The Nationalization of the Land

A manuscript by Marx explaining the question of the nationalization of the land. Written in March–April 1872, first published in The International Herald, No. 11, June 15, 1872, under the title A Paper read at the Manchester Section of the International Working Men’s Association.

In the early 1870s, the members of the Manchester section of the First International were confused and unable to form a unified view on the land question. The section leader E. Dupont wrote to Engels to inform him of the problems and his own views, and asked Marx and Engels to give their opinions so that he could consider their views before the section meeting and address the congress. So Marx wrote this manuscript.

In the work, Marx made clear the importance of the question of property in land to the cause of the working class, that “the property in the soil is the original source of all wealth, and has become the great problem upon the solution of which depends the future of the working class”, and pointed out that the land question is closely linked to the revolutionary cause of the working class. Marx criticized the “natural right” to land and expounded on the historical necessity of the nationalization of the land. He pointed out that, in order to preserve the old system, some private owners of land had described it as a “natural right” and fixed it by law, whereas in reality it had been established by a few through the primitive fact of conquest. Therefore, the “many” (the proletarians) could, by some means or other, take away this “natural right”, which has been acquired by means of conquest. Marx discusses the socio-historical significance of the nationalization of the land. He held that population growth and agglomeration required the adoption of collective and organized labor in agricultural development and the extensive use of modern scientific and technological achievements, which could only be effectively utilized in the large-scale cultivation of land. Therefore, the nationalization of land was more conducive to the implementation of large-scale management and has become an inevitable trend in the development of social production. In his discussion, Marx also analyzed two different kinds of nationalization of land, pointing out that bourgeois nationalization of land would only result in cruel competition between individuals and workers’ cooperatives, causing an increase in rent, would afford new facilities to the appropriators of feeding upon the producers. Only the true nationalization of land by the proletariat could radically change the relationship between labor and capital and ultimately eliminate the capitalist mode of production in agricultural and industrial production. The value goal of the great economic movement in the 19th century (including the nationalization of the land) was that “national centralization of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan.”

The Nationalization of the Land is an important document of Marxism. In this work, Marx refuted the bourgeois view of private property in the land as a “natural right” and pointed out that the nationalization of the land was a historical necessity and an actual alternative, which played an important role in clearing up the ideological confusion within the First International and guiding the proletarians in their revolutionary struggle.