Preface

The present work was occasioned by the discussions that had arisen over the agrarian programme proposed at the Frankfurt Party Congress of German Social Democracy and rejected at the Breslau Party Congress. Whatever one may think of these discussions, one thing they showed clearly: that in German as in international Social Democracy views on the tendencies of modern agricultural development diverge widely, so that an undisputed foundation for a decided agrarian policy of Social Democracy has not yet been won.

It was therefore declared unanimously at Breslau that a more thorough theoretical investigation of agrarian conditions was necessary and should be promoted as far as possible.

This occasion was not needed, of course, to arouse my interest in the land question. It had occupied me keenly from the very beginnings of my activity in the party. In 1878, when I was still writing under the pseudonym “Symmachos”, I published in the Vienna Sozialist a series of articles, The Peasants and Socialism, which was then to appear as an offprint for agitation, but which was put out of the way by the confiscation of the whole edition. In 1879 I finished my work on The Influence of the Increase of Population on the Progress of Society, in which the question of the production of food plays a large part; in 1880 Richter’s Jahrbuch carried my article on agitation among the peasants; in 1881 I discussed the question of overseas competition in foodstuffs in the Staatswirthschaftliche Abhandlungen. Besides this I wrote at that time a series of leaflets for peasants, The Uncle from America and others.

When, therefore, in the middle of this decade the agrarian question came to the forefront of the discussions of the socialist parties of Europe, I had merely to renew an old acquaintance — an acquaintance I had never lost sight of. With age it had only gained in interest, practical as well as theoretical. The growth of our party and the agrarian crisis had raised it to one of the most important of the practical questions with which Social Democracy has to concern itself. In the meantime, too, Marxism had everywhere become the foundation of the socialist movement, and the third volume of Capital had appeared, with its brilliant investigations of ground-rent; but the development of agriculture in particular had brought forth phenomena that seemed incompatible with the Marxist theories. Thus the agrarian question came to the forefront of theoretical interest as well.

In treating a subject familiar to me from earlier days I expected to meet no particular difficulties, and I was all the more bound to wish to come before the public with my work soon, since it is concerned not with academic questions but with practical questions of the greatest topicality. Even so, it has taken three years to see the light. This is due partly to numerous interruptions, caused by my professional position, by my occupation with the questions of the day, and by the share in the publication of Marx’s literary remains that has fallen to me since Engels’s death; and partly to the circumstance that I wished to base my investigations chiefly on the results of the most recent surveys of agricultural statistics: on those of the inquiry of the parliamentary agricultural commission in England, of the third volume of the American census of 1890, which deals with agriculture, of the French agricultural inquiry of 1892 and of the German statistics of agricultural enterprises and occupations of 1895 — all of them publications that appeared only in 1897 or even 1898.

Moreover, it became clear as the work proceeded that it was impossible to accomplish what it was meant to accomplish within the compass of a pamphlet, as I had planned.

What we need most, in my opinion, is not that one more should be added to the already countless agricultural monographs and inquiries. However welcome these may be, there is certainly no lack of information about the conditions of agriculture; the governments, and the science and journalism of the ruling classes, pour out a positively crushing abundance of it year in, year out. What is needed is to lay bare the red thread that runs through this tangle of the most varied facts, to investigate the fundamental tendencies that are at work beneath the surface of the phenomena and determine them. The task is to regard the various particular questions that make up the agrarian question — the relation between large-scale and small-scale farming, indebtedness, the law of inheritance, the shortage of labour, overseas competition, etc. — which today are as a rule each examined by itself as a separate phenomenon, as partial phenomena of a single total process.

The task is a difficult one, the subject a vast one, and I know of no adequate preliminary work from the modern socialist standpoint. The theoreticians of Social Democracy have naturally devoted themselves mainly to the investigation of industrial development. Engels, and Marx in particular, did indeed say important things about agrarian conditions too, but as a rule only in occasional remarks or short articles. An exception is the section on ground-rent in the third volume of Capital; this, however, was not brought to a complete conclusion. Marx died without having finished his life’s work. But even if he had finished it, we should not find in it all the information we are now looking for. For in accordance with the plan of his work he deals there only with capitalist agriculture, whereas what concerns us most today is precisely the role of the pre-capitalist and non-capitalist forms of agriculture within capitalist society.

None the less, Capital is invaluable for our understanding of agricultural conditions, invaluable not only for its results but, still more, for its method, which enables us to carry the work fruitfully further even beyond its own field. If I should have succeeded in developing new and fruitful ideas in the present work, I owe thanks for it above all to my two great masters; and I stress this here all the more gladly since for some time voices have been raised, even in socialist circles, declaring the standpoint of Marx and Engels obsolete. In their time, it is said, they accomplished things altogether worthy of recognition, and even today they offer a rich stimulus; but whoever does not wish to ossify in dogmatism must overcome them, in order to pass beyond them to higher views. This, it is said, is demanded by the standpoint of the Marxist dialectic itself, according to which there are no eternal truths, and every development springs from the negation of what exists.

That looks very philosophical, but it leads us to the famous conclusion that Marx must be wrong for the very reason that he is right, that the dialectic must be false for the very reason that it is correct — a conclusion of which one thing at least is undeniable: the falseness of the dialectic, though not of the Marxist one.

Engels pointed out long ago in his Anti-Dühring (2nd ed., p. 133) how absurd it is to regard a negation that annihilates as a link in the dialectical process. Development through negation by no means signifies the negation of everything that exists; on the contrary, it presupposes the continued existence of what is to be developed. The negation of capitalist society by socialism does not mean the abolition of human society, but only the abolition of certain aspects of one of its phases of development. But neither does it by any means mean the abolition of all those aspects that distinguish capitalist society from the form of society that preceded it. If capitalist property is the negation of individual property, socialism is the “negation of the negation. This re-establishes individual property, but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist era” (Marx, Capital, 2nd ed., p. 793).

Development is progress only if it does not merely negate, abolish, but also preserves; if, besides what exists that deserves to perish, it also finds in existence something that deserves to be preserved. To that extent progress consists in an accumulation of the acquisitions of earlier phases of development. The development of organisms is conditioned not only by adaptation but also by heredity; the class struggles that develop human society are directed not only to destruction and new formation but also to conquest, and with it to the preservation of what exists; the progress of science would be as impossible without the transmission of its earlier achievements as without their criticism; and the progress of art springs not only from the originality of genius, which breaks through all the barriers of convention, but also from understanding of the masterpieces of its predecessors.

Knowledge of what is at any given time obsolete and what is to be conserved can be gained only from the investigation of reality; the dialectic is utterly unsuited to serve as a stencil that would spare us this investigation. It is only a means of giving method to research, of sharpening the eye of the investigator. Therein lies its high value. But it does not simply put finished results into his hands.

The assumption that the necessity of its own supersession follows from the Marxian doctrine from the outset rests, then, on an entirely false conception of its dialectic. Whether and how far that doctrine is an error, how far it is a ktēma es aei, a lasting acquisition of science, cannot be decided by appeal to the dialectic, but only by investigation of the facts. These, however, seem to me so far by no means to contribute to the “negation” of Marxism. I do see misgivings and doubts arising, but nowhere new truths destined to supersede Marxism. Mere misgivings and doubts, however, constitute no negation in the sense of the dialectic; they signify no development beyond the knowledge already won, no supersession of it.

The cause of these doubts seems to me to lie more in the persons of the doubters than in the doctrine doubted. I conclude this not only from the results that an examination of such misgivings yields, but also from the experiences I have had with myself.

In the beginnings of my occupation with socialism my sympathies by no means belonged to Marxism. I approached it as critically and doubtingly as any of those who today look down with contempt on my fanaticism for dogma. I became a Marxist only reluctantly. But then, as later, whenever doubts arose in me on a fundamental question, I always found in the end that the fault lay with me and not with my masters, and that a deeper study of the subject compelled me to recognise their standpoint as the justified one. Thus every fresh examination, every attempt at revision, has led me only to increased confidence in, and strengthened recognition of, the doctrine whose dissemination and application has become the task of my life.

The facts of agricultural development have called forth the strongest doubts about the “Marxian dogma”. How far these doubts are justified, the present work is meant to show.

Berlin-Friedenau, December 1898. K. Kautsky.