V- 1 -LENIN SELECTED WORKS VOLUME XII THEORY OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Y. I. LENIN THEORY OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION V-I-LENIN SELECTED WORKS IN TWELVE VOLUMES Translated from, the Russian as issued] bg .THE MARX-ENGELS-LENIN INSTITUTE Moscow, U.S.S.R. V- 1 -LENIN SELECTED WORKS VOLUME XII THEORY OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS NEW YORK ALL RIGHTS BESERVhD 1938 English Translation Edited by L Levin CONTENTS Page PREFACE ix CAPITALISM IN AGRICULTURE. Kautsky's Book and Mr. Bulga- kov's Article 1 First Article v x 1 Second Article 37 THE AGRARIAN QUESTION AND THE "CRITICS OF MARX" 51 I. The "Law" of Diminishing Returns 51 II. The Theory of Rent 63 III. Machinery in Agriculture 73 IV. The Abolition of the Antithesis Between Town and Country. The Secondary Questions Raised by the "Crimes" 90 V. "The Prosperity of Advanced, Modern, Small Farms." The Baden Example 103 VL The Productivity of Small and Large Farms. An Example from East Prussia Ill VII. The Enquiry into Peasant Farming in Baden 125 VIIL General Statistics of German Agriculture for 1882 and 1895. The Question of the Medium Farms 137 IX. Dairy Farming and Agricultural Co-operative Societies in Germany. The Agricultural Population in Germany Divided According to Economic Posi- tion 149 XIL The "Ideal Country" from the Point of View of the Opponents of Marxism on the Agrarian Question... Page NEW DATA ON THE LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN AGRICULTURE. Part L Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America 190 ' 1. General Features of the Three Principal Regions. The Colonised West and the Homesteads 1 92 2. The Industrial North 196 3. The Formerly Slave-Owning South 198 4. Average Size of Farms. "Disintegration of Capitalism" in the South 201 5. The Capitalist Character of Agriculture 206 6. Regions of Most Intensive Farming 212 7. Machinery and Wage Labour in Agricultune. .,.,.. .218 8. Elimination of Small Farms by Large-Scale Farms. Area of Improved Land 224 9. Continuation. Statistics on the Value of Farms 231 10. Defects of the Usual Methods of Econ6mic Investiga- tion. Marx on the Specific Features of Agriculture. .235 11. A More Accurate Comparison of Small and Big Farms 242 12. Different Types of Economy in Agriculture 250 13. How the Elimination of Small Production by Large- Scale Production in Agriculture is Minimised 256 14. The Expropriation of the Small Farmers 263 15. The Evolution of Industry and Agriculture Com- pared 272 16. Summary and Conclusions 280 MESSRS. BOURGEOIS ON "TOILER" FARMING < 283 SMALL PRODUCTION IN AGRICULTURE 288 Vi Page CHILD LABOUR IN PEASANT FARMING 291 THE PEASANTRY AND THE WORKING CLASS 295 MARX ON THE AMERICAN "BLACK REDISTRIBUTION" 298 THE AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY IN THE FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, 1905-1907. Chapter HI. The Theoretical Principles of Nationalisation and Municipa- lisation 304 1. What is Nationalisation of the Land? 305 2. Peter Maslov Corrects Karl Marx's Rough Notes 310 3. Is it Necessary to Refute Marx in Order to Refute the Narodniki? 317 4. Is the Repudiation of Absolute Rent Connected with the Programme of Municipalisation? 320 5. The Criticism of Private Property in Land From the Point of View of the Development of Capitalism 323 6. The Nationalisation of Land and "Money" Riant 326 7. Under What Conditions Can Nationalisation Be Brought About? 328 8. Is Nationalisation the Transition to Division? 332 PREFACE THE present volume of Selected Works coincides with Part II of VoL VI of the Russian six-volume edition of the Selected Works of V. I. Lenin prepared by the Marx-Engels Lenin Institute, Moscow, published in 1937. The explanatory notes given in the preceding volumes of Selected Works have been omitted from this volume for reasons already stated in the Preface to Vol. IX. V. I. LENIN THEORY OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION CAPITALISM IN AGRICULTURE Kautsk'fs Book and Mr. Bulgakov's Article FIRST ARTICLE NACHALO, No. 1-2 (Section II, pp. 1-21), contains an article by Mr. S. Bulgakov entitled: "A Contribution to the Question of the Capitalist Evolution of Agriculture," which is a criticism of Kaut- sky's work on the agrarian question. Mr. Bulgakov quite rightly says that "Kautsky's book represents a whole world outlook"; that it is of great theoretical and practical importance. It is, perhaps, the first systematic and scientific investigation of the question which has given rise to heated debate in all countries, even among writers who are agreed on general views and who regard themselves as Marxists. Mr. Bulgakov "confines himself to negative criticism," to the criticism of "individual postulates in Kautsky's book" (which he "briefly" too briefly and very inexactly, as we shall see reviews for the readers of Nachalo) . "Later on," Mr. Bulgakov hopes "to give a systematic expose of the question of the capitalist evolution of agriculture" and thus "also present a complete world outlook" in opposition to Kautsky's. We have no doubt that Kautsky's book will give rise to no little debate among Marxists in Russia also, and that in Russia also some will oppose Kautsky and others will support him. At all events, the writer of these Mines disagrees most emphatically with Mr. Bulga- kov's opinion, with his appraisal of Kautsky's book. Notwithstand- ing Mr. Bulgakov's admission that Die Agrarfrage* is "a remarkable work," his appraisal is astonishingly sharp, and is written in a tone unusual in a controversy between authors belonging to similar trends. l discus- . The Agrarian Question, the title of Kautsky*s book here under sion. Ed. 2 THEORY OF THE AGRARIAN QUESTION Here are samples of the expressions Mr. Bulgakov uses : "extreme- ly superficial" . "equally little of real agronomics and of real economics" . "Kautsky evades serious scientific problems by means of phrases" (Mr. Bulgakov's italics!!), etc., etc. We shall therefore carefully examine the expressions used by the stern critic and at the same time introduce the reader to Kautsky's book. I Even before Mr. Bulgakov gets to Kautsky, he, in passing, gives a trouncing to Marx. It goes without saying that Mr. Bulgakov emphasises the enormous services rendered by the great economist, but observes that in Marx's works one "sometimes" comes across even '"erroneous views . which have been sufficiently refuted by history." "Among such views is, for example, the one that in agri- culture variable capital diminishes in relation to constant capital just as it does in manufacturing industry, so that the organic compo- sition of agricultural capital continuously rises." Who is mistaken here, Marx or Mr. Bulgakov? Mr. Bulgakov has in mind the fact that in agriculture the progress of technique and the increase in intensive farming often lead to an increase in the amount of labour necessary to cultivate a given plot of land. This is indisputable; but it is very far from being a refutation of the theory of the dimi- nution of variable capital relatively to constant capital, in propor- tion to constant capital. Marx's theory merely asserts that the rela- tion v : c (invariable capital, c= constant capital) in general has a tendency to diminish even though v increases per unit of area. Is Marx's theory refuted if, simultaneously, c increases still more rapidly? Taken as a whole, agriculture in capitalist countries shows a diminution of v and an increase of c. The rural population and the number of workers employed in agriculture are diminish- ing in Germany, in France and in England, whereas the number of machines employed in agriculture is increasing. In Germany, for example, from 1882 to 1895, the rural population diminished from 19,200,000 to 18,500,000 (the number of wage workers in agri- culture diminished from 5,900,000 to 5,600,000) , whereas the num- CAPITALISM IN AGRICULTURE 3 her of machines employed in agriculture increased from 458.369 to 913,391;i the number of steam-driven machines employed in agriculture rose from 2,731 (in 1879) to 12,856 (in 1897), and the total of the horse-power steam-driven machinery employed in- creased still more. The number of cattle rose from 15,800,000 to 17,500,000 and the number of pigs from 9,200,000 to 12,200,000 (in 1883 and 1892 In respectively). France, the rural population diminished from 000 2 6,QOO S ("independents") in 1882 to 6,600.000 in 1892 and the ; number of agricultural machines increased as fol- lows: 1862132,784; 1882278,896; 1892355,795. The num- ber of cattle in the respective years was as follows: 12,000,000; 13,000,000; the 13,700,000; number of horses: 2,910,000; 2,840,000; 2,790,000 (the diminution in the number of horses in the period 1882-92 was smaller than the diminution of the rural population). Thus, on the the of whole, history modern capitalist countries has not but certainly refuted, has confirmed the validity of Marx's law for agriculture. The mistake Mr. Bulgakov made was that he too hastily elevated certain facts in agronomics, without their examining significance, to the degree of general economic laws. We emphasise "general," because neither Marx nor his disci- ever this law otherwise ples regarded than as the law of the general trends of capitalism, and not as a law for all separate cases. Even in regard to industry Marx pointed out that periods of technical the relation v : change (when c diminishes) are followed by periods of progress on the given technical basis (when the relation c remains i constant, and in certain cases may even increase).