Lenin's “Own Words”(Part Four: On Economic Theory)

12. The Agrarian Problem and Agrarian Revolution

Dual Character of the Peasantry

“It [peasantry] is progressive insofar as it puts forward general democratic demands, i.e., fights against all survivals of the medieval epoch and of serfdom; it is reactionary insofar as it fights to preserve its position as a petty bourgeoisie and tries to retard, to turn back the general development of the country along bourgeois lines. Reactionary demands of this kind, such, for example, as the notorious inalienability of allotments, as well as the many other projects for tutelage over the peasants, are usually covered up by plausible talk of protecting the working people but actually, of course, they only worsen their condition, while at the same time hampering them in their struggle for emancipation. A strict distinction should be drawn between these two sides of the petty-bourgeois program and, while denying that these theories are in any way socialist in character, and while combating their reactionary aspects, we should not forget their democratic side.” (“What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are,” Collected Works Vol. 1 p. 288)

The peasantry generally oscillates between the class struggle of the bourgeoisie and proletariat. This stems from their dual nature. They are direct producers who are engaged in productive labor that creates social wealth, and in this aspect they share common ground with the proletariat who are also direct producers, and they struggle against the parasitic and exploiting class. On the other hand, they are the possessors of the means of production, albeit on a modest scale, and producers of commodities. In this aspect, they have to be grouped together with the bourgeoisie. Regardless of whether they develop up to the point of exploiting workers, as small commodity producers they are connected to the bourgeoisie, who they are dependent upon, in a variety of relations concerning economic interest. To the extent that they fight against monopoly capitalism the peasantry can be an anti-monopoly force, but they do not appear as a socialistic element within society, and are reactionary to the extent, for example, that they oppose “monopoly” capitalism from a desire for “democratic” capitalism. 

Lenin here is speaking of the dual nature of the peasantry in an age of struggle against the remnants of the feudal system. In such a period, the peasantry advances revolutionary struggles against feudalistic land ownership, while idealizing small peasant production, which it calls socialism.  They “reject” the development of capitalism, while and at the same time opposing the socialist struggles of the proletariat. The political expression of this was Narodnism. Lenin emphasized that without considering the dual nature of the peasantry, it would not be possible to correctly establish the attitude of the proletariat towards the peasantry.

Proletariat's Attitude towards the Peasantry

“The demand for the eradication of the remnants of the serf-owning system [must ensure] the free development of the class struggle in the countryside…To acknowledge this condition means undertaking to abide unswervingly by the class viewpoint also in the very painful question of the participation of the small peasants in the Social-Democratic movement, means sacrificing nothing of the proletariat’s standpoint in favor of the interests of the petty bourgeoisie, but, on the contrary, demanding that the small peasant, who is being oppressed and ruined by all modern capitalism, should desert his own class standpoint and place himself at the standpoint of the proletariat.” (“The Agrarian Program of Russian Social-Democracy,” Vol. 6, pp. 124-5)

In this passage, Lenin is expressing an important idea that has been completely lost and rejected by the official communist movement today. Lenin is clearly making a distinction between and juxtaposing the socialistic demands of the working class and the peasantry’s petty bourgeois, reformist demands. Already in 1899, Lenin expressed “conditional support” for the peasantry, which he supported to the extent that they adopted a revolutionary stance towards the old feudal system. However, “the proletariat cannot and must not, in general, take upon itself the defense of the interests of a class of small property-owners.” (“A Draft Programme of Our Party” Collected Works Vol. 4 p. 245)

This position of Lenin’s is still very timely, for example the demand to “maintain the agricultural protectionisms is purely a demand to maintain the status quo, but despite the fact that such a stance represents a “defense of the interests of a class of small property-owners,” the official communist movement [i.e. JCP] have proposed this demand. As is clear from the earlier passage on the dual nature of the peasantry, Lenin viewed the protectionist polices of the peasantry as being something reactionary that holds back the capitalistic dissolution of the peasantry (i.e. the development of capitalism). For him, the most essential and important thing was the overall development of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat -- which depended on the development of capitalism.

Lenin’s Marxist view that the revolutionary proletariat has the responsibility of bringing the peasantry, which was oppressed by capital, over to the position of the proletariat, did not change after the revolution, even when the “worker-peasant alliance” was proclaimed. Recently the vulgar theory has been circulating among bourgeois scholars that Lenin constantly changed his agrarian policy, and that he was great practically speaking, but ultimately a pragmatist. But this view is nothing but the empty talk of bourgeois philistines who are only able to grasp the surface of things.

"Cut-Off Lands Program"

“The demand for ‘General Redistribution’ contains the reactionary Utopian idea of generalizing and perpetuating small-scale peasant production, but it also contains (in addition to the Utopian idea that the ‘peasantry’ can serve as the vehicle of the socialist revolution) a revolutionary element, namely, the desire to sweep away by means of a peasant revolt all the remnants of the serf-owning system. In our opinion, the demand for the restitution of the cut-off lands singles out from all the peasant’s two-way and contradictory demands precisely that which can have a revolutionary effect only in the direction along which society's entire development is proceeding, and consequently deserves the proletariat’s support.” (Ibid. p. 139)

The 1902 agrarian program, which was revised by Lenin himself in 1907, was called the “Cut-Off Lands Program.” In the 1902 program, Lenin opposed both the “Black Redistribution” and the top-down agrarian reform of the landowners, and made the “restitution of cut-off lands” the center of the agrarian program.

The “Black Redistribution” was the revolutionary slogan of the Narodniks which signified agrarian reform through peasant revolution, rather than the top-down agrarian reform of the landowners, in other words a sweeping agrarian revolution. In contrast to this, the “restitution of the cut-off lands” was the demand for the restitution to the peasantry of the land that was “cut off” to them by the landlords from the time of the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and was thus a partial agrarian reform. Lenin on the one hand had doubts about a sweeping agrarian reform, but on the other hand held out hopes for the thorough revolutionary quality of the peasantry, and argued for raising the “maximum program” to the peasantry. The consistent revolutionary demand of the peasantry was the “Black Redistribution” and in fact the movement of agrarian revolution enjoyed an upsurge during the revolutionary wave from 1905 to 1917, and the revolution of 1917 did in fact realize this. In this sense, Lenin’s view was in contradiction, and as he later said, the 1902 program “artificially sets up something intermediate” between “the consistently peasant” and “the consistently Junker method.” Lenin’s contradiction stemmed from the fact the 1902 program went no further than being “a Marxist declaration in the most general terms,” did not adequately consider actual relations, and overestimated capitalistic development [in Russia]. In 1907, Lenin spoke of the source of this contradiction in the following way: “The survivals of serfdom appeared to us then to be a minor detail, whereas capitalist agriculture on the peasant allotments and on the landlords’ estates seemed to be quite mature and well-established.” (“The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution,” Collected Works Vol. 13)

Revolutionary Prospects of the Peasantry

“Ten million peasant households own 73,000,000 dessiatins of land, whereas 28,000 noble and upstart landlords own 62,000,000 dessiatins. Such is the main background of the arena on which the peasants' struggle for the land is developing. (“The Agrarian Program of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution,” Collected Works, Vol. 13 p. 225)

At the time of the outbreak of the first revolution in Russia, the land struggles of the peasantry against the feudal landlords had broken out with incredible intensity, and this called for a revision of the “Cut-Off Lands Program.” Since “the peasant mass movement could not be directed against particular categories of landlord estates, but only against landlordism in general” (Ibid p. 257), Lenin argued for an agrarian program that would be directed not only against the cut-off lands, but also seek “the confiscation of all church, monastery, crown, state, and landlord estates” (“Revision of the Agrarian Programme of the Workers’ Party,” Collected Works Vol. 10, p. 194). 

I want to look at Lenin’s chart above. The great landlords own one third of the tenire land, with an average of 2,333 dessiatins per holding. By contrast, the average for the peasants was from 7 to 15 dessiatins. Lenin saw this as the starting point of the peasants’ land struggles, abolishing the great landowners’ serfdom system of land ownership and the transfer of land to the peasantry as the point of arrival. For Lenin, one third of the entire land was owned by the bourgeoisie, which was thought to be progressive, and the dissolution of this land was not proposed. But here was a difficult problem. That is, the question of whether, in the case of the gradual shift of the great landowners towards becoming large-scale bourgeois operators, the dissolution of these estates should be seen as progressive. The peasants were not necessarily able to make a distinction between the feudalistic landowners and the bourgeois ones. In reality, these two elements were intertwined in a complex fashion. On this point, Rosa Luxembourg severely criticized the Bolsheviks for allocating land to the peasantry. Lenin, however, while recognizing that the allocation of land, in part, had such a reactionary aspect, concluded that, on the whole, this was a progressive historical act in terms of carrying out a sweeping change that would dissolve feudalistic land ownership and hasten the move to capitalism.

Two Roads to Bourgeois Development

“The pivot of the struggle is the feudal latifundia which are the most conspicuous embodiment and the strongest mainstay of the survivals of serfdom in Russia. The development of commodity production and capitalism will certainly and inevitably put an end to those survivals. In that respect Russia has only one path before her, that of bourgeois development.

“But there may be two forms of that development. The survivals of serfdom may fall away either as a result of the transformation of landlord economy or as a result of the abolition of the landlord latifundia, i.e., either by reform or by revolution. Bourgeois development may proceed by having big landlord economies at the head, which will gradually become more and more bourgeois and gradually substitute bourgeois for feudal methods of exploitation. It may also proceed by having small peasant economies at the head, which in a revolutionary way, will remove the ‘excrescence’ of the feudal latifundia from the social organism and then freely develop without them along the path of capitalist economy.” (“The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution,” Collected Works Vol. 13, p. 239)

Lenin called the former the Prussian model of the bourgeois development of the peasantry, and the latter the American model. The question revolves around which path is more beneficial and desirable to the proletariat. The second path is considered more desirable because the thorough elimination of feudal remnants would lessen the suffering of the laboring classes, while hastening and deepening the development of productive power and the free growth of capitalism. Moreover, the establishment of a democratic state that wipes out feudal power is to the advantage of the proletariat in the class struggle. Thus, the workers should fight for the second model, and form a “revolutionary alliance” of workers and peasants.

Of course, Lenin is not raising this second path as a question in general. This should be clear from the fact that Lenin opposed the Narodniks who spoke of two paths for Russia (the path of capitalist development or the path of non-capitalist development) and insisted that in Russia there could be no other path than the inevitable path of capitalist development. The two paths Lenin speaks of are only valid in terms of the question of the form of bourgeois development. He placed the emphasis on the influence that the form of development would have on the class struggles of the proletariat.

Two-Stage Theory of Revolution

“The proletariat must carry out to the end the democratic revolution, and in this unite to itself the mass of the peasantry in order to crush by force the resistance of the autocracy and to paralyze the instability of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must accomplish the socialist revolution and in this unite with itself the mass of the semi-proletarian elements of the population in order to crush by force the resistance of the bourgeoisie and to paralyze the instability of the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. Such are the tasks of the proletariat.” (Two Tactics, International Publishers, p. 85)

Lenin said that the revolution facing Russia was not directly a socialist revolution, but a bourgeois democratic revolution, and that “Marxists are absolutely convinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution” (Ibid p. 41). Indeed, apart from Trotsky, the Social Democratic Party recognized the coming revolution as a bourgeois one. At the time, the Mensheviks thought that the bourgeoisie must lead the revolution, and that the proletariat should not act too revolutionary so as to avoid scaring away the bourgeoisie from its ranks. It’s not difficult to recognize that this standpoint would lead to tailing after, being subservient to, and fusing with the bourgeoisie. The Bolsheviks, for their part, also recognized that the revolution was bourgeois in terms of its socio-economic content, but insisted that owing to the conservatism of the bourgeoisie, which was partially connected to feudalistic power, only the proletariat and peasantry would be able to wage the revolutionary struggle to the end. In other words, in the first stage (democratic revolution) of the revolution the overall interests of the proletariat and peasantry would coincide and they would be able to fight side by side. But in the second stage (socialist revolution) the proletariat could only find common ground with those “semi-proletarian” elements within the peasantry.

This view of Lenin poses the tasks of the proletariat in the coming bourgeois-democratic revolution, and does not include the position of insisting that this democratic revolution would directly “grow and transform” into a socialist revolution. The Stalinist theory of the growth and transformation of the revolution is in fact similar to Trotsky’s theory of “permanent revolution.” Lenin, unlike Trotsky, did not raise the question of the proletariat assuming power in general, but rather posed the question of whether the proletariat should participate in a provisional government to thoroughly advance the bourgeois revolution, and he answered this question in the affirmative. The “revolutionary democratic dictatorship” of the proletariat and peasantry did not deny the participation of various layers of the “people” (i.e. the participation of the bourgeoisie as well). A bourgeois revolution would not weaken the power of the bourgeoisie, but rather strengthen it. More than any other class they would be the beneficiaries of the revolution. Despite this, however, it was in the interests of the proletariat for a bourgeois revolution to thoroughly wipe out feudal relations and a democratic republic would offer the best conditions for the struggle for socialism.

This view of the revolution may appear unrealistic when compared to the actual development of the revolution in 1917, or it may seem that Trotsky’s view of the coming revolution as the establishment of a proletarian government was justified. Despite some superficial contradictions, however, it was Lenin’s theory, which was based on the materialistic conception of history, that was profoundly rational. Lenin’s criticism of Trotsky for adopting the semi-anarchistic standpoint of leaping over capitalism did not lack a basis. The 1917 revolution was unable to create socialism in Russia, and instead created the “peculiar state capitalism” of NEP. Compared with the old feudal system NEP was progressive, but clearly this did not represent the overcoming of capitalism once and for all.

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