Quiz: The Agrarian Question

All 50 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. Which animals does Kautsky say the Reichstag left free to feed on peasants’ crops in the Civil Code?

   Foxes Wild boar Martens Hares
2. 2. How does Kautsky characterise the American bonanza wheat farms?

   As peasant co-operatives formed by settlers who pooled their homesteads As a robber economy growing one crop without manure or rotation As state-owned model farms run by the federal Department of Agriculture As intensive mixed farms with heavy stocking of cattle and rotation of crops
3. 3. According to Kautsky, what does the peasant enterprise’s ability to hold its own against the large one rest on?

   Its higher technical performance Its better access to credit Its lower demands Its greater use of machinery
4. 4. What does Kautsky mean when he says the peasant who supplies a dairy or sugar factory becomes a “detail-labourer”?

   He is elected to manage one department of the co-operative He sells his land to the factory and then works there for daily wages The factory dictates how he farms, so he is no longer master of his own land He specialises in a single crop to get a better price from the factory
5. 5. Which nationalisation does Kautsky think Social Democracy may demand even in present-day society?

   Nationalisation of all agricultural land against compensation Nationalisation of forests and waters Nationalisation of the grain trade Nationalisation of mortgages
6. 6. Why, according to Kautsky, would an agrarian dread the prospect of making fine Johannisberger wine from sugared water?

   It would destroy the ground-rent of the famous vineyards It would require costly grapes imported from southern Europe It would be banned by the wine laws as adulteration It would make fine wine too expensive for the workers to buy
7. 7. Who made up most of the “Saxon-goers” on the beet estates Kärger examined?

   Young women and girls Discharged soldiers Married men with families Elderly day-labourers
8. 8. In Buchenberger’s comparison of two Baden holdings, why did the smaller family-worked farm show a surplus?

   It used a hired steam threshing-machine that saved the family much winter labour It paid no land tax, since holdings below a certain size were exempt in Baden Its family ate about half as well as the wage-labourers on the larger farm It grew more valuable commercial crops, such as tobacco and hops, on its land
9. 9. What did the 1848 Demands of the Communist Party in Germany propose regarding peasant holdings, as Kautsky reads them?

   To abolish peasant inheritance To make the mortgages on them state property, not the holdings themselves To divide the feudal estates among the peasants To nationalise all peasant land with compensation
10. 10. Which enterprises does Kautsky say are least affected by the flight from the land, and so gained ground from 1882 to 1895?

    Middle peasant holdings of 5 to 20 hectares Big peasant farms of 20 to 100 hectares using hired labour Latifundia of over 1,000 hectares run by salaried managers Dwarf holdings under 1 hectare worked by part-time labourers
11. 11. What difference between industry and agriculture does Kautsky treat as the great obstacle to large-scale farming in countries of small property?

    Land cannot be multiplied, so a large farm must absorb existing holdings Agriculture has no use for wage-labour on a large scale Farm products cannot be exported in quantity from small countries Agricultural machines cannot be patented and so are seldom improved
12. 12. What does Kautsky see as the one way to give the rural labourer both a home and freedom of movement?

    Workers’ dwellings built from public funds and let to them Grants and cheap loans to help labourers buy their own cottages Revival of the common pastures Employer-provided housing under police control
13. 13. According to Meitzen’s Prussian figures, small peasant holdings sold for what multiple of their assessed net yield?

    120 times 105 times 78 times 52 times
14. 14. What brought the co-operative at Ralahine to an end, according to the account Kautsky quotes?

    A failed potato harvest and the famine that followed it in County Clare The owner’s gambling losses, after which his creditors seized the property Eviction by the British government, which feared the association as a seditious society Quarrels among the members over the division of wages and the produce of the farm
15. 15. How does Kautsky explain why English wheat yields stopped falling after the 1880s?

    Wheat farmers adopted the steam drill and the threshing-machine Poorer wheat land went to pasture, leaving only the most fertile under wheat Artificial manures restored the fertility of the exhausted soil A run of exceptionally good harvests from the late 1880s on
16. 16. What share of German agricultural enterprises, by Kautsky’s reckoning, had an interest in the corn duties?

    Only about a quarter, since the smaller holdings had to buy corn About three-quarters, since nearly all farms sold some of their corn All of them, since corn prices set the price of every piece of land Exactly half, divided between the corn-selling east and the west
17. 17. Why does Kautsky call the agricultural producers’ co-operative a transitional stage to capitalism?

    It is always founded and owned by joint-stock banks Its workers are wage-labourers employed by the farmer-members, who pocket the profit on capital It abolishes private property in land It is run by the state on behalf of the large landowners
18. 18. Why does Kautsky judge the rural factory more hopeful than rural domestic industry?

    It frees the workers entirely from their plots of land It pays wages higher than those in the towns, so that its workers can buy land of their own It allows the whole family, children included, to earn together under one roof and one master Its hours are regulated in common and easier to limit by law, and it gathers workers
19. 19. What do the French wheat figures for 1816–17 and 1821–22 show?

    Bad harvests ruined the farmers, while the good harvests made even the smallest of them rich A harvest a third larger brought farmers about a third less per hectare Higher yields brought the farmers proportionally higher money incomes per hectare in both years Prices stayed stable in both years because the state bought up the surplus for its granaries
20. 20. What form had Kautsky originally planned for the work?

    A pamphlet A three-volume treatise A series of articles in a daily newspaper A set of lectures at Zurich
21. 21. How much more fencing does Kautsky say fifty plots of 20 ares need than one plot of 10 hectares?

    More than seven times as much The same amount, since the total area is equal Exactly fifty times as much About twice as much
22. 22. Which two “souls” does Kautsky find in the dwarf farmer?

    A Catholic soul and a Protestant one A conservative soul and a liberal one A peasant soul and a proletarian one A German soul and a Polish one
23. 23. Which of these is not one of the three ways in which, Kautsky says, the small farm holds its own?

    An industrial side-occupation State price guarantees for its produce Overwork and underconsumption Wage-labour for a large agricultural enterprise
24. 24. To which fields, apart from agricultural industries, does Kautsky say agricultural co-operation had so far almost entirely confined itself?

    Credit and commerce Ploughing and harvesting Stock-breeding and dairying Drainage and irrigation
25. 25. Why, according to Kautsky, did the threshing-machine encourage peasants to shrink their families further?

    It removed threshing, one of the main tasks that had filled the winter It needed skilled operators whom the peasants had to hire from the town at high wages It was so expensive that peasants who bought one could no longer afford to feed large families It was forbidden on small farms by the landlords, forcing the younger sons to seek work elsewhere
26. 26. What does Kautsky conclude the small farm produces that the large estate urgently needs?

    Draught horses Cheap credit Labour-power Seed-corn
27. 27. According to Kärger, why did large beet estates in the Province of Saxony keep mowing-machines they hardly used?

    To hire them out to neighbouring peasants To mow laid grain, which hand mowers could not cut Because the law required them on farms of a certain size As protection against strikes at harvest time
28. 28. What, in Kautsky’s account, forces peasants in Russia and India to export grain cheaply?

    A large surplus of grain left over after the peasant families have eaten well Free trade treaties that Britain imposed on both countries in the course of the century Money taxes and usurious debts that compel them to sell at any price Capitalist farming methods that have lowered their costs
29. 29. How had English farming adapted to overseas competition by the 1890s, according to the chapter?

    Landlords bought out their tenants and farmed the land themselves Farmers switched from pasture to wheat on the best soils New corn duties restored the price of wheat Rents fell and land passed from wheat to pasture
30. 30. From what source, according to Kautsky’s proletarian fiscal policy, should taxes be paid?

    From a single tax on agricultural land Only from surplus-value From state loans repaid by future generations Chiefly from indirect taxes on consumption
31. 31. What part of his capital, according to Kautsky, must the owner-farmer pay to the former landowner for the land?

    None, since land is bought on credit About a tenth Roughly a third Two-thirds to three-quarters
32. 32. What is Kautsky’s main criticism of the Verein für Sozialpolitik’s inquiry into rural labour?

    It relied on Social Democratic informants among the labourers It was conducted only in South Germany, where few large estates exist It questioned only the agricultural employers It ignored the sugar-beet districts of the Province of Saxony
33. 33. What, according to the preface, occasioned The Agrarian Question?

    A commission from the Reichstag to report on the agricultural depression The publication of the 1895 German occupational census The debates over an agrarian programme proposed at Frankfurt and rejected at Breslau A request from Engels to complete the third volume of Capital
34. 34. According to Kautsky, what made overseas food threatening to European agriculture?

    The sheer quantity of food, which produced a general glut on European markets Its superior quality, which European consumers preferred Its conditions of production, free of the burdens that rent, mortgages and taxes laid on European farming Dumping by overseas governments that sold grain below cost to ruin rivals
35. 35. Which institution does Kautsky, quoting Anton Menger, call the nearest thing to slavery in bourgeois society?

    The relation of servant to master Military service under conscription The mortgage on peasant land The factory system and its wage contract
36. 36. Whose recent book does Kautsky quote as doubting that Marx’s theory applies to agriculture?

    Theodor von der Goltz’s Werner Sombart’s Eduard Bernstein’s Lujo Brentano’s
37. 37. Which country does Kautsky present as the model of extreme parcelling driven by by-employment?

    Russia Württemberg Belgium Denmark
38. 38. What role does Kautsky assign Social Democracy towards farmers and landowners as such?

    A neutral party that ignores agriculture entirely An observer or watchman guarding the general interest against particular interests An agitator rousing them to defend their interests A representative bargaining on their behalf in parliament
39. 39. What grievance does the fifth of the Twelve Articles of 1525, quoted by Kautsky, raise?

    The lords forbade peasants to sell their pigs outside the mark The clergy demanded tithes on livestock Peasants were forced to drink the lord’s sour wine The lords had appropriated the woods, so the poor had to buy wood
40. 40. Roughly what share of Germany’s population was agricultural in 1895, according to Kautsky?

    Just over half of the population A little over a third Only about a tenth of the population Roughly three-quarters of the people
41. 41. According to Kautsky, what decides whether a farmer belongs with the fighting proletariat?

    Whether he sells his labour-power or sells food on the market Whether he is in debt to a mortgagee Whether his standard of living has fallen to a proletarian level Whether he employs any wage-labourers
42. 42. Which form of rent does Kautsky say would continue even if the land were nationalised while farming remained capitalist?

    Absolute rent, which would then flow to the state as the landowner Both forms of rent, unchanged, since the farmers would still pay them Differential rent, which would then flow to the community Neither, since nationalising the land abolishes every form of ground-rent
43. 43. What does Kautsky say the single-heir law (Anerbenrecht) amounts to where it is carried through resolutely?

    Saving the peasant economy by disinheriting most of the peasant children The abolition of the mortgage debt that weighs on most peasant land A means of raising the yield of small holdings by keeping them together undivided A step towards the common ownership of land by the village community
44. 44. How does Kautsky assess the role of peasant indebtedness?

    It is the main driving force behind the expropriation of the peasantry It mostly finances machinery and so speeds up technical progress It is a new phenomenon, peculiar to the capitalist mode of production It is mainly conservative, draining the farm of the means of progress
45. 45. What were the “beet holidays” described in Schippel’s account?

    Holidays declared in the beet districts when beet prices fell Festivals held by the sugar manufacturers for their workers after the harvest Days off granted to adult migrant workers between the hoeing and the lifting School holidays given so that children could work in the beet fields
46. 46. Why does Kautsky favour state hail insurance more readily than state cattle insurance?

    Private companies offer hail insurance cheaply in every district Cattle insurance is already compulsory throughout the German Empire Hail is the most frequent and costly of all agricultural losses Hail strikes all farms alike and is never due to negligence, so it shelters no backward farm
47. 47. Why is Kautsky wary of state subsidies for consolidating scattered holdings?

    It raises ground-rent, so taxpayers, proletarians included, would subsidise the landowners Peasants would refuse any state money on religious grounds The state lacks the surveyors needed to measure the land and value each owner’s scattered strips Consolidation lowers yields for a decade or more while the new fields are drained, levelled and fenced
48. 48. How, according to Kautsky, did the abolition of feudal burdens proceed in Prussia?

    By decree of Napoleon, who distributed the estates confiscated from the nobility to the peasants By a peasant rising in 1848 that seized the Junker estates and divided them among the villages Without compensation, as in revolutionary France Peacefully, with the peasants paying the Junkers in cash, land and taxes
49. 49. Why does Kautsky say socialism need not take the peasant’s house?

    The peasants would revolt if it were tried Socialism rests on common property in the means of production, not in the means of enjoyment Houses are worthless compared with land Fourier’s phalansteries will make houses unnecessary
50. 50. What is the essential mark of the people’s defence force (militia) Kautsky advocates?

    The difference between soldier and citizen disappears as far as possible Only volunteers serve, for long terms The army is abolished and defence left to international courts of arbitration Soldiers are kept in barracks but paid the same wages as workers