V. I.

Lenin

The Need for an Agricultural Labourers’ Union in Russia

ARTICLE ONE

There is a highly important question which the All-Russia
Trade. Union Conference now in session in
Petrograd [1] should consider. It is the question of founding an
all-Russia union of agricultural labourers .

All classes in Russia are organising. Only the class which is
the most exploited and the poorest of all, the most disunited
and downtrodden—the class of Russia’s agricultural wage-labourers—-seems to have been forgotten. In some non–
Russian border regions, such as the Latvian territory, there
are organisations of agricultural wage-labourers. The rural
proletariat in the vast majority of the Great-Russian and
Ukrainian gubernias has no class organisations.

It is the indisputable and paramount duty of the vanguard of
Russia’s proletariat, the industrial workers’ trade unions, to
come to the aid of their brothers, the rural workers. The
difficulties involved in organising the rural workers are
clearly enormous, as is borne out by the experience of other
capitalist countries.

This makes it all the more necessary to set about using
political liberty in Russia as speedily and vigorously as
possible and to immediately found a country-wide union of
agricultural labourers. This can and must be done by the trade
union conference. It is the more experienced, more developed,
more class—conscious representatives of the proletariat
gathered at this conference who can and must issue a call to the
rural workers, urging the’ latter to join them in the ranks of
the independently organising workers, in the ranks of their
trade unions. It is the wage-workers at the factories who must take the initiative and use the trade union
cells, groups and branches scattered all over Russia to awaken
the rural worker to independent action and to active participation in the struggle to improve his position and uphold
his class interests.

It may seem to many, and perhaps even to most at the moment,
that with the peasants organising throughout Russia and calling
for the abolition of private ownership of land and for “equalised” land tenure, this is not the right time
to set up a rural workers’ union.

Quite the contrary. This is precisely the time when it is
particularly opportune and urgent. Those who share the proletarian class point of view can have no doubt as to the
correctness of the proposition which the Mensheviks approved at
the Stockholm Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party in 1906 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, and which has
ever since been part of the R.S.D.L,P. programme. That proposition reads:

“ The Party should in all eventualities, and whatever the situation with regard to democratic
agrarian reforms, consider it as its task to steadfastly strive for independent class
organisation of the rural proletariat and explain to it the irreconcilable antithesis between its interests and the
interests of the peasant bourgeoisie, to warn it against
illusions about the small-holding system, which can never, as
long as commodity production exists, do away with the poverty of
the masses, and, lastly, to point to the need for a complete
socialist revolution as the only means of abolishing all poverty
and exploitation.”

Every class-conscious worker, every union member, would agree
that these propositions are correct. They must be carried out by
the trade unions, since it is a question of independent class organisation of the rural workers .

We hope that at this revolutionary moment, when the urge to
express themselves, to chart their own path, to see that life is
not shaped anew without the workers themselves independently
deciding labour issues, is making itself felt among the working
people in general and the workers in particular—that at
this time the trade unions will not confine themselves to narrow
craft interests and forget their weaker brethren, the rural
workers, but will exert all their energy to help them by
founding a union of Russia’s rural workers.

In the next article, we shall try to outline some practical
steps in this direction.

ARTICLE TWO

In the previous article we dealt with the fundamental significance of a rural workers’ union in Russia. Here we shall
touch upon certain practical aspects of the question.

A union of Russia’s rural workers should group all who are
engaged mainly, or even partly , as labourers at agricultural undertakings.

Experience will show whether or not it will be necessary to
subdivide these unions into those of pure agricultural labourers
and those of part-time labourers. At any rate, this is not the
main thing. The main thing is that the fundamental class
interests of all who sell their labour power are identical and that the unity of all who gain at least
part of their livelihood by hiring themselves out is absolutely
necessary.

The wage-workers in the cities, in the factories, are bound by
thousands and millions of ties with the wage-workers in the
countryside. A call issued by the former to the latter cannot go
unheeded. But issuing a call is not the only thing to be
done. The urban workers have far more experience, knowledge,
means and forces. Some of their forces should be directly used to help the rural workers on to their feet .

All organised workers should give one day’s wages to promote and
strengthen the unity of town and country wage-workers. Let a
certain part of this sum be fully used as a contribution from
the urban workers to the class unity of the rural workers. Let
this fund be drawn on to cover the expenses of putting out a
series of the most popular leaflets, of publishing a rural
workers’ newspaper—at least a weekly to begin with—and of sending at least a few agitators and
organisers to the countryside to immediately set up unions of agricultural labourers in the various Localities.

Only the experience gained by those unions themselves will help
find the right method of furthering this work. Each union should
first of all try to improve the condition of those who sell
their labour power to agricultural under takings and to secure
higher pay, better housing conditions, better food, etc.

A most determined war must be declared on the preconceived
notion that the coming abolition of private land ownership can
“give land” to every farm-hand and day labourer and undermine the very foundations of wage-labour in
agriculture. This is a preconceived notion and, moreover, an
extremely harmful one. The abolition of private land ownership
is a tremendous and unquestionably progressive reform that
unquestionably meets the interests of economic development and
the interests of the proletariat, a reform which every wage-worker will back to the utmost but which in no way
eliminates wage-labour.

You cannot eat land. You cannot farm without livestock,
implements, seed, a reserve of produce, or money. To rely on
“promises” from anyone—that the wage—workers in the countryside will be
“helped” to acquire livestock, implements, etc.—would be the worst kind of error, unpardonable
naiveté.

The basic rule, the first commandment, of any trade union
movement is not to rely on the “state” but to rely only on the strength of one’s own class. The state is
an organisation of the ruling class.

Don’t rely on promises. Rely only on the strength of the unity
and political consciousness of your class!

That is why it must be made the immediate task of the rural
workers’ trade union not only to fight for better conditions
for the workers in general, but in particular to defend their interests as a class during the coming great land
reform.

Many peasants and Socialist-Revolutionaries maintain that
“labour power must be put at the disposal of the volost
committees”. The class of agricultural labourers holds the
opposite view—it wants the volost committees to be put at
the disposal of labour power! It is clear enough where the
master and the labourer stand.

“ Land for the whole people.” This is correct. But the people are divided into classes. Every worker knows, sees,
feels, experiences this truth which the bourgeoisie deliberately
obscure and the petty bourgeoisie always forget .

When alone, a poor man is helpless. No “state” will help the rural wage-worker, the farm-hand, the day-labourer, the
poor peasant, the semi-proletarian, if he does not help himself . The first step in this direction is independent
class organisation of the rural proletariat.

We hope the all-Russia trade union conference will tackle this
task with the greatest energy, will issue a call to all Russia
and hold out a helping hand, the mighty hand of the organised
vanguard of the proletariat, to the rural workers.

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Notes:
[1]
The All-Russia Trade Union Conference was held in Petrograd
between June 21 and 28 (July 4–11), 1917. It was attended by
211 delegates, 73 of them being Bolsheviks, and the rest Mensheviks,
S.R.s, Bundists and non-party people. Among the items on the
agenda were the trade union movement and development and the
economic struggle. The Bolsheviks moved resolutions or amendments on all the major issues. The conference carried by a slight
majority of 10 or 12 the motions tabled by the defencist
Mensheviks. It elected a provisional Central Council of Trade Unions.