The bourgeois and reactionary parties are feverishly wondering 
why everywhere among socialists the peasant question has now 
suddenly been placed on the agenda. What they should be 
wondering at, by rights, is that this was not done long ago. From 
Ireland to Sicily, from Andalusia to Russia and Bulgaria, the 
peasant is a very essential factor of the population, production and 
political power. Only two regions of Western Europe form an 
exception. In Great Britain proper big landed estates and 
large-scale agriculture have totally displaced the self-supporting 
peasant; in Prussia east of the Elbe the same process has been 
going on for centuries; here too peasant is being increasingly 
“put down” or at least economically and politically forced into the 
background. 

The peasant has so far largely manifested himself as a factor of 
political power only by his apathy, which has its roots in the 
isolation of rustic life. This apathy on the part of the great mass of 
the population is the strongest pillar not only of parliamentary 
corruption in Paris and Rome but also of Russian despotism. Yet it 
is by no means insuperable. Since the rise of the working-class 
movement in Western Europe, especially in those parts where 
small peasant holdings predominate, it has not been particularly 
difficult for the bourgeoisie to render the _ socialist workers 
suspicious and odious in the minds of the peasants as partageux, as 
people who want to “divide up”, as lazy greedy city dwellers who 

a Wird “gelegt” Bauernlegen—a technical term from German history meaning 
eviction, expropriation of peasants. [Lenin’s note to his Russian translation of the 
beginning of Engels’ work.] 

have an eye on the property of the peasants. The hazy socialist 
aspirations of the revolution of February 1848 were rapidly 
disposed of by the reactionary ballots of the French peasantry; the 
peasant, who wanted peace of mind, dug up from his treasured 
memories the legend of Napoleon, the peasant emperor, and 
created the Second Empire. We all know what this one feat of the 
peasants cost the people of France; it is still suffering from its 
consequences. 

But much has changed since then. The development of the 
capitalist form of production has cut the life-strings of small 
production in agriculture; small production is irretrievably going 
to rack and ruin. Competitors in North and South America and in 
India, too, have swamped the European market with their cheap 
grain, so cheap that no domestic producer can compete with it. 
The big landowners and small peasants alike see ruin staring them 
in the face. And since they are both owners of land and country 
folk, the big landowners assume the role of champions of the 
interests of the small peasants, and the small peasants by and large 
accept them as such. 

Meanwhile a powerful socialist workers’ party has sprung up 
and developed in the West. The obscure presentiments and 
feelings dating back to the February revolution have become 
clarified and acquired the broader and deeper scope of a 
programme that meets all scientific requirements and contains 
definite tangible demands; and a steadily growing number of 
socialist deputies are fighting for these demands in the German, 
French and Belgian parliaments. The conquest of political power 
by the socialist party has become a matter of the foreseeable 
future. But in order to conquer political power this party must 
first go from the towns to the country, must become a power in 
the countryside. This party, which has an advantage over all 
others in that it possesses a clear insight into the interconnections 
between economic causes and political effects and long ago spotted 
the wolf in the sheep’s clothing of the big landowner, that 
importunate friend of the peasant—may this party calmly leave 
the doomed peasant in the hands of his false protectors until he 
has been transformed from a passive into an active opponent of 
the industrial workers? This brings us right it into the thick of the 
peasant question. 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 485 

The rural population to which we can address ourselves consists 
of quite different parts, which again vary greatly with the various 
regions. 

In the West of Germany, as in France and Belgium, there 
prevails the small-scale cultivation of small-holding peasants, the 
majority of whom own and the minority of whom rent their plots 
of land. 

In the Northwest—in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein— 
we have a preponderance of big and middle peasants who cannot 
do without male and female farm servants and even day labourers. 
The same is true of part of Bavaria. 

In Prussia east of the Elbe and in Mecklenburg we have the 
region.of big landed estates and large-scale cultivation with hinds, 
cotters and day labourers, and in between small and middle 
peasants in relatively unimportant and steadily decreasing propor- 
tion. 

In central Germany all these forms of production and owner- 
ship are found mixed in various proportions, depending upon the 
locality, without the clear prevalence of any particular form over a 
large area. 

Besides there are localities varying in extent where the arable 
land owned or rented is insufficient to provide for the subsistence 
of the family, but can serve only as the basis for operating a 
domestic industry and enabling the latter to receive the otherwise 
incomprehensibly low wages that ensure the steady sale of its 
products despite all foreign competition. 

Which of these subdivisions of the rural population can be won 
over by the Social-Democratic Party? We, of course, investigate this 
question only in broad outline; we single out only clear-cut forms. 
We lack space to give consideration to intermediate stages and 
mixed rural populations. 

Let us begin with the small peasant. Not only is he, of all 
peasants, the most important for Western Europe in general, but 
he is also the critical case that decides the entire question. Once we 
have clarified in our minds our attitude to the small peasant we 
have all the grounds needed to determine our stand relative to the 
other constituent parts of the rural population. 

By small peasant we mean here the owner or tenant— 
particularly the former—of a patch of land no bigger, as a rule, 
than he and his family can till, and no smaller than can sustain the 
family. This small peasant, just like the small handicraftsman, is 

therefore a toiler who differs from the modern proletarian in that 
he still possesses his instruments of labour; hence a survival of a 
past mode of production. There is a threefold difference between 
him and his ancestor, the serf, bondman or, very exceptionally, 
the free peasant liable to rent and feudal services. First, in that the 
French Revolution freed him from the feudal services and dues 
that he owed to the landlord and in the majority of cases, at least 
on the left bank of the Rhine, assigned his peasant farm to him as 
his own free property. Second, in that he lost the protection of 
and the right to participate in the self-administering Mark 
community, and hence his share in the emoluments of the former 
common Mark. The common Mark was whisked away partly by 
the erstwhile feudal lord and partly by enlightened bureaucratic 
legislation modelled on Roman law. This deprives the small 
peasant of modern times of the possibility of feeding his draft 
animals without buying fodder. Economically, however, the loss of 
the emoluments derived from the Mark by far outweighs the 
benefits accruing from the abolition of feudal services. The 
number of peasants unable to keep draft animals of their own is 
steadily increasing. Third, the peasant of today has lost half of his 
former productive activity. Formerly he and his family produced, 
from raw material he had made himself, the greater part of the 
industrial products that he needed; the rest of what he required 
was supplied by village neighbours who plied a trade in addition 
to farming and were paid mostly in articles of exchange or in 
reciprocal services. The family, and still more the village, was 
self-sufficient, produced almost everything it needed. It was a 
natural economy almost unalloyed; almost no money was neces- 
sary. Capitalist production put an end to this by its money 
economy and large-scale industry. But if the Mark emoluments 
represented one of the basic conditions of his existence, his 
industrial sideline was another. And thus the peasant sinks ever 
lower. Taxes, crop failures, divisions of inheritance and litigations 
drive one peasant after another into the arms of the usurer; the 
indebtedness becomes more and more general and _ steadily 
increases in amount in each case—in brief, our small peasant, like 
every other survival of a past mode of production, is hopelessly 
doomed. He is a future proletarian. 

As such he ought to lend a ready ear to socialist propaganda. 
But he is prevented from doing so for the time being by his 
deep-rooted sense of property. The more difficult it is for him to 
defend his endangered patch of land the more desperately he 
clings to it, the more he regards the Social Democrats, who speak 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 487 

of transferring landed property to the whole of society, just as 
dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer. How is Social 
Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can it offer to the 
doomed small peasant without becoming untrue to itself? 

Here we find a practical point of support in the agrarian 
programme of the French socialists of the Marxist trend, a 
programme which is the more noteworthy as it comes from the 
classical land of small peasant economy. 

The Marseilles Congress of 1892 adopted the first agrarian 
programme of the Party.** It demands for propertyless rural 
workers (that is to say, day labourers and hinds): minimum wages 
fixed by trade unions and community councils; rural trade courts 
consisting half of workers; prohibition of the sale of communal 
land; and thé leasing of public domain land to communities which 
are to rent out all this land, whether owned or leased by them, to 
associations of propertyless families of farm labourers for common 
cultivation, on condition that the employment of wage labourers 
be prohibited and that communities exercise control; old-age and 
invalid pensions, to be defrayed by means of a special tax on big 
landed estates. 

On behalf of the small peasants, with special consideration to 
tenant farmers, it demands: acquisition of farm machinery by the 
community to be leased at a cost price to the peasants; the 
formation of peasant co-operatives for the purchase of manure, 
drain-pipes, seed, etc., and for the sale of the produce; abolition 
of the real estate transfer tax if the value involved does not exceed 
5,000 francs; arbitration commissions on the Irish pattern to 
reduce exorbitant rents and compensate quitting tenant farmers 
and sharecroppers (métayers) for the appreciation of the land due 
to them; repeal of Article 2102 of the Civil Code which allows a 
landlord to impound the crop, and the abolition of the right of 
creditors to levy on growing crops; exemption from levy and 
distraint of a definite amount of farm implements and of the crop, 
seed, manure, draft animals, in short, whatever is indispensable to 
the peasant for carrying on his business; revision of the general 
cadastre, which has long been out of date, and until such time a 
local revision in each community; lastly, free instruction in 
farming, and agricultural experimental stations. 

As we see, the demands made in the interests of the 
peasants—those made in the interests of the workers do not 
concern us here for the time being—are not very far-reaching. 
Some of them have already been implemented elsewhere. The 
tenants’ arbitration courts refer explicitly to the Irish prototype. 

33* 

Peasant co-operatives already exist in the Rhine provinces. The 
revision of the cadastre has constantly been a pious wish of all 
liberals and even bureaucrats throughout Western Europe. The 
other points, too, could be carried into effect without any 
substantial impairment of the existing capitalist order. So much 
simply in characterisation of the programme. No reproach is 
intended; quite the contrary. 

The Party did such good business with this programme among 
the peasants in the most diverse parts of France that—since 
appetite comes with eating—a need was felt to adapt it still more 
to their taste. The feeling was, however, that this would be 
treading on dangerous ground. How was the peasant to be helped, 
not the peasant as a future proletarian but as a propertied peasant 
of the present time, without violating the basic principles of the 
general socialist programme? In order to meet this objection the 
new practical proposals were prefaced by a theoretical preamble 
which seeks to prove that it is in keeping with the principles of 
socialism to protect small-peasant property from destruction by the 
capitalist mode of production although one is perfectly aware that 
this destruction is inevitable. Let us now examine more closely this 
preamble as well as the demands themselves, which were adopted 
by the Nantes Congress in September of this year. 

The preamble begins as follows: 

“Whereas according to the terms of the general programme of the Party 
producers can be free only in so far as they are in possession of the means of 
production; 

“Whereas in the sphere of industry these means of production have already 
reached such a degree of capitalist centralisation that they can be restored to the 
producers only in collective or social form, but—at least in present-day 
France—this is by no means the case in the sphere of agriculture, the means of 
production, namely the land, being in very many localities still in the hands of the 
individual producers themselves as their individual property; 

“Whereas even this state of affairs characterised by small-holding ownership is 
irretrievably doomed (est fatalement appelé a disparaitre), still it is not for socialism to 
hasten this doom, as its task does not consist in separating property from labour 
but, on the contrary, in uniting both of these factors of all production by placing 
them in the same hands, factors whose separation entails the servitude and poverty 
of the workers reduced to proletarians; 

“Whereas, on the one hand, it is the duty of socialism to put the agricultural 
proletarians again in possession—collective or social in form—of the great domains 
after expropriating their present idle owners, it is, on the other hand, no less its 
imperative duty to maintain the peasants themselves tilling their patches of land in 
possession of the same as against the treasury, the usurer, and the encroachments 
of the newly arisen big landowners; 

‘Whereas it is expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who as 
tenants or sharecroppers (métayers) cultivate the land owned by others and who, if 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 489 

they exploit day labourers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so by the 
exploitation to which they themselves are subjected — 

“Therefore the Workers’ Party—which unlike the anarchists does not count on 
an increase and spread of poverty for the transformation of the social order but 
expects labour and society in general to be emancipated only by the organisation 
and concerted efforts of the workers of both country and town, by their taking 
possession of the government and legislation—had adopted the following agrarian 
programme in order to bring together all the elements of rural production, all 
occupations which by virtue of various rights and titles utilise the national soil, to 
wage an identical struggle against the common foe: the feudality of landowner- 

ship.” 

Now for a closer examination of these “whereas”. 

To begin with, the statement in the French programme that 
freedom of the producers presupposes the possession of the 
means of production must be supplemented by those immediately 
following: that the possession of the means of production is 
possible only in two forms: either as individual possession, which 
form never and nowhere existed for the producers in general, and 
is daily being made more impossible by industrial progress; or else 
as common possession, a form the material and _ intellectual 
preconditions of which have been established by the development 
of capitalist society itself; that therefore taking collective possession 
of the means of production must be fought for by all means at the 
disposal of the proletariat. 

The common possession of the means of production is thus set 
forth here as the sole principal goal to be striven for. Not only in 
industry, where the ground has already been prepared, but in 
general, hence also in agriculture. According to the programme 
individual possession never and nowhere obtained generally for all 
producers; for that very reason and because industrial progress 
removes it anyhow, socialism is not interested in maintaining, but 
rather in removing, it; because where it exists and in so far as it 
exists it makes common possession impossible. Once we cite the 
programme in support of our contention, we must cite the entire 
programme, which considerably modifies the proposition quoted 
in Nantes by making the universal historical truth expressed in it 
dependent upon the conditions under which alone it can remain a 
truth today in Western Europe and North America. 

Possession of the means of production by the individual 
producers nowadays no longer grants these producers any real 
freedom. The handicrafts have already been ruined in the cities; 
in metropolises like London they have even disappeared entirely, 
having been replaced by large-scale industry, the sweatshop 
system and miserable bunglers who thrive on bankruptcy. The 

self-supporting small peasant is neither in the safe possession of 
his tiny patch of land nor is he free. He, as well as his house, his 
farmstead and his few fields belong to the usurer; his livelihood is 
more uncertain than that of the proletarian, who at least does 
have tranquil days now and then, which is never the case with the 
tortured debt slave. Strike out Article 2102 of the Civil Code, 
provide by law that a definite amount of a peasant’s farm 
implements, livestock, etc., shall be exempt from levy and 
distraint; yet you cannot ensure him against an emergency in 
which he is compelled to sell his cattle “voluntarily”, in which he 
must sign himself away body and sole to the usurer and be glad to 
get a reprieve. Your attempt to protect the small peasant in his 
property does not protect his liberty but only the particular form 
of his servitude; it prolongs a situation in which he can neither live 
nor die. It is, therefore, entirely out of place here to cite the first 
paragraph of your programme. 

The preamble states that in present-day France the means of 
production, that is, the land, is in very many localities still in the 
hands of individual producers as their individual possession; that, 
however, it is not, so it continues, the task of socialism to separate 
property from labour, but, on the contrary, to unite these two 
factors of all production by placing them in the same hands.—As 
has already been pointed out, the latter in this general form is by 
no means the task of socialism. The latter’s task is rather only to 
transfer the means of production to the producers as their common 
possession. As soon as we lose sight of this the above statement 
becomes directly misleading in that it implies it is the mission of 
socialism to convert the present sham property of the small 
peasant in his fields into real property, that is to say, to convert 
the small tenant into an owner and the indebted owner into a 
debtless owner. Undoubtedly socialism is interested to see that the 
false semblance of peasant property should disappear, but not in 
this manner. 

At any rate we have now got so far that the preamble can 
straightforwardly declare it to be the duty of socialism, indeed, its 
imperative duty, 

“to maintain the peasants themselves tilling their patches of land in possession 
of the same as against the treasury, the usurer,and the encroachments of the newly 
arisen big landowners”. 

The preamble thus imposes upon socialism the imperative duty 
to carry out something which it had declared to be impossible in 
the preceding paragraph. It charges it to “maintain” the 
small-holding ownership of the peasants although it itself states 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 491 

that this form of ownership is “‘irretrievably doomed”. What are 
the treasury, the usurer and the newly arisen big landowners if 
not the instruments by means of which capitalist production brings 
about this inevitable doom? What means “socialism” is to employ 
to protect the peasant against this trinity we shall see below. 

But not only the small peasant is to be protected in his property. 
It is hkewise 

“expedient to extend this protection also to the producers who as tenants or 
sharecroppers (métayers) cultivate the land owned by others and who, if they exploit 
day labourers, are to a certain extent compelled to do so by the exploitation to 
which they themselves are subjected”. 

Here we are entering upon peculiar ground indeed. Socialism is 
particularly opposed to the exploitation of wage labour. And here 
it is declared to be the imperative duty of socialism to protect the 
French tenants when they “exploit day labourers’, to quote the 
text verbatim! And that because they are compelled to do so to a 
certain extent “by the exploitation to which they themselves are 
subjected”! 

How easy and pleasant it is to keep on coasting once you are on 
the toboggan slide! When the big and middle peasants of 
Germany now come to ask the French socialists to intercede with 
the German Party Executive to get the German Social-Democratic 
Party to protect them in the exploitation of their male and female 
farm servants, citing in support of their contention the “exploita- 
tion to which they themselves are subjected” by usurers, tax 
collectors, grain speculators and cattle dealers, what will they 
answer? What guarantee have they that our agrarian big landlords 
will not send them Count Kanitz (as he also submitted a proposal 
like theirs providing for a state monopoly in grain importation) 
and likewise ask for socialist protection of their exploitation of the 
rural workers, citing in support “the exploitation to which they 
themselves are subjected” by stock-jobbers, money lenders and 
grain speculators? 

Let us say here at the outset that the intentions of our French 
friends are not as bad as one would suppose. The above 
paragraph, we are told, is intended to cover only a quite special 
case, namely the following: In Northern France, just as in our 
sugar-beet districts, land is leased to the peasants obliged to 
cultivate beets on conditions which are extremely onerous. They 
must deliver the beets to a stated factory at a price fixed by it, 
must buy definite seed, use a fixed quantity of prescribed fertiliser 
and on delivery are badly cheated into the bargain. We are only 
too familiar with this in Germany as well. But if this sort of 

peasant is to be taken under one’s wing this must be said openly 
and explicitly. As the sentence reads now, in its unlimited general 
form, it is a direct violation not only of the French programme but 
also of the fundamental principle of socialism in general, and its 
authors will have no cause for complaint if this careless piece of 
editing is used against them in various quarters contrary to their 
intention. 

Also capable of such misconstruction are the concluding words 
of the preamble according to which it is the task of the Socialist 
Workers’ Party 

“to bring together all the elements of rural production, all occupations which by 
virtue of various rights and titles utilise the national soil, to wage an identical 
struggle against the common foe: the feudality of landownership”. 

I flatly deny that the socialist workers’ party of any country is 
charged with the task of taking into its fold, in addition to the 
rural proletarians and the small peasants, also the middle and big 
peasants and perhaps even the tenants of big estates, the capitalist 
cattle breeders and the other capitalist exploiters of the national 
soil. To all of them the feudality of landownership may appear to 
be a common foe. On certain questions we may make common 
cause with them and be able to fight for some time on their side 
for definite aims. True, we can use in our Party individuals from 
every class of society, but we have no use whatever for any groups 
representing capitalist, middle-bourgeois or middle-peasant inter- 
ests. Here too what they mean is not as bad as it looks. The 
authors evidently never even gave all this a thought. But 
unfortunately they allowed themselves to be carried away by their 
zeal for generalisation and they must not be surprised if they are 
taken at their word. 

After the preamble come the newly adopted addenda to the 
programme itself. They betray the same cursory editing as the 
preamble. 

The article providing that the communities must acquire farm 
machinery and lease it at prime cost to the peasants is modified so 
as to provide that the communities are, in the first place, to 
receive state subsidies for this purpose and, secondly, that the 
machinery is to be placed at the disposal of the small peasants free 
of charge. This further concession will not be of much avail to the 
small peasants, whose fields and mode of production permit of but 
little use of machinery. 

Furthermore, 

“substitution of a single progressive tax on all incomes upward of 3,000 francs 
for all existing direct and indirect taxes”. 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 493 

A similar demand has been included for many years in almost 
every Social-Democratic programme. But that this demand is 
raised especially in the interests of the small peasants is something 
new and shows only how little its real scope has been calculated. 
Take England. There the state budget amounts to 90 million 
pounds sterling, of which 13'/, to 14 million are accounted for by 
income tax. The smaller part of the remaining 76 million is 
contributed by taxing business (post and telegraph charges, stamp 
tax), but by far greater part of it imposts on articles of mass 
consumption, by constantly repeated clipping of small, impercepti- 
ble amount totalling many millions from the incomes of. all 
members of the population, but particularly of its poorer sections. 
In present-day society it is scarcely possible to defray state 
expenditures in any other way. Suppose the whole 90 million are 
saddled in England on the incomes of 120 pounds sterling=3,000 
francs and in excess thereof by the imposition of a progressive 
direct tax. The average annual accumulation, the annual increase 
of the aggregate national wealth, amounted in 1865 to 1875, 
according to Giffen, to 240 million pounds sterling. Let us assume 
it now equals 300 million annually; a tax burden of 90 million 
would consume almost one-third of the aggregate accumulation. 
In other words, no government except a socialist one can 
undertake any such thing. When the socialists are at the helm 
there will be things for them to carry into execution alongside 
which that tax reform will figure as a mere, and quite 
insignificant, settlement for the moment while altogether different 
prospects open up to the small peasants. 

There seems to be a realisation that the peasants will have to 
wait rather a long time for this tax reform so that “in the 
meantime” (en attendant) the following prospect is held out to 
them: 

“abolition of taxes on land for all peasants living by their own labour, and 
reduction of these taxes on all mortgaged plots”. 

The latter half of this demand can refer only to peasant farms 
too big to be operated by the family itself; hence it is again a 
provision in favour of peasants who “exploit day labourers”. 

Again: 

“freedom of hunting and fishing without restriction other than such as may be 
necessary for the conservation of game and fish and the protection of growing 
crops”. 

This sounds very popular, but the concluding part of the 
sentence wipes out the introductory part. How many hares, 
partridges, pikes and carp are there even today per peasant family 

in all the rural localities? Would you say more than would warrant 
giving each peasant just one day a year for free hunting and 
fishing? 

“Lowering of the legal and conventional rate of interest” — 

hence renewed usury laws, a renewed attempt to introduce a 
police measure that has always failed everywhere for the last two 
thousand years. If a small peasant finds himself in a position 
where recourse to a usurer is the lesser evil to him, the usurer will 
always find ways and means of sucking him dry without falling 
foul of the usury laws. This measure could serve at most to soothe 
the small peasant but he will derive no advantage from it; on the 
contrary, it makes it more difficult for him to obtain credit 
precisely when he needs it most. 

“Medical treatment free of charge and medicines at cost price” — 

this at any rate is not a measure for the special protection of the 
peasants. The German programme goes further and demands that 
medicine too should be free of charge. 

“Compensation for families of reservists called up for military duty for the 
duration of their service” — 
this already exists, though most inadequately, in Germany and 
Austria and is likewise no special peasant demand. 

“Lowering of the transport charges for fertiliser and farm machinery and 
produce” — 
is on the whole in effect in Germany, and mainly in the 
interests—of the big landowners. 

“Immediate preparatory work for the elaboration of a plan of public works for 
the amelioration of the soil and the advancement of agricultural production” — 
leaves everything in the realm of uncertainty and fine-sounding 
promises and is also above all in the interest of the big landed 
estates. 

In brief, after the tremendous theoretical effort exhibited in the 
preamble the practical proposals of the new agrarian programme 
are even more unrevéaling as to the way in which the French 
Workers’ Party expects to be able to maintain the small peasants in 
possession of their smallholdings which, on its own testimony, are 
irretrievably doomed. 

II 

In one point our French comrades are absolutely right: No 
lasting revolutionary transformation is possible in France against 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 495 

the will of the small peasant. Only it seems to me they have not 
got the right leverage if they mean to lay hold of the peasant. 

They are bent, it seems, on winning over the small peasant 
forthwith, possibly even for the next general elections. This they 
can hope to achieve only by making very risky general assurances 
in defence of which they are compelled to set forth even much 
more risky theoretical considerations. Then, upon closer examina- 
tion, it appears that the general assurances are self-contradictory 
(promise to maintain a state of affairs which, as one declares 
oneself, is irretrievably doomed) and that the various measures are 
either wholly without effect (usury laws), or are general workers’ 
demands or demands which also benefit the big landowners or 
finally are such of no great bearing at all on the interests of the 
small peasants. In consequence, the directly practical part of the 
programme of itself corrects the erroneous initial part and reduces 
the apparently formidable grandiloquence of the preamble to 
actually innocent proportions. 

Let us say it outright: in view of the prejudices arising out of 
their entire economic position, their upbringing and their isolated 
mode of life, prejudices nurtured by the bourgeois press and the 
big landowners, we can win over the mass of the small peasants 
forthwith only if we make them a promise which we ourselves 
know we shall not be able to keep. That is, we must promise them 
not only to protect their property in any event against all 
economic forces sweeping over them but also to relieve them of 
the burdens which already now oppress them: to transform the 
tenant into a free owner and to pay the debts of the owner 
succumbing to the weight of his mortgage. If we could do this we 
should again arrive at the point from which the present situation 
would necessarily develop anew. We shall not have emancipated 
the peasant but only given him a reprieve. 

But it is not in our interests to win over the peasant overnight 
only to lose him again on the morrow if we cannot keep our 
promise. We have no more use for the peasant as a Party member 
if he expects us to perpetuate his property in his smallholding 
than for the small handicraftsman who would fain be perpetuated 
as a boss. These people belong to the anti-Semites. Let them go to 
them and let them get the promise to salvage their small 
enterprises. Once they learn there what these glittering phrases 
really amount to and what melodies are fiddled down from the 
anti-Semitic heavens they will realise in ever-increasing measure 
that we who promise less and look for salvation in entirely 
different quarters are after all more reliable people. If the French 

496 Frederick Engels — 

had the strident anti-Semitic demagogy we have they would hardly 
have committed the mistake at Nantes. 

What, then, is our attitude towards the small peasants? How 
shall we have to deal with them on the day of our accession to 
power? 

To begin with, the French programme is absolutely correct in 
stating: that we foresee the inevitable doom of the small peasant 
but that it is not our mission to hasten it by any interference on 
our part. 

Secondly, it is just as evident that when we are in possession of 
state power we shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the 
small peasants (whether with or without compensation), as we shall 
have to do in the case of the big landowners. Our task relative to 
the small peasant consists, in the first place, in effecting a 
transition of his private undertaking, private property to a 
co-operative one, not forcibly but by dint of example and the 
proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then of course 
we .shall have ample means of showing to the small peasant 
prospective advantages that must be obvious to him even today. 

Almost twenty years ago the Danish socialists, who have only 
one real city in their country—Copenhagen—and therefore have 
to rely almost exclusively on peasant propaganda outside of it, 
were already drawing up such plans. The peasants of a village or 
parish—there are many big individual homesteads in Denmark— 
were to pool their land to form a single big farm in order to 
cultivate it for common account and distribute the yield in 
proportion to the land, money and labour contributed. In 
Denmark small landed property plays only a secondary role. But if 
we apply this idea to a region of smallholdings we shall find that if 
these are pooled and the aggregate area cultivated on a large 
scale, part of the labour power employed hitherto is rendered 
superfluous. It is precisely this saving of labour that represents 
one of the main advantages of large-scale farming. Employment 
for this labour power can be found in two ways. Either additional 
land taken from big estates in the neighbourhood is placed at the 
disposal of the peasant co-operative or the peasants in question are 
provided with the means and opportunity to engage in industrial 
sidelines, primarily and as far as possible for their own use. In 
either case their economic position is improved and simultaneously 
the general social directing agency is assured the necessary 
influence to gradually transform the peasant co-operative to a 
higher form, and to balance the rights and duties of the 
co-operative as a whole as well as of its individual members with 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 497 

those of the other departments of the entire community. How this 
is to be carried out in practice in each particular case will depend 
upon the circumstances of the case and the conditions under 
which we take possession of political power. We may thus possibly 
be in a position to offer these co-operatives yet further advan- 
tages: assumption of their entire mortgage indebtedness by the 
national bank with a simultaneous sharp reduction of the interest 
rate; advances from public funds for the establishment of 
large-scale production (to be made not necessarily or primarily in 
money but in the form of required products: machinery, artificial 
fertiliser, etc.), and other advantages besides. 

The main point is and will be to make the peasants understand 
that we can save, preserve their houses and fields for them only by 
transforming them into co-operative property operated co- 
operatively. It is precisely the individual farming conditioned by 
individual ownership that drives the peasants to their doom. If 
they insist on individual operation they will inevitably be driven 
from house and home and their antiquated mode of production 
superseded by capitalist large-scale production. That is how the 
matter stands. Now we come along and offer the peasants the 
opportunity of introducing large-scale production themselves, not 
for account of the capitalists but for their own, common account. 
Should it really be impossible to make the peasants understand 
that this is in their own interest, that it is the sole means of their 
salvation? 

Neither now nor at any time in the future can we promise the 
smallholding peasants to preserve their individual property and 
individual enterprise against the overwhelming power of capitalist 
production. We can only promise them that we shall not interfere 
in their property relations by force, against their will. Moreover, 
we can advocate that the struggle of the capitalists and big 
landlords against the small peasants should be waged even now 
with a minimum of unfair means and that direct robbery and 
cheating, which are practised only too often, be as far as possible 
prevented. In this we shall succeed only in exceptional cases. 
Under the developed capitalist mode of production nobody can 
tell where honesty ends and cheating begins. But always it will 
make a considerable difference whether public authority is on the 
side of the cheater or the cheated. We of course are decidedly on 
the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all 
permissible to make his lot more bearable, to facilitate his 
transition to the co-operative should he decide in favour of it, and 
even to make it possible for him to remain on his smallholding 

for a protracted length of time to think the matter over, should he 
still be unable to bring himself to this decision. We do this not 
only because we consider the small peasant living by his own 
labour as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of 
the Party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save 
from being actually hurled down into the proletariat, whom we 
can win over to our side while they are still peasants, the more 
quickly and easily the social transformation will be accomplished. 
It will serve us nought to wait with this transformation until 
capitalist production has developed everywhere to its utmost 
consegences, until the last small handicraftsman and the last small 
peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production. The 
material sacrifice to be made for this purpose in the interest of the 
peasants and to be defrayed out of public funds can, from the 
- point of view of capitalist economy, appear only as money thrown 
away, but it is nevertheless an excellent investment because it will 
effect a perhaps tenfold saving in the cost of the social reorganisa- 
tion in general. In this sense we can, therefore, afford to deal very 
liberally with the peasants. This is not the place to go into details, 
to make concrete proposals to that end; here we can deal only 
with general principles. 

Accordingly we can do no greater disservice to the Party as well 
as to the small peasants than to make promises that even so much 
as create the impression that we intend to preserve the small- 
holdings permanently. It would mean directly to block the way of 
the peasants to their emancipation and to degrade the Party to the 
level of rowdy anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it is the duty of our 
Party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their 
position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism holds sway, 
that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their smallholdings for 
them as such, that capitalist large-scale production is absolutely 
sure to run over their impotent antiquated system of small 
production as a train runs over wheelbarrow. If we do this we 
shall act in conformity with the inevitable trend of economic 
development, and this development will not fail to bring our 
words home to the small peasants. 

Incidentally, I cannot leave this subject without expressing my 
conviction that the authors of the Nantes programme are also 
essentially of my opinion. Their insight is much too great for them 
not to know that areas now divided into smallholdings are also 
bound to become common property. They themselves admit that 
smallholding ownership is destined to disappear. The report of 
the National Council drawn up by Lafargue and delivered at the 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 499 

Congress of Nantes likewise fully corroborates this view. It has 
been published in German in the Berlin Sozialdemokrat of 
October 18 of this year.*. The contradictory nature of the 
expressions used in the Nantes programme itself betrays the fact 
that what the authors actually say is not what they mean to say. If 
they are not understood and their statements misused, as actually 
has already happened, that is of course their own fault. At any 
rate, they will have to elucidate their programme and the next 
French congress revise it thoroughly. 

We now come to the bigger peasants. Here as a result of the 
divisions of inheritance as well as of indebtedness and forced sales 
of land we find a variegated pattern of intermediate stages, from 
smallholding peasant to big peasant proprietor, who has retained 
his old patrimony intact or even added to it. Where the middle 
peasant lives among smallholding peasants his interests and views 
will not differ greatly from theirs; he knows from his own 
experience how many of his kind have already sunk to the level of 
small peasants. But where middle and big peasants predominate 
and the operation of the farms requires, generally, the help of 
male and female servants it is quite a different matter. Of course a 
workers’ party has to fight, in the first place, on behalf of the 
wage workers, that is, for the male and female servants and the 
day labourers. It is thus unquestionably forbidden to make any 
promises to the peasants which include the continuance of the 
wage slavery of the workers. But as long as the big and middle 
peasants continue to exist as such they cannot manage without 
wage workers. If it would, therefore, be downright folly on our 
part to hold out prospects to the smallholding peasants of 
continuing permanently to be such, it would border on treason 
were we to promise the same to the big and middle peasants. 

We have here again the parallel case of the handicraftsmen in 
the cities. True, they are more ruined than the peasants but there 
still are some who employ journeymen in addition to apprentices 
or for whom apprentices do the work of journeymen. Let those of 
these master craftsmen who want to perpetuate their existence as 
such cast in their lot with the anti-Semites until they have 
convinced themselves that they get no help in that quarter either. 
The rest, who have realised that their mode of production is 
inevitably doomed, are coming over to us and, moreover, are 
ready in future to share the lot that is in store for all other 

a P. Lafargue, “Das bauerliche Eigentum und die 6konomische Entwicklung.” — 
Ed. 

workers. The same applies to the big and middle peasants. It goes 
without saying that we are more interested in their male and 
female servants and day labourers than in them themselves. If 
these peasants want to be guaranteed the continued existence of 
their enterprises we are in no position whatever to assure them of 
that. They must then take their place among the anti-Semites, 
peasant leaguers and similar parties who derive pleasure from 
promising everything and keeping nothing. We are economically 
certain that the big and middle peasant must likewise inevitably 
succumb to the competition of capitalist production and the cheap 
overseas corn, as is proved by the growing indebtedness and the 
everywhere evident decay of these peasants as well. We can do 
nothing against this decay except recommend here too the pooling 
of farms to form co-operative enterprises, in which the exploita- 
tion of wage labour will be eliminated more and more, and their 
gradual transformation into branches of the great national 
producers’ co-operatives with each branch enjoying equal rights 
and duties can be instituted. If these peasants realise the 
inevitability of the doom of their present mode of production and 
draw the necessary conclusions they will come to us and it will be 
incumbent upon us to facilitate to the best of our ability also their 
transition to the changed mode of production. Otherwise we shall 
have to abandon them to their fate and address ourselves to their 
wage workers, among whom we shall not fail to find sympathy. 
Most likely we shall be able to abstain here as well from resorting 
to forcible expropriation, and as for the rest to count on future 
economic developments making even these more stubborn charac- 
ters amenable to reason. 

Only the big landed estates present a perfectly simple case. Here 
we are dealing with undisguised capitalist production and no 
scruples of any sort need restrain us. Here we are confronted by 
rural proletarians in masses and our task is clear. As soon as our 
Party is in possession of political power it has simply to 
expropriate the big landed proprietors just like the manufacturers 
in industry. Whether this expropriation is to be compensated for 
or not will to a great extent depend not upon us but the 
circumstances under which we obtain power, and _ particularly 
upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big landowners, 
themselves. We by no means consider compensation as impermissi- 
ble in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!) that in his 
opinion we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole 
lot of them. But this does not concern us here. The big estates 
thus restored to the community are to be turned over by us to the 

The Peasant Question in France and Germany 501 

rural workers who are already cultivating them and are to be 
organised into co-operatives. They are to be assigned to them for 
their use and benefit under the control of the community. Nothing 
can as yet be stated as to the terms of their tenure. At any rate the 
transformation of the capitalist enterprise into a social enterprise is 
here fully prepared for and can be carried into execution 
overnight, precisely as in Mr. Krupp’s or Mr. von Stumm’s factory. 
And the example of these agricultural co-operatives would 
convince even the last of the still resistant small-holding peasants, 
and surely also many big peasants, of the advantages of 
co-operative, large-scale production. 

Thus we can open up prospects here before the rural 
proletarians as splendid as those facing the industrial workers, and 
it can be only a question of time, and of only a very short time, 
before we win over to our side the rural workers of Prussia east of 
the Elbe. But once we have the East-Elbe rural workers a different 
wind will blow at once all over Germany. The actual semi- 
servitude of the East-Elbe rural workers is the main basis for the 
domination of Prussian Junkerdom and thus for the specially 
Prussian overlordship in Germany. It is the Junkers east of the 
Elbe who have created and preserved the specifically Prussian 
character of the bureaucracy as well as of the body of army 
officers—the Junkers, who are being reduced more and more to 
ruin by their indebtedness, impoverishment and parasitism at state 
and private cost and for that very reason cling the more 
desperately to the dominion which they exercise; the Junkers, 
whose haughtiness, bigotry and arrogance have brought the 
German Empire of the Prussian nation within the country into such 
hatred—even when every allowance is made for the fact that at 
present this Empire is inevitable as the sole form in which national 
unity can now be attained—and abroad so little respect despite its 
brilliant victories. The power of these Junkers is grounded on the 
fact that within the compact territory of the seven old Prussian 
provinces—that is, approximately one-third of the entire territory 
of the Empire—they have at their disposal the landed property, 
which here brings with it both social and political power; and not 
only the landed property but, through their beet-sugar refineries 
and liquor distilleries, also the most important industries of this 
area. Neither the big landowners of the rest of Germany nor the 
big industrialists are in a similarly favourable position. Neither of 
them have a compact kingdom at their disposal. Both are scattered 
over a wide stretch of territory and compete among themselves 
and with other social elements surrounding them for economic 

and political predominance. But the economic foundation of this 
domination of the Prussian Junkers is steadily deteriorating. Here 
too indebtedness and impoverishment are spreading irresistibly 
despite all state assistance (and since Frederick II this item has 
been included in every regular Junker budget). Only the actual 
semi-serfdom sanctioned by law and custom, and the resulting 
possibility of the unlimited exploitation of the rural workers, still 
barely keeps the drowning Junkers above water. Sow the seed of 
Social Democracy among these workers, give them the courage 
and cohesion to insist upon their rights, and the glory of the 
Junkers will be at an end. The great reactionary power, which to 
Germany represents the same barbarous, predatory element as 
Russian tsardom does to the whole of Europe, will collapse like a 
pricked bubble. The “picked regiments” of the Prussian army will 
become Social-Democratic, which will result in a shift in power that 
is pregnant with an entire upheaval. But for this reason it is of 
vastly greater importance to win over the rural proletariat east of 
the Elbe than the small peasants of Western Germany or yet the 
middle peasants of Southern Germany. It is here, in East-Elbe 
Prussia, that the decisive battle of our cause will have to be fought 
and for this very reason both government and Junkerdom will do 
their utmost to prevent our gaining access here. And should, as we 
are threatened, new forcible measures be resorted to in order to 
impede the spread of our Party their primary purpose will be to 
protect the East-Elbe rural proletariat from our propaganda. It’s 
all the same to us. We shall win it nevertheless. 

503