p By A. I. MALYSH

p The agrarian question is one of the most complicated in revolutionary theory. At the same time, it covers some of the most crucial political issues of revolutionary practice. All revolutions, both bourgeois and socialist, have affected in one way or another the destinies of many millions of toilers on the land. The industrial bourgeoisie has appealed to the peasantry in order to consolidate its political rule. Contrary to this the labouring peasantry is the natural ally of the proletariat in the socialist revolution. The position of the peasantry and the extent to which the various parties and groups have taken its interests into account have always determined, in all essential respects, the fate and depth of the social revolutions of the past. The peasantry in the agrarian countries has always represented and still represents a very great force.

p Attempts to make deep revolutionary changes in social relations, while ignoring the peasantry, treating it as "one reactionary mass”, are necessarily doomed to failure. On the other hand, there is not a sign of a truly revolutionary approach in theoretical propositions and practical measures based on any artificial counterposing of the labouring peasantry to the working class or on exalting the peasantry as a principal and decisive force in the revolutionary process, which, allegedly, is in no need of the support of the proletariat and even capable of leading it.

p The founders of scientific communism, Marx and Engels, allotted considerable space in their works to analysing the lessons and experience of the mass peasant movements of the past and to the agrarian problems of their own time, the peasant question among them. In the 18503, while working on a large treatise on economics, which he thought at first would 276 run to six volumes, Marx planned to devote one of its volumes to a study of landownership. Later, he revised his plan for writing six volumes. But it is noteworthy that in the four volumes of Capital, particularly in volumes III and IV (Theories of Surplus-Value), a prominent place is given to problems of landownership and agrarian relations, their historical evolution and the special features and trends of the growth of capitalism in agriculture. Engels’s The Peasant Question in France and Germany is a basic document in Marxist agrarian literature. Lenin, incidentally, not only studied this work very carefully but began translating it into Russian in 1903. There are valuable thoughts of Marx and Engcls on the agrarian question in many other of their works and in their letters, too.

p After the death of Marx and Engcls, the agrarian question remained a central point in all theoretical discussions and in practical and political work. In 1899, Kautsky published a book entitled The Agrarian Question, in which, however, he largely confined himself to a more or less popular account of Marx’s agrarian theory. He avoided the question of the class differentiation taking place in the countryside and how this related to the prospects and tasks of the class struggle in which the proletariat was engaged.

p Lenin always placed the agrarian question in the centre of his scientific research. He had a splendid knowledge of the relevant literature on the subject, and, of course, he read and reread Marx’s and Engels’s works, displaying an extraordinary " appetite" for their ideas. He consulted them in his capacity as a theoretician and as a practical worker, studying agrarian relations under capitalism and working out the strategy and tactics of both the Russian and the world labour movement. The following reminiscence of Pyotr Stucka is interesting in this respect: "It was 1906. Volume II of Marx’s Theorien uber den Mehrwert (Theories of Surplus-Value) had just come out, edited by Kautsky. I was in Vitebsk at that time. I got a copy of the book and later, when I met Lenin in St. Petersburg, in one of my first conversations with him, the agrarian question came up and I happened to praise the way Marx explained the role of absolute rent in this work. Lenin had not yet obtained a copy and I had to promise to send it to him. But he let me know the next day that he had bought it in the German book shop on the Nevsky."  [276•1 

p Lenin’s agrarian studies make up a large part of his literary legacy and are a veritable treasure-house of Marxist ideas. Generations of Russian and foreign Marxists-Leninists have studied and continue to study such classic works of Lenin’s as The Development of Capitalism in Russia; The Agrarian Question and the "Critics of Marx”; The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy; The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-07; New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part I, Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America; The Capitalist System of Modern Agriculture and many others.

p Lenin’s keen interest in the agrarian and peasant questions resulted, largely, from the economic and political peculiarities of Russia’s development.

p Tsarist Russia was primarily an agrarian country, its rural population comprising the overwhelming majority. But the bulk of peasants suffered from shortage or complete lack of land and were in slavish dependence on big landowners. Their position prepared them for the acceptance of the idea of a radical breakup of the existing system.

p Lenin did not confine his interest to Russia, however. He was familiar with the situation in other countries, too. By relying on official statistics (especially regular agricultural returns) he was able to present a general picture of the new phenomena and laws of capitalist development in a wide range of countries. His general conclusions, as well as those based chiefly or exclusively on Russian materials, revealed the typical socio-economic processes of capitalist development in agriculture, and gave a clear orientation to Russian revolutionaries and to the great army of fighters for socialism throughout the world. Lenin’s agrarian theory alone, in the age of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, makes Leninism a teaching that is international in spirit and content, applicable on a world scale. Leninism gained recognition in the eyes of all true proletarian fighters of all countries and continents while Lenin was still living. Lenin’s name and teaching became the banner of the Communist Parties that were formed under the direct influence of the October Revolution and which united in the Third, Communist International.

p Lenin’s analysis of agrarian relations is a model of concrete economic research into a key section of social production. Lenin made a detailed study of pre-capitalist, mainly feudal, forms of landownership and ground rent. At the same time he explained 278 and amplified better than anyone before him Marx’s essential point that the capitalist form of landownership cither originates from the feudal form, transformed under the influence of capital and the capitalist mode of production, or else is merely small-= scale peasant farming. Lenin completely rejected all the theories about agriculture evolving in a non-capitalist direction under capitalism that were advanced by bourgeois professors, bourgeois democrats and opportunists in the labour movement.

p Lenin’s contribution was to elaborate and define scientific criteria for determining the particular ways and forms in which capitalism manifests itself in agriculture. Capitalism is characterised by a relatively high degree of intensity, replacing extensive methods of production by intensive ones. It follows that the value of a farm should be estimated not so much by the cultivated area as by the number of hired hands working on it. A small farm in effect becomes quite “large” if the amount of capital invested in it, its profitability and acquired surplus value arc great enough.

p Lenin came to the conclusion, and proved beyond all doubt, that although capitalism raises the technical standards of agriculture, including the mechanisation of animal breeding, and therefore undeniably represents progress, this progress is accompanied by the permanent ruination and unprecedented oppression of the mass of small peasants.

p In addition to the general laws of the development of capitalism in agriculture, Lenin made a close study of the special peculiarities of this process in individual countries. In Russia, the survivals of feudal bondage were holding up the advance of the productive forces. In England, most farmers depended on landlords who appropriated the lion’s share of profits through leasing land. In the USA, free land was being “colonised” by enterprising owners and hence capitalism was developing on a non-feudal basis. Lenin also revealed the characteristic features of farming in Denmark, Hungary, France, and other countries.

His scientific analysis of the social and economic relations, and the principal trends of development in modern capitalist agriculture, helped the revolutionary Social-Democrats to map up a correct scientific programme on the agrarian question and long before the October Revolution enabled Lenin to determine in a broad outline the most realistic methods for introducing socialist changes in farming to suit the interests of the working class and the working peasantry.