The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution

The work where Lenin expounded the Social-Democratic Party’s agrarian program in the Russian Revolution. Lenin examined and analyzed the socio-economic development of Russia during the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He sorted out and summarized the historical lessons of the failed 1905 Revolution. Lenin made an accurate evaluation of the extent of the development of Russian agricultural capitalism and wrote the book The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution. This book was confiscated and destroyed by the Tsarist censorship when it went to press in Petersburg in 1908, and only one copy was preserved until it was published in 1917. This article is a summary of the book, which was written by Lenin at the request of Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches, in order to introduce the differences of views existing in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party on the land issue to the Polish Social Democrats. It was written on July 5, 1908, and published in the 6th issue of Social-Democratic Review (Krakow)in August 1908. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 17 of the second revised edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

This work is divided into five chapters to introduce the five chapters in the book The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution.

In the first chapter, Lenin explains “the economic basis and nature of the agrarian revolution in Russia”. He examined the economic basis and essence of the agrarian transformation in Russia, Lenin elucidated the two forms of the evolution of agricultural capitalism and their impact on the development of the productive forces. The two forms of the evolution of agricultural capitalism were the “Prussian” and “American” paths. The Prussian way meant not completely eliminating feudal land tenure and preserved large estates, a remnant of serfdom relations so that the peasants were oppressed by both capitalism and serfdom, consequently development of productive forces was very slow.

The American way realizes that land is freely operated by free peasants so that the peasants are completely freed from the shackles of feudal land ownership and serfdom, thus they became free peasants. Such way were the most favorable for the masses and thus enabled the rapid development of the productive forces.

Lenin argued that the key to grasp the Russian agrarian program was which path the Russian agrarian transformation should take. He criticized the constitutional democrats (Kadets) for trying to disguise the essence of agrarian reform and criticized them for confusing the two major lines in the agrarian program in the Russian Revolution, namely the Prussian-style landowner line and the American-style peasant line. Lenin clearly affirmed the model of the American-style peasant line which favored the freedom of peasants and productive forces, pointing out that the defeat of landlords would give a strong impetus to the development of farming technology and peasant farming and trade. For Lenin, if Russia could get rid of the large estates of landlords, it would turn a large amount of untilled land into tilled land.

In the second chapter, Lenin describes “The Agrarian Programmes of the R.S.D.L.P.”. and how this programme was tested in the First Revolution. Lenin pointed out that the basic flaw of all previous agrarian programs in the past was that they did not envisage very specifically what form the agrarian evolution of Russian capitalism might take in the future, a mistake also made by the Menshevik program of “local self-government”. Lenin said: Local self-government that is at all really democratic is impossible unless landlord rule is completely overthrown and landlordism is abolished. In practice, it cannot be attained unless the revolutionary classes conquer political power throughout the state.

Lenin compared the program of “local self-government” with the RSDLP’s program of “nationalization of land”. The Mensheviks claimed that the peasants were hostile and opposed to the nationalization programme, consequently for the Mensheviks peasant movement would thus bypass and even oppose the Social-Democratic Party, which would cause the defeat of the revolution. Lenin refuted the absurdity of this argument with facts and pointed out that in the two recent Duma assemblies, the representatives of peasants from all over Russia advocated the nationalization of land. The peasants with their class instincts understood that medieval land ownership must be completely eliminated, and they knew it better than those short-sighted false “Marxists”.

The only conceivable way to eliminate village communities and medieval land ownership system, which are remnants of the Middle Ages, is to implement “nationalization of the land”, which is the only possible way to eliminate these systems in a capitalist society with maximum concern for the interests of the peasants.

In the third chapter, Lenin talked about “The Theoretical Basis of Nationalization and of Municipalisation”. Lenin used Marx’s doctrine of land rent to argue the rationality of the land nationalization program and to deny the Mensheviks’ misunderstanding and distortion of Marx’s theory of land reform. Lenin argued that to repudiate the theory of absolute rent is to deprive oneself of any chance of understanding the significance of the nationalization of land in capitalist society, because nationalization can lead to the abolition only of absolute, and not differential, rent. To repudiate absolute rent is to repudiate the economic significance of private land-owning as an obstacle to the development of capitalism. The program of “nationalization of land” is aimed at the elimination of private ownership of land and absolute land rent. Nationalization of land means calling on the masses of peasants to use revolutionary means to eliminate all feudal serf land systems and their political rule, the confiscation of the landed estates, and the establish nationalization of the land and land use principles common to the whole country prescribed by the organs of state power. The nationalization of land reflected the demands and aspirations of the masses of peasants, removed obstacles to the development of capitalism, promoted the development of the agricultural productive forces, and facilitated the development of the rural class struggle. Therefore, Lenin argued that land nationalization was the most radical bourgeois revolution, the best form of land relations in a capitalist society, and the most correct way to eliminate serfdom in Russia.

In the fourth chapter, Lenin spoke of “Political and Tactical Considerations in Questions of the Agrarian Programme”. Lenin refuted the absurdity of Plekhanov’s argument in favor of “local self-government”, pointing out that it was not leading the proletariat to a complete victory, but to a deal with the old regime. Lenin advocated that the revolution should be carried out to the end, that the old system should be eliminated most completely, that maximum democracy (republic) should be introduced politically, and that the way should be cleared for capitalism economically. In response to the Mensheviks’ view that “Nationalization, strengthens the central authority of the bourgeois state”, Lenin pointed out that capitalism was an inevitable stage in Russia’s historical development and that the existing revolution was a bourgeois revolution. “We cannot get rid of the ‘bourgeois state’. Only petty-bourgeois philistines can dream of doing so. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution precisely because the struggle going on in it is not between socialism and capitalism, but between two forms of capitalism, two paths of its development, two forms of bourgeois-democratic institutions.” Lenin pointed out that in the Russian revolution we could not go further without supporting the bourgeoisie against the old system. In response to the accusation that “nationalization of land is hopelessly utopian”, Lenin pointed out that this was a failure to understand the essential and unbreakable connection between an economic and a political upheaval. Confiscation of the landed estates is impossible without the abolition of the landlord autocracy political system. And the autocracy cannot be abolished without the revolutionary action of class— conscious millions, without a great surge of mass heroism, readiness and ability on their part to “storm heaven”, as Marx put it when speaking of the Paris workers at the time of the Paris Commune.

In the fifth chapter, Lenin briefly talked about “Classes and Parties in the Debate on the Agrarian Question in the Second Duma.” Lenin highly affirmed the revolutionary spirit of the peasants and their active role in the revolution. The task of the proletariat was to organize the masses not for this purpose, but for the revolutionary struggle, for complete democratization today and a socialist revolution tomorrow. And the proletariat must ally itself with the peasant class, which harbors great power if this great change is to be possible. Such a revolution would not only be the basis for a development of productive forces under capitalism at an American speed, or whether it will become the prologue to a socialist revolution in the West. Although Lenin acknowledged that the Russian revolution had to go through a bourgeois revolutionary stage, he emphasized that it cannot stop there and that the revolutionary path of really overthrowing the old order inevitably requires, as its economic basis, the destruction of all the old forms of landownership, together with all the old political institutions of Russia. The experience of the first period of the Russian revolution has conclusively proved that it can be victorious only as a peasant agrarian revolution, and that the latter cannot completely fulfil its historical mission unless the land is nationalised. Lenin’s idea of “nationalization of land” was an important development of Marxist theory on the land question.