriculture of any country and any epoch. Marx takes
a specific historical period, when capitalism developed the
technique of industry more rapidly than that of agriculture. Marx takes capitalist
agriculture, constrained by non-capitalist private
ownership of land" (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XI, pp. 398-399).
It is interesting to note that even where Kautsky polemicizes with Rodbertus (on the question of the lower composition of capital
in agriculture), this polemic is essentially directed also against
Marx, since Kautsky could not have been unaware that Marx derived
absolute rent both from private ownership of land and from
the lower organic composition of capital in agriculture.
Lenin's Marxist formulations on the question of the lower structure of the organic composition of capital, in contrast to Kautsky's
treatment, can be traced in a number of Lenin's works, both
from the earliest and from the later period (Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol. IV, p. 195; Vol. XI, p. 394; Vol. XII, pp. 369-370, and others). In
the article against P. Maslov, Lenin says: "In Marx one can
find dozens of phrases where absolute rent is derived from private
ownership of land, and dozens of phrases where it is derived from
the low composition of agricultural capital. And this for the simple
reason that he advances both these conditions in the corresponding passages
of his exposition—exactly as,

PREFACE
15 in expounding Marx, I advanced both these conditions" (Lenin, Collected
Works, Vol. XII, pp. 369-370).
Kautsky, by his polemic against Rodbertus on the question
of absolute rent, attempted to cover up his disagreement with Marx,
his distortion of Marxism on this question. In
essence, Kautsky confuses absolute and monopoly rent,
whereas Marx pointed out that "the only normal"
forms of capitalist rent are precisely differential rent and absolute rent. See this same
idea in the synopsis of Lenin's lecture on the agrarian
question printed here (the synopsis was edited by Lenin) (pp. 245-246 of the present
Collection).
One could multiply many times over the number of examples of how Lenin, using Kautsky's book against the bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois "theoreticians" of the agrarian question,
of the type of Bulgakov, David, etc., at the same time carried out a
consistent demarcation between revolutionary Marxism (Bolshevism) and the deviations from it that were already present then
in Kautsky (as in Plekhanov).
"Leninism was born, grew, and became strong in a merciless struggle against opportunism of all stripes, including centrism in
the West (Kautsky), and centrism in our country (Trotsky and others)."
This proposition of J. V. Stalin is fully confirmed by the struggle that Lenin waged against centrism also in the sphere of agrarian
theory. And even when Kautsky was in the camp of Marxism
and waged a struggle against revisionism (a struggle, moreover, that was never consistent), Lenin, without at that time naming Kautsky
in the interests of a united front in this struggle, always irreconcilably
fought against Kautskyism on all the fundamental questions
of Marxism, including questions of agrarian policy and the
programme of the party of the revolutionary proletariat.
Extremely interesting is the attitude of Kautsky himself
toward his book "Die Agrarfrage" now, when Kautsky's deviation from Marxism
has turned into the finished ideology of Social-Fascism,
the bitterest enemy of the world's first proletarian state.
It is known that Lenin, in his articles against Bulgakov
(Collected Works, Vol. II), particularly emphasized, as one of the very best
chapters of Kautsky's book, Chapter VI on large-scale and small-scale
production. With this chapter, as Lenin notes, Bulgakov was particularly displeased.
The same "displeasure" was expressed by David, and

16

Hertz, and Chernov, and the like. How, then, does Kautsky now assess
his struggle against revisionism on the question of large-scale and small-scale
production in agriculture?
This question is extremely topical precisely now, when Marx's law of the concentration of capital
is being fully confirmed in agriculture as well; when, by virtue of this law, capitalist contradictions in agriculture
have emerged with all
their nakedness; when, as a result of the contemporary crisis,
the impoverishment and ruin of millions of small rural proprietors, the
sharpening of the class struggle in the capitalist countryside, etc.,
receives its most vivid expression. When the international
proletariat has, in the person of the USSR, its proletarian state,
where for the first time socialist forms of production have been created, uniting tens of millions of poor peasant and middle peasant masses.
When the Marxist thesis on the superiority of large-scale socialist
production has been confirmed, as the experience of the sovkhozes
and kolkhozes in the USSR has shown, by life itself. It is life itself that has buried
irrevocably the little theories of the David type about special laws
of development of agriculture, about the stability of small-scale farming
and its superiority over large-scale farming, etc., etc.
"'Have crumbled and scattered to dust,' says Comrade Stalin, 'the
assertions of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois "science," the assertions
of the Right opportunists and Trotskyites about the impossibility and
disadvantageousness of large sovkhozes, the impossibility of a mass movement
of the basic masses of the peasantry,... 'the inability of the proletariat to
lead the basic masses of the peasantry in the work of socialist
construction'" (see "The Year of the Great Turn").
But to recognize all this means to recognize that the real
bearers of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the Bolsheviks, are right.
To recognize this means to recognize the victory of Bolshevism. But Kautsky is
a counter-revolutionary. He is the bitterest enemy of Bolshevism, he is against
the first proletarian state. Kautsky stops
at no form of struggle against the proletariat. In his
servility to the bourgeoisie, he does not stop at distorting
his own works.
In the booklet against the USSR ("Bolshevism at a Deadlock"), published
in 1930, Kautsky interprets his "Agrarfrage" in the following way, and in
particular the chapter in this book on the superiority of large-scale
production. First of all, Kautsky poses the question: "Should
large-scale production in agriculture be considered at all such

PREFACE

Is the large-scale enterprise a higher and more productive form of enterprise in agriculture, as it is in industry? (p. 13).

Having pointed out that Marx and Engels answer this question in the affirmative, believing that modern technology and agronomy ensure the same superiority of large-scale production over small-scale in agriculture as in industry, Kautsky presents the revisionist viewpoint. “In these years (late 1890s, early 1900s. A. H.), a number of comrades came forward, the most prominent of whom was Eduard David, asserting that the law of the superiority of large-scale production does not apply to agriculture” (p. 13).

What, then, was Kautsky’s own viewpoint at that time? The question will seem idle to any reader, since everyone knows that, despite a number of incorrect propositions in *The Agrarian Question*, this book on the whole played a positive role in the struggle against revisionism. It turns out that Kautsky himself thinks otherwise about his book.

Having indicated that he still “continues to stand by the viewpoint of *The Agrarian Question*,” Kautsky goes on:

“The main result I arrived at in 1899 (in *The Agrarian Question*. A. H.) was that on certain points I had to acknowledge David as right and to renounce the views of Marx and Engels—true, only in order to defend with all the greater determination that which is fundamental and essential in these views. (A remarkable reservation for a social-fascist, is it not? A. H.) I had to acknowledge that the victorious advance of large-scale production observed by Marx and Engels was coming to a halt, and indeed had never been particularly strong” (p. 14, our italics. A. H.).

After Kautsky’s definitive defection to the camp of the bourgeoisie, it is difficult to be surprised at any reactionary vileness on the part of this ideologue of the Second International, and yet such a *salto* with regard to his own book seems unexpected. It turns out that David made a mistake in his book *Socialism and Agriculture*, that “one of the latest compendiums of bourgeois theories on the agrarian question” (Lenin, see this Collection, pp. 363–4), and in his other articles, when he polemicized with Kautsky, for Kautsky even then already agreed with David!

This example once again demonstrates the full depth of the political prostitution of the most authoritative theoretician of the Second International.

Having announced to the world that he, Kautsky, had never been a Marxist, this “theoretician” begins to expound his present views on the agrarian question, literally repeating David word for word.

Let us cite one of the gems of the contemporary “theoretical” baggage of the ideologue of the Second International: “In cases where the small and the large enterprise operate with the same technology and the same level of knowledge, the small enterprise shows superiority over the large, because the peasant’s personal stake in the product of his own farm is considerably higher than the stake of hired workers in the product of the large enterprise” (p. 15).

At one time, Kautsky called such arguments of “David about ‘persönliche Interessiertheit,’ ‘private Arbeit,’ ‘rastlose Tätigkeit’”* bourgeois arguments. And now the same argument was needed in order to transfer it to large-scale socialist agriculture in the USSR, to state farms and collective farms. It is interesting to note the complete unity of views between teacher and pupil: Kautsky and the Kautskyite Trotsky on the question of the absence of advantages in the simple aggregation of peasant means of production, as J. V. Stalin pointed out. For Kautsky and Trotsky, together with David, large-scale production at the same level of technology is inferior to small-scale.

The fact, pointed out by J. V. Stalin, that the mere cooperation of means of production and labor already eases labor and raises the productivity of the workers of socialist agriculture, that this simple cooperation in itself already creates the conditions and the possibility for applying machine technology, the conditions for raising socialist production in agriculture to a higher level of technology—completely overturns Kautsky and all Kautskyites.

In the book mentioned, Kautsky even sets in motion such a thesis as: “Up to now, large-scale production in agriculture has taken a form which to the highest degree hindered the application of developed technology and science.” It turns out that small-scale production has more conditions for applying science and technology than large-scale capitalist production! Is it not true that this is “a little” unlike what Marx said and what Kautsky himself once repeated?

And all this Kautsky needed in order to obscure the fundamental tendency of capitalism: the penetration of capitalist forms of production, capitalist forms of property into agriculture, and this fundamental tendency leads to the fact that “capitalism raises the technology of agriculture and drives it forward, but it cannot do this except by ruining, degrading, and crushing the mass of small producers” (Lenin, this Collection, p. 376).

The actual state of affairs in a number of capitalist countries, and especially in the USA, where the ruin of small farming has reached enormous proportions, confirms the correctness of the Marxist-Leninist theory.

This Collection prints part of Lenin’s work, which is of immense theoretical and political value, on capitalist agriculture in Germany, Hungary, and other European capitalist countries.

This work, along with those already published, exposes all the falsity of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois views, now professed by Kautsky as well, on the stability of small-scale production, while unmasking attempts to conceal under the term “small-scale production” proletarian farms, which represent a hidden form of the reserve army of the unemployed, and capitalist farms employing hired labor.

Kautsky’s definitive shift to David’s positions was needed by him for the theoretical substantiation of his struggle against the Bolsheviks, who are building socialism at the head of the proletariat and the vast masses of the collective-farm peasantry.

The Bolsheviks—in Kautsky’s opinion—have not understood Marx’s method. Marx’s method, in the interpretation of this ideologue of social-fascism, boils down to the fact that “for Marx nothing was absolute, nor did he consider absolute the advantages of socialism over capitalism, of large-scale production over small-scale” (p. 15, our italics. A. H.).

Having distorted Marx in the most charlatanic manner (Marx did not consider absolute “the advantages of socialism over capitalism”), Kautsky proceeded to substantiate his thesis of the absolute advantage of capitalism over socialism, as well as the absolute necessity of struggling against the USSR by any methods and forms, including the armed intervention of the imperialists.

((Kautsky, the greatest authority of the Second International, represents in the highest degree a typical and vivid example of how verbal recognition of Marxism led in practice to its transformation into “Struvism” or “Brentanoism” (Lenin, Collected Works XVIII, p. 203)—such is Lenin’s characterization of Kautsky in 1915. The documents on the agrarian question confirm this characterization.))

Of the other documents comprising this Collection, it is necessary to note Lenin’s critical remarks on the books of Bulgakov, Hertz, David, and Chernov. Despite the fact that Lenin in his works (especially “The Agrarian Question and the ‘Critics of Marx’”) thoroughly analyzed the listed books, these remarks of Lenin are nonetheless of exceptional value as models of Bolshevik criticism of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois works. David especially received his due in this criticism. The current political significance of this document becomes all the more obvious if one takes into account that the social-fascist parties of the Second International, headed by Kautsky, are entirely shifting to David’s positions, openly proclaiming that David was right in his struggle against Marxism.

In 1903, Lenin delivered several lectures in Paris on the theme “Marxist Views on the Agrarian Question in Europe and Russia,” and also read a paper on the theme “The Agrarian Program of the S.R.s and S.D.s.” In November 1902, Lenin read papers on the S.R.s in Geneva and London. This Collection prints the plans of the lectures, the outline of the first lecture, corrected by Lenin, and Lenin’s notes of the speeches made in the discussions on his papers. For more details on these lectures and papers, see the bibliography indicated in the text. The plans and program of the lectures represent a concise exposition of Lenin’s theory of the agrarian question. These documents should become guiding material for the corresponding parts of programs on agricultural economics in our agricultural higher educational institutions, courses, etc.

Of the notes on the speeches made in the discussions on Lenin’s paper, the note on Trotsky’s speech should be singled out. Trotsky’s Kautskyism on the question of the attitude of the party of the proletariat toward the peasantry has been definitively exposed in the works of Lenin and Stalin. Lenin’s note on Trotsky’s speech once again reveals Trotsky’s entire Kautskyite stance on this question. In fact, in Trotsky’s entire speech, the role of the peasantry as a whole, as a revolutionary force in the struggle against serfdom, disappeared. There is not a sound about the various classes within this peasantry and their role at the various stages of the revolution (see pp. 278–281 of the Collection).

Shortly after his lectures and paper, Lenin wrote his famous pamphlet *To the Rural Poor*, material for which is printed in the Collection.

“Declaring the class struggle to be his guiding thread in all agrarian questions,” Lenin decided in a popular pamphlet for the peasants “to explain our idea of the class struggle in the countryside on the basis of concrete data about the four strata of the rural population (landlords, peasant bourgeoisie, middle peasantry, and semi-proletarians together with proletarians).”¹

In the printed materials for this pamphlet, there is an extremely interesting graphic depiction of these “concrete data.”

A special place among the documents comprising the Collection is occupied by Lenin’s unfinished work “The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture.”

A number of Lenin’s statistical works held in the archives of the Institute were listed above. All these statistical materials, as a number of documents show (Lenin Collection III, p. 527; *Letters to Relatives*, pp. 17, 18), Lenin intended to process for the continuation of the large work *New Data on the Laws of Development of Capitalism in Agriculture* (Collected Works, Vol. XVII, pp. 571–645).

The fragments of the work “The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture” printed here are part of the processed and generalized statistical material indicated.

The results of the 1907 census in Germany showed “a decrease in the number of large farms (by size of agricultural area) and in the amount of land held by them” (Collection, p. 561). Regarding the results of this census, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois press raised a noisy jubilation: “Small enterprises not only do not perish in the struggle with large ones in the sphere of agriculture; on the contrary, each new census records their

---

* “personal stake,” “domestic labor,” “untiring activity.”

¹ Lenin Collection IV, p. 223. Letter to Plekhanov, March 15, 1903.

success" (Collection, p. 360) — thus declared Prof. Vobly. To this
same conclusion, as was shown above, Kautsky later also came.

Lenin, having applied the method of materialist dialectics to statistics, demonstrated that the results of the German census, like the results
of the statistics of other countries, not only do not refute Marxism, but,
on the contrary, are the best confirmation of the correctness of Marx's
teaching.

Lenin showed in this work that the question of the relation between large-scale and small-scale production in agriculture is a particular
question. The general question is the question of to what extent and how capitalism takes hold of agriculture.

Having pointed out that "the capitalist system of agriculture is characterized by the relations that exist between employers and workers," Lenin uncovered these capitalist relations in the basic mass of farms: either relations of hiring labor power (capitalist farms), or — of selling labor power (proletarian farms).

Lenin shows that the mass of peasants ("proprietors") is
nothing other than an appendage of capitalism, its reserve army.
And the presence of this mass characterizes not the prosperity of these
"proprietors," but their vegetation.

"Socio-economic statistics," says Lenin, "is one of the most powerful instruments of social cognition"
(Collection, p. 368), but it is such an instrument only under
the conditions of applying Marxist-Leninist dialectics to statistics.

In the present Collection are printed materials on American agricultural statistics. Lenin's processing of these materials,
his remarks, are a model of the application of the dialectical
method to statistics.

The publication of the Leninist legacy on the theory of the agrarian
question must give an impetus to the further elaboration of one of
the most pressing problems of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship
of the proletariat — the problem of communist policy and program in relation to the peasantry, to the various classes
within the peasantry, in connection with the concrete situation. The publication of the Leninist legacy must further sharpen
the theoretical weapon in the practical activity of the Bolsheviks
of our Union, who are organizing large-scale socialist production

PREFACE
2 3 (sovkhozes and kolkhozes) and liquidating the kulaks as a
class. It must also provide a durable weapon for the Bolsheviks
of other countries, who are waging the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism, for
the dictatorship of the proletariat. The newly published works on the agrarian
question, along with all the other works of Lenin, the
works of Marx, Engels, and Stalin, are the best and most reliable
weapon of struggle against all kinds of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theories. Only by relying on this treasury
of Marxism-Leninism can one move further, developing and deepening the theory and practice of Leninism.
A. Nikanorov.

I. SYNOPSIS OF K. KAUTSKY'S BOOK
"THE AGRARIAN QUESTION"
FEBRUARY - MARCH 1899, SHUSHENSKOYE