From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 3 No. 2, 5 January 1923, pp. 9–12.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Agrarian question was thoroughly discussed at the Second Congress of the Communist International. We adopted theses which even now form the basis of our work. The program of action proposed by the Agrarian Commission is not a deviation from these theses, but complementary to them. These additions are made necessary by the historical changes which have taken place in the last two years.
At the Second Congress we were all convinced that the revolution would rapidly spread Westward. It was the period of the victorious advance of the Russian army in Poland, of the spread of the Communist movement in all Europe; and under the impression of an imminent revolution, the theses formulated by the Second Congress were prepared especially for an immediate conquest of power. Today, we see that the time for the conquest of power in the European countries is not so near as we thought, and we are confronted with the necessity of recruiting the masses into our ranks and elarging the armies of the Communist Party.
This idea is the basis of the United Front and of the present program of agrarian action. To secure the success of our movement, to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must gain the active help of the large masses of the peasant population and neutralise another section of it. We must realise that we were not the only ones who have learned from the Russian revolution, – the bourgeoisie has also learned much. The Russian dictatorship has shown the bourgeoisie the magnitude of the danger which menaces it. It no longer believes that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a passing phase, and it guards against this. There is no longer any possibility of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by a small revolutionary group.
If our goal, then, is to win over a certain section of the peasantry and to neutralise another, the first thing we have to do it to determine the methods of our work. This method can be none other than to participate in the struggles of that section of the peasantry. The winning over of these groups cannot be accomplished by the mere drawing up of a program. In general, these groups distrust the Communist Party. It is not sufficient to draw up a good program to approach them; it is absolutely necessary to convince them of our interest in their welfare and to erase their distrust of the Communist Party by participating in their daily struggles. For that purpose it is necessary primarily to win over the agrarian proletariat, the poor peasantry, that is such peasants as do not posses sufficient land to provide them with a living but are partly dependent on wage labour. The second group to be won over, is the poorer section of the small peasantry. To win them over, it is first necessary to remove them from the intellectual leadership of the large land owners. This is a very hard task in Europe; the European peasantry is not such a large loose mass as the Russian peasantry before the revolution. They are organised politically, economically and cooperatively, and the large landowners have the leadership of these organisations. It must be our work to connect up the interests of the poor peasantry with ours and remove them from the influence of the large landowners. This task is exceedingly difficult. These difficulties arise primarily from the nature of the European Communist Parties.
Most of these parties lack sufficient strength to carry out such a campaign. Many parties are not even strong enough to influence the industrial proletariat. They have not sufficient men to carry on the propaganda among the peasant population, and a result we have the situation that the Communist Party is altogether cut off from the peasantry.
I will give you an example. I asked the following questions of the comrades representing the Roumanian Delegation in the Agrarian Commission:
What were the political consequences of the division of land among the Roumanian peasants?
He had to answer that he did not know. I do not wish thereby to cast any reproach upon the Roumanian Party. We know under what difficult conditions it has had to work during recent times. I only wish to point out that in many countries the Communist Party is not sufficiently strong to carry on any intensive propaganda in the agrarian districts. The solution of this difficulty is not that we should give up all agitation in the agrarian districts, but rather that we train leaders, agitators, Party workers from among the peasant population, from the agrarian proletariat, and then put them in charge of this work.
This work of participating in the daily struggles of the various sections of the agrarian workers also presents great objective difficulties. The greatest of these is the vagueness of the population. One sees clearly that this man is an industrial worker, this one an artisan, this one a manufacturer, and the passage from one class to another is rare and difficult. In this period of the disruption of capitalism, it often happens that an industrial worker will conduct a small speculative business as an adjunct to his ordinary work, that he manufactures certain things at home, but in general, the division is clear and sharp.
This is quite different among the agrarian population. The change from an absolute landless and propertyless agrarian proletarian to a poor peasant, then to a small peasant, then to a middle peasant and to a rich peasant is frequent. There is a constant passage from one class into the other. Neither is this class position a constant one. For instance, by a change of methods of land cultivation, the small peasant may become an employer, on the other hand outside circumstances may force him for a time to become a wage worker. So we see that the division of classes is neither constant nor clear.
I would like also to point out the quantitative difference which exists between industry and agriculture in respect to the size of the middle class. In the cities, we can practically ignore the ossilating mass of the petty bourgeois, the petty shopkeepers, the petty manufacturers etc. in certain countries, on the other hand, the agrarian proletariat is very small, and the small and middle peasantry constitutes the great majority of the population. This forces us to give this rural middle class greater attention than we do to the urban middle class.
I would like io say a few words on the economic cause of this vague division of classes in agriculture. The cause of it is that the most ipmortaat means of production of agriculture, the land, is easily divisible. It can be divided without producing a noticeable decline in production. The industrial worker could never think of dividing up a railroad, an electric station, a large wharf or a machine shop. It is quite apparent that this would be ridiculous because it would destroy production. In agriculture on the other hand, the chief means of production, the land, may be divided up without any noticeable diminution of production. Landed estates can be diminished or increased by sale or purchase and may be divided up by legacy. This easy division of the means of production is the cause of the kin division of classes among the peasantry.
Another great difficulty lies in the different conditions prevailing in the various districts in each country. While the problems of the industrial proletariat, the conditions on which it lives are very much the same in al! countries, agriculture presents profound differences. We may distinguish three main types. First, the colonial country with an oppressed native peasantry. I am referring to Egypt and India where the situation is as follows: The peasant is oppressed by the foreign exploiters who maintain the closest connection with the feudal landowners of that territory, with the great princes, the allies of British imperialism. In those districts the struggle against imperialism is at the same time, the struggle of the oppressed peasant against his own feudal lord; and the struggle for national liberation is also a struggle for the liberation of the peasantry from their old social bondage.
A second type is formed by the countries where considerable relics of feudalism still exist, where the bourgeois revolution has not yet accomplished its work. These relics of feudalism still exist in Germany, and they increase as we go eastward to Poland, to the Balkans, to Rumania, to Asia Minor.
The third type is found in purely capitalist countries as in America, where agriculture is a branch of capitalist production, and in the British colonies like Canada and Australia and in England itself. There the delation is the same as in industry: exploiters and exploited. Jugoslavia shows exceptionally well the confusion of conditions prevailing in agriculture; in the newly acquired sections of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the peasants live practically in a state of serfdom in relation to their old Turkish feudal lords; Serbia itself, is a purely democratic land of peasants; and in the newly acquired sections of Hungary i.e. South Hungary and Croatia, we find a fully developed capitalist agriculture, large land holdings with modem equipment, so that in this small country we have three different political and social types existing side by side. This makes our propaganda in the country especially difficult, because our slogans must be quite different in old Serbia from those in Bosnia, or capitalistically developed Croatia and South Hungary.
The second great difference arises in the land problem. There are countries where the demand of the peasantry for land is the chief point of interest, while in others the land problem plays absolutely no role, for instance, in Poland and in certain sections of Germany and Italy the most important question is that of land, while in America or Canada this problem does not exist because there is plenty of land. The same applies to France where the population increases slowly; one million and a haIf peasants fell in the war, so that there is no acute shortage of land at the present time. In Bulgaria, there there is a shortage of land the absence of large land holdings nukes a demand for land absolutely purposeless. As you see, here also the conditions are exceedingly varied. The chief characteristic of the poorer peasantry is the vagueness and the instability of their class position. This fact determines also their political role: They oscillate from one side to the other; this is a direct result of the instability of their economic basis. At one moment they feel nearer to the proletariat, in times of prosperity they feel nearer to the large peasantry. They are a varying element that must be energetically dealt with, with tactics varying with the conditions of the moment.
In this connection, I must point to the changes which have taken place in the class situation and in the political views of the peasant population as a result the war. Briefly it is as follows. During the war, the division of the national income was in favour of agriculture and as a result, those layers of the peasantry which formerly stood nearer to the proletariat now feel a community of interests with the large peasantry. What I wish to say is that a dividing line has been pressed lower down the social scale, that the mass which we could win over for the world revolution has become somewhat reduced as a result of the war. On the other hand, the war has sharpened the division between those elements accessible to our propaganda and those not accessible. The peasantry grew rich during the war because the price of foodstuffs increased much more than that of any other product. This brought wealth to those classes of the peasantry who could bring goods to the market. But those who had to live partly as wage workers, became poor during the war and the contrast increased somewhat, though naturally not as rapidly and sharply as in industry.
I wish to add that the situation has grown even worse during the last one or two years. I only need to recall the great agrarian crisis in America and in Argentina as a result of which the prices of industrial products rose, and the peasant no longer had the advantage of being able to sell his food products dear and buy his manufactured goods cheap. This new aggravation in the condition of the peasantry manifests itself in the growing indebtedness of the peasantry in the various countries.
Comrades, this instability of the position of the bourgeois agrarian classes makes it a matter of course that wherever there exists a real agrarian proletariat, this proletariat must become the main factor of the revolutionary movement. The landless agrarian proletariat must become our trusted and reliable comrades in all the phases of the class struggle conducted by our Party. This, comrades, has been distinctly stated in our program.
How can we approach the agrarian proletariat? I do not believe that a long speech is necessary on this matter. We can achieve this by supporting their immediate demands as wage workers and proletarians, by supporting them in their fight for the increase of their wages for the betterment of their working conditions, for the extension of social reforms, etc. Furthermore, we should unite them for this fight, lead them, associate them with the fights of the industrial proletariat in order to prove to the agricultural working class that the Communist Party is the real Party of the proletariat. I do not believe that I need say any more. This is all contained ui the program.
I now pass to our work among the semi-peasant classes, and I would like to point to the dangers which, we are likely to meet in this work The danger comes from both left and right. The danger from the right is that in those countries where there is a numerous semi-peasant and small peasant population, our propaganda may become a purely peasant propaganda with no difference in principle between the agitation of the Communist Party and that of a radical peasant party. I would like to point out two facts in this connection. First, in France, where the method of agitation of comrade Renaud lean presails a certain danger in this direction; the interests of the real agricultural proletariat are likely to be neglected for the sake of the semi- and small peasants, the same danger lurks in the report of the American Delegation, where the demand is made for a minimum price for agricultural products, so-called staples, to be fixed by the government which is in direct opposition not only to the interests of the peasant population, but also to those of the industrial proletariat as consumers. These are the dangers from the right.
On the other hand, I also see certain dangers from the left. Certain comrades seem to entertain an actual fear of the peasantry, a sectarian insistence on the idea that only the true proletariat, industrial and agricultural can be the active fighters for the revolution, for which the poor and small peasant classes have no interest. I believe this to be a big mistake, for there is a great number of countries where the proletarian revolution is impossible without the active support of these classes. I might say that with the exception of England there is no single European country where the dictatorship of the proletariat can maintain itself if the bourgeoisie, the rich peasantry, the middle and small peasant classes are opposed to it. Thus, I consider the fear of the collaboration of the peasants, the doubts about the possibility of revolutionising the wide peasant masses, as a political mistake just as great as the neglect of the interests of the rural workers. It is quite clear that only the rural proletariat will give us reliable and permanent fighting forces, but, as soon as the revolutionary movement has been initiated, the widest possible sections of the working rural population must be, drawn into it If this is not done, it will be impossible in many countries for the workers to assume power, and in other countries it will be impossible to maintain the proletarian dictatorship without their active support.
We are now concerned with the question of how to approach the various sections of the peasantry. Our program of action deals with the dependence of the peasantry on capitalism in its various forms. The dependence on loans and usurious capital, the dependence on speculative capital which buys the produce of the small peasants at low prices in order to sell it at high prices to the town population, the dependence on industrial capital which through monopoly artificially raises the prices of manufactured goods, the dependence on transport capital, as in the case of America for example, where 50% of the net proceeds from the sale is frequently absorbed by the cost of transport. Perhaps there are comrades present here who have read the interesting novel by Norris which contains the following information: In America the railway companies change their tariffs every week or every fortnight. If a poor fellow, who worked himself up from a proletarian to a small hop grower by dint of very hard work, asks the manager how he fixes the rates, he will get the reply: “we fix it as high as the traffic will bear”. Thus, they take everything beyond wages.
I am of the opinion that our chief work must consist in supporting the various demands of the peasant population in its struggle against capitalism. This also offers the solution of the difficult problem of prices. Of course, we must not say “Yes, the peasants must receive high prices for their produce,” but we must make use of the question of prices in order to draw the peasantry into the struggle against capitalism. We must say: “Capitalism must be compelled to provide the peasantry with cheap means of production, cheap machinery, artificial fertiliser etc., in order to enable them to sell their produce at low prices.” We must not say that we want to fix a definite price, but that the capitalists should provide the peasantry with all manufactured goods which they need for their production at low prices.
But, comrades, the chief factor of our work must be our attitude on the land question, for land-hunger is the most active factor of all revolutionary movements in the rural districts. The question is put quite clearly; should or should not the Communist Party support the movement of the poor peasantry for the acquisition of more land within the capitalist system? Should it oppose this movement or should it declare itself in favour of it? No evasion of this question is admissible. In most countries this question is put so pointedly that the Communist Party must say either yes or no. And I say, comrades, that the Communist Party must come forward with a definite yes. The Communist Party must give active support to all the efforts of the working peasantry to obtain more land. Our tactics must consist in putting our revolutionary solution of the agrarian question against the bourgeois agrarian reforms and direct the activity of these strata of the population in our favour. The land-poor peasants such as the small and partial lease holders demand a reduction in rent. The Communist Party cannot put itself in opposition to this. It must say that it is tor it, but at the same time it is obliged to tell the peasantry that this is not a solution of the problem, and that the only solution is the expropriation, the revolutionary confiscation of the land which it is now leasing. The poor peasants want to purchase land, and demand that the State should give it to them at a low price. The Communist Party cannot say that it is against this. It must say that it is for it, but that if wants to let them have the land free of charge. It must say that it is willing to fight with them now in order to let them have it cheaply, but that at the same time it will continue to struggle until they receive the land and the inventory free of charge.
Comrades, it is only in this way that we can get into close contact with these people who, I venture to say, are to-day entirely cut off from the Communist Party. It is only in this way that we shall bring them under our influence, and unite their movement of the urban proletariat The following argument may be advanced against this policy: The bourgeois government seeing that the movement has become really revolutionary, may attempt to check it by distributing land to the leading and the most active elements of the peasantry, as has already happened in all the countries surrounding Russia, such as Finland, Latvia, and Esthonia (in Poland it has been promised but not yet carried out) and in Roumania. A reporter of the English journal The Economist makes the following plain statement about Roumania in its issue of October 21, 1922.
“It is self-evident that it was fear and economic considerations that led to agrarian reforms in Roumania. In fact, these reforms were the price which the ruling classes paid, to protect the country against Bolshevism.”
This is clear and to the point. Therefore, it might be said perhaps, that this being so there is no reason for us to support movements which at a given moment can have an anti-revolutionary effect But, I must reiterate that this question presents itself in such a way that the Communist Party can only answer it with yes or no. In these countries it cannot say no, it must say yes, even at the risk of a partial setback. An ideal revolutionary movement would, of course, be for the struggle of the workers and the revolutionary movement of the poor peasants to run parallel until the time when the industrial proletariat will have assumed power in the cities simultaneously with the agricultural proletariat and the poor peasants seizing the land.
In this case, the rural population would receive the land from die proletarian dictatorship, just as it happened in Russia, where, not the bourgeoisie, but the revolutionary proletariat having come into power, distributed the land: This would be an ideal development. But, we are not the only Party in the field, the bourgeoisie is also fighting, and it has the opportunity to give the land to the peasants sooner than we can, thus checking the general revolutionary movement.
Should the bourgeoisie do this, we shall have to begin anew. We must immediately lake advantage of all the shortcomings of a bourgeois agrarian reform. We must be quick in pointing out that the limitations of bourgeois reform cannot give anything to the landless proletarian, for, it either sells the land or provides the money for land purchase. It cannot give land to people who have no means of production, no cattle, no seed, no machinery, no stabling etc. In Yugoslavia, an attempt was made to give land to the poor ex-soldiers in the newly annexed Hungarian territory with the result that these men were compelled to lease out or sell the land which they had received.
To recapitulate: we must accept the risk of bourgeois agrarian reforms, and in the event of such reforms being introduced, our tactics must be – to take advantage of all the shortcomings of these bourgeois agrarian reforms.
The social consequences of such bourgeois reforms is as follows:
They temporarily check the revolutionary movement, creating a numerous section of big peasants who arc in dose union with the capitalists. On the other hand they render the antagonism between the rich and the poor peasants more acute, owing to the fact that the tatter obtained the land on conditions which made them the debtors of the banks, thus reducing them very quickly to their former state of misery.
Comrades, as I said before, our chief concern in all our agitational work must be to put our program very dearly and definitely before the masses. The expropriation of land, the confiscation of all means of production connected with the land, the free transference of this land and of the whole inventory to the landless proletarians and poor peasants. In order to win over the neutral middle peasantry, we must emphasise the fact that the proletarian revolution does away with mortgages and that everyone who hitherto leased a piece of land, would get it free of charge for his own use. We must not relax in our endeavours to bring to the fore the difference between bourgeois agrarian reform and the proletarian agrarian revolution!
In conclusion, I wish to say a few words about the organizational measures contained in our program of action. Comrades, it is of course our task to organize the rural proletariat into trade unions, wherever this was not done already, and also to form communist nuclei in these agricultural unions, in order to bring them under our influence. I must also point out that it is in our interests to develop the agricultural unions into industrial federations, in order to organize within them all those industrial workers who are permanently employed within the agricultural system, such as locksmiths, blacksmiths, woodworkers, builders and mechanics on the large estates. Thus, these trade unions will afford us greater support.
On the other hand, it is to be desired that Communists living in the country enter the yellow, the bourgeois, the fascist, the counter-revolutionary trade unions in the country, form communist factions within them and work to destroy them by showing that these trade unions do not accomplish their purpose, that they conduct no fight against the employers. In the same way, the communists must enter the various organisations of the small peasants, agricultural and co-operative, from factions there also, and bring these organisations under the leadership of the Communist Party. It is self-evident that the Communist Party should attempt to assume the leadership in the activities of the poor peasantry. They must try to direct the struggle, to give it a more and more revolutionary purpose in order to prove to the rural population, to the proletariat, to the poor peasantry that the Communist Party represents the interests of all the workers in the country not only, in their program, but also in their actions. We must always try to connect the struggle of the rural proletariat, the fight of the agricultural and the poor peasant with that of the industrial proletariat by reciprocal support This is no mere fantasy. In Germany, for instance, the poor peasants supported the strike of the metal workers in South Germany with fairly considerable gifts of food products; and there are surely cases when the industrial proletariat can help the poor peasants in their struggle. We must attempt whenever possible to unite these two movements which have been going on independently all the time as for instance, by the creation of rural councils on the large land holdings, and of small peasants’ councils wherever a strong Factory Councils’ movement exists, in order to create a common councils movement in agriculture and industry. Naturally, I cannot cite all possible cases, all I can do is to refer to some examples.
Comrades, I am coming to the aid of my speech, the program of action which is now before you and has been adopted unanimously by the commission does not imply that there were no differences of opinion on the matter among the various delegations. There were such, due to the very difficulty of the problem and the confusion of rural conditions. One of the comrades, I believe it was a Polish comrade, used the very happy expression that the agrarian problem was an omnibus into which every one could climb. This is exactly what it is. It cannot be otherwise, for the very reason that there is no clear and sharp division of classes in agriculture. We must build up our program so that, while insisting upon the priority of the rural proletarian it will give the possibility to all working classes in agriculture to take part actively in the revolutionary movement of the Communist Party on the basis of this program.
Last updated on 9 July 2021