Engels 1894: The Peasant Question in France and Germany

Part 1: France

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

In the west of Germany, as in France and Belgium, there prevails
the small-scale cultivations of small-holding peasants, the majority of
whom own and the minority of whom rent their parcels 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 regions
of big landed estates and large-scale cultivation with hinds, cotters,
and day laborers, and in between small and middle peasants in relatively
unimportant and steadily decreasing proportion.

In central Germany, all of these forms of production and ownership
are found mixed in various proportions, depending upon the locality, without
the decided 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 pay 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-forms. We lack space to
give consideration in 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 data needed to determine
our stand relative to the other constituent parts of the rural population.

By small peasant we mean here the owners 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 labor; hence, a survival of a past mode of production. There is a threefold
difference between him and his ancestor, the serf, bondman, or, quite exceptionally,
the free peasant liable to rent and feudal services. First, in that the
French Revolution freed him from 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.

Secondly, 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 patterned after 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.

Thirdly, 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 neighbors 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 natural economy
almost unalloyed; almost no money was necessary. 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 side line 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 in 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 of transferring landed property to the
whole of society, as just as dangerous a foe as the usurer and lawyer.
How is Social-Democracy to overcome this prejudice? What can is 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 Marxian 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 laborers and hinds): minimum wages fixed by trade unions and
community councils; rural trade courts consisting half of workers; prohibition
of the sale of common lands; and the leasing of public domain lands to
communities which are to rent all this land, whether owned by them or rented,
to associations of propertyless families of farm laborers for common cultivation,
on conditions that the employment of wage-workers be prohibited and that
the communities exercise control; old-age and invalid pensions, to be defrayed
by means of a special tax on big landed estates.

For the small peasants, with special consideration for
tenant farmers, purchase of machinery by the community to be leased at
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 of the Irish pattern
to reduce exorbitant rentals and compensate quitting tenant farmers and
sharecroppers (me'tayers) for appreciation of the land due to them; repeal
of article 2102 of the Civil Code which allows a landlord to on the distraint
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 shirt, 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. Part of them has already been
realised elsewhere. The tenants' arbitration courts follow the Irish prototype
by express mention. Peasant co-operatives already exist in the Rhine provinces.
The revision of the cadastre has been a constant 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 a good business with this programme among the
peasants in the most diverse parts of France that — since appetite comes
with eating — one felt constrained to suit it still more to their taste.
It was felt, 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 present propertied peasant — 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 the collective or social form, but
in the sphere of agriculture — at least in present-day France — this
is by no means the case, the means of production, namely, the land, being
in very many localities still in the hands of the individual producers
themselves as their individuals possession;

Whereas even if this state of affairs characterized by small-holding
ownership is irretrievably doomed (est fatalement appete' a disparaître),
still it is not for socialism to hasten its doom, as its task does not
consist in separating property from labor but, on the contrary, in uniting
both of these factors of all production by placing them in the same hands,
factors the separation of which 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 ownership,
it is, on the other hand, on less its imperative duty to maintain the peasants
themselves tilling their patches of land in possession of the same as against
the fisk, 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 (me'tayers) cultivate the land
owned by others and who, if they exploit day laborers, are to a certain
extent compelled to do so because of 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 labor 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
— has adopted the following agrarian programme in order thereby 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 for: the feudality of landownership.

Now, for a closer examination of these "whereases".

To being 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: 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 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; for it makes
the general 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 real freedom. Handicraft has
already been ruined in the cities; in metropolises like London, it has
already disappeared entirely, having been superseded 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 new 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 eternally tortured debt slave.
Strike out Article 2102 of the Civil Code, provide by law that a definite
amount of a peasant's farm implements, cattle, 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 soul, 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 as authority
for your contention.

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 the task of socialism to separate property from labor, 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. Its 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 that 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 fisk, 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 that this form of ownership is "irretrievably
doomed". What are the fisk, 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 likewise

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

Here, we are entering upon ground that is passing strange. Socialism is
particularly opposed to the exploitation of wage labor. And here it is
declared to be the imperative duty of socialism to protect the French tenants
when they "exploit day laborers", as the text literally states! And that
because they are compelled to do so to a certain 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 now the big and middle peasants of Germany 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 the contention
the "exploitation 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 of 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 lender, 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 sentence, 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 subject to the obligation to cultivate beets, on conditions
which are extremely onerous. They must deliver the beets to a state factory
at a price fixed by it, must but definite seed, use a fixed quantity of
prescribed fertilizer, and on delivery are badly cheated into t he bargain.
We know all about 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 expressly.
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 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, utilize 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 idle and big peasants and perhaps even
the tenants of the big estates, the capitalist cattle breeders and 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 side by side with
them for definite aims. We can use in our Party individuals from every
class of society, but have no use whatever for any groups representing
capitalist, middle-bourgeois,or middle-peasant interests. 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 generalization 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 procure farming
machinery and lease it at 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 gratis. 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".

A similar demand has been included for many years in almost every Social-Democratic
programme. But that this demand is raised in the special interests of the
small peasants is something new and shows only how little its real scope
has been calculated. take Great Britain. There the state budget amounts
to 90 million pounds sterling, of which 13.5 to 14 million are accounted
for by the income tax. The smaller part of the remaining 76 million is
contributed by taxing business (post and telegraph charges, stamp tax),
but by far the greater part of it by imposts on articles of mass consumption,
by the constantly repeated clipping of small, imperceptible amounts totalling
many millions from the incomes of all members of the population, but particularly
of tis 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 Great Britain 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 200 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 of which that tax
reform will figure as a mere, and quite insignificant, settlement for the
moment while altogether different prospects open up before the small peasants.

One seems to realize that the peasant will have to wait rather
long 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 labor,
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
favor of peasants who "exploit day laborers".

Again:

"Hunting and fishing rights without restrictions 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 rabbits, partridges, pikes, and carps,
are there even today per peasant family in all rural localities? Would
you say more than would warrant giving each peasant jut 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 filed 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 service 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 fertilizer and farm machinery
and products" —

is on the whole in effect in Germany, and mainly in the interest — of
the big landowners.

"Immediate preparatory work for the elaboration of a plan of public
works for the amelioration of the soil and the development of agricultural
production" —

leaves everything in the realm of uncertitude and beautiful 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 unrevealing as to the way in which the French Workers' Party
expects to be able to maintain the small peasants in possession of their
small holdings, which, on its own territory, are irretrievably doomed.