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Collected Works #40
Collected Works, Volume 40: Notebooks on the Agrarian Question, 1900-1916
The present volume contains Lenin’s Notebooks on the Agrarian Question, which is preparatory material for his works analysing capitalist agriculture in Western Europe, Russia and the United States, and criticising bourgeois and petty-bourgeois theories, and reformism and revisionism in the agrarian question.
The material in this volume relates to the period from 1900 to 1916. In the new conditions, with capitalism at its highest and final stage — the stage of imperialism — Lenin worked out and substantiated the agrarian programme and agrarian policy of the revolutionary proletarian party, and took Marxist theory on the agrarian question a step forward in its view of classes and the class struggle in the countryside, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat, and their joint struggle against the landowners and capitalists, for democracy and socialism. The success of the revolution depended on whom the peasantry would follow, for in many European countries it constituted the majority or a sizable section of the population. In order to win over the peasantry, as an ally of the proletariat in the coming revolution, it was necessary to expose the hostile parties which claimed leadership of the peasantry, and their ideologists.
In the new epoch, these questions became especially pressing and acquired international significance. That is why bourgeois economists, reformists and revisionists fiercely attacked Marxism. It was subjected to criticism by bourgeois apologists, the ideologists of petty-bourgeois parties, and opportunists among the Social-Democrats. They all rejected Marx’s theory of ground-rent, and the law of concentration of production in agriculture, and denied the advantages of large- over small-scale production; they insisted that agriculture developed according to special laws, and was subject to the inexorable “law of diminishing returns”. They said it was not human labour and the implements of labour, but the elemental forces of nature that were decisive in agriculture. These “critics of Marx” juggled with the facts and statistics, in an effort to show that the small-scale peasant economy was “stable” and had advantages over large-scale capitalist production.
Lenin’s great historical service in working out the agrarian question lies in the fact that he defended Marx’s revolutionary teaching against the attacks of his “critics”, and further developed it in application to the new historical conditions and in connection with the working out of the programme, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian party of the new type; he proved the possibility, and the necessity, of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat at the various stages of the revolution, and showed the conditions in which this could be realised.
It was of tremendous importance to produce a theoretical elaboration of the agrarian question so as to determine the correct relations between the working class and the various groups of peasantry as the revolutionary struggle went forward. Under capitalism, the peasantry breaks up into different class groups, with differing and antithetical interests; the “erosion” of the middle peasantry yields a numerically small but economically powerful rich peasant (kulak) top section at one pole, and a mass of poor peasants, rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, at the other. Lenin revealed the dual nature of the peasant as a petty commodity producer — the dual nature of his economic and political interests: the basic interests of the toiler suffering from exploitation by the landowner and the kulak, which makes him look to the proletariat for support, and the interests of the owner, which determine his gravitation towards the bourgeoisie, his political instability and vacillation between it and the working class. Lenin emphasised the need for an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, with the leading role belonging to the proletariat, as a prerequisite for winning the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism through a joint effort by the workers and peasants.
The material in this volume relates to the period from 1900 to 1916. In the new conditions, with capitalism at its highest and final stage — the stage of imperialism — Lenin worked out and substantiated the agrarian programme and agrarian policy of the revolutionary proletarian party, and took Marxist theory on the agrarian question a step forward in its view of classes and the class struggle in the countryside, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat, and their joint struggle against the landowners and capitalists, for democracy and socialism. The success of the revolution depended on whom the peasantry would follow, for in many European countries it constituted the majority or a sizable section of the population. In order to win over the peasantry, as an ally of the proletariat in the coming revolution, it was necessary to expose the hostile parties which claimed leadership of the peasantry, and their ideologists.
In the new epoch, these questions became especially pressing and acquired international significance. That is why bourgeois economists, reformists and revisionists fiercely attacked Marxism. It was subjected to criticism by bourgeois apologists, the ideologists of petty-bourgeois parties, and opportunists among the Social-Democrats. They all rejected Marx’s theory of ground-rent, and the law of concentration of production in agriculture, and denied the advantages of large- over small-scale production; they insisted that agriculture developed according to special laws, and was subject to the inexorable “law of diminishing returns”. They said it was not human labour and the implements of labour, but the elemental forces of nature that were decisive in agriculture. These “critics of Marx” juggled with the facts and statistics, in an effort to show that the small-scale peasant economy was “stable” and had advantages over large-scale capitalist production.
Lenin’s great historical service in working out the agrarian question lies in the fact that he defended Marx’s revolutionary teaching against the attacks of his “critics”, and further developed it in application to the new historical conditions and in connection with the working out of the programme, strategy and tactics of the revolutionary proletarian party of the new type; he proved the possibility, and the necessity, of an alliance between the working class and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat at the various stages of the revolution, and showed the conditions in which this could be realised.
It was of tremendous importance to produce a theoretical elaboration of the agrarian question so as to determine the correct relations between the working class and the various groups of peasantry as the revolutionary struggle went forward. Under capitalism, the peasantry breaks up into different class groups, with differing and antithetical interests; the “erosion” of the middle peasantry yields a numerically small but economically powerful rich peasant (kulak) top section at one pole, and a mass of poor peasants, rural proletarians and semi-proletarians, at the other. Lenin revealed the dual nature of the peasant as a petty commodity producer — the dual nature of his economic and political interests: the basic interests of the toiler suffering from exploitation by the landowner and the kulak, which makes him look to the proletariat for support, and the interests of the owner, which determine his gravitation towards the bourgeoisie, his political instability and vacillation between it and the working class. Lenin emphasised the need for an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, with the leading role belonging to the proletariat, as a prerequisite for winning the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism through a joint effort by the workers and peasants.
542 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
18 people want to read
About the author
Vladimir Lenin
2,113 books1,807 followersVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), statesman and political theorist. After the October Revolution he served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924.
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December 17, 2021
448 page(note to self). For others starting around 300. It's like statistics till the footnotes at the end. First part is more wordy. Great piece for Russia and American statistical information compilation. Also good work if you wanted to take Marxist Economic calculation and math and apply it to statistics.
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