II. What Socialists Can Offer the Peasants

On one point our French comrades are absolutely right: in France no lasting revolution is possible against the small peasant. Only it seems to me that, in order to get at the peasant, they have not applied the lever at the right point.

They are bent, it seems, on winning the small peasant overnight, if possible as early as the next general election. They can only hope to achieve this by very risky general assurances, in defence of which they are obliged to launch even riskier theoretical considerations. If one then looks more closely, one finds that the general assurances contradict themselves (a promise to maintain a state of affairs that they themselves declare to be irretrievably doomed), and that the particular measures are either quite ineffectual (usury laws), or else general workers’ demands, or demands that benefit big landed property too, or finally such as are by no means of very great consequence for the interest of the small peasant; so that the directly practical part of the programme of itself corrects the first misguided run-up and reduces the dangerous-looking big words of the preamble to an actually harmless measure.

Let us say it straight out: in view of the prejudices which spring from his whole economic position, his upbringing and his isolated way of life, and which are nourished by the bourgeois press and the big landowners, we can win the mass of the small peasants overnight only if we promise them something we ourselves know we cannot keep. We should have to promise them, namely, not only to protect their property in all circumstances against all the economic forces bearing down on it, but also to free it from the burdens that already oppress it: to turn the tenant into a free owner, and to pay the debts of the owner who is succumbing to his mortgage. If we could do that, we should be back at the point from which the present state of affairs necessarily develops afresh. We should not have freed the peasant; we should have got him a respite.

But it is not in our interest to win the peasant overnight, only for him to fall away from us again the day after, when we cannot keep our promise. We can no more use as a party comrade the peasant who expects us to perpetuate his small holding for him than the small master craftsman who wants to perpetuate himself as a master. These people belong with the anti-Semites. Let them go to them and let them promise to save their small businesses; once they have learned there what these glittering phrases amount to, and what tunes are played on the fiddles with which the anti-Semitic heaven is hung, they will see to an ever-growing extent that we, who promise less and look for salvation in quite a different direction, are after all the more reliable people. If the French had, as we have, a noisy anti-Semitic demagogy, they would hardly have made the mistake of Nantes.

What, then, is our attitude to the small peasantry? And how shall we have to deal with it on the day when state power falls to us?

In the first place, the statement of the French programme is absolutely correct: that we foresee the inevitable ruin of the small peasant, but are by no means called upon to hasten it by any interference on our part.

And secondly, it is just as obvious that when we are in possession of state power we shall not think of expropriating the small peasants by force (whether with or without compensation is all the same), as we shall be compelled to do with the big landowners. Our task with regard to the small peasant consists, in the first place, in transforming his private production and private ownership into co-operative ones, not by force, but by example and by offering social aid for this purpose. And here we have, to be sure, means enough to hold out to the small peasant advantages that must be plain to him even now.

Almost twenty years ago the Danish socialists, who have only one real town in their country—Copenhagen—and who outside it must therefore rely almost entirely on propaganda among the peasants, already drew up plans of this kind. The peasants of a village or parish—there are many large single farms in Denmark—were to throw their land together into one big farm, cultivate it for common account, and divide the proceeds in proportion to the land, the money advanced and the labour contributed. In Denmark small property plays only a secondary part. But if we apply the idea to a region of small holdings, we shall find that when the plots are thrown together and the whole area cultivated on a large scale, part of the labour hitherto employed becomes superfluous; it is precisely in this saving of labour that one of the chief advantages of large-scale farming lies. Employment can be found for this labour in two ways. Either further tracts of land from neighbouring big estates are placed at the disposal of the peasant co-operative; or else the peasants are given the means and the opportunity of industrial side-work, as far as possible and mainly for their own use. In either case they are placed in a better economic position, and at the same time the general management of society is assured of the influence it needs to carry the peasant co-operative over gradually into a higher form, and to bring the rights and duties both of the co-operative as a whole and of its individual members into line with those of the other branches of the great community. How this is to be carried out in detail in each particular case will depend on the circumstances of the case and on the circumstances under which we take possession of public power. Thus we may possibly be in a position to offer these co-operatives still further advantages: the taking over of their whole mortgage debt by the national bank, with a sharp reduction of the rate of interest; advances from public funds for the setting up of large-scale production (advances not necessarily or mainly in money, but in the necessary products themselves: machines, artificial fertiliser, etc.); and other advantages besides.

The main thing in all this is and remains to make the peasants understand that we can save and maintain their house and fields for them only by transforming them into co-operative property and co-operative production. It is precisely individual farming, conditioned by individual ownership, that is driving the peasants to ruin. If they persist in farming individually, they will inevitably be driven from house and home, and their antiquated mode of production displaced by capitalist large-scale production. That is how things stand; and now we come and offer the peasants the possibility of introducing large-scale production themselves, not for capitalist account but for their own common account. Should it really be impossible to make the peasants understand that this is in their own interest, that it is the only means of saving them?

Never, now or at any time, can we promise the smallholding peasants to maintain individual property and individual farming against the overwhelming power of capitalist production. We can only promise them that we shall not interfere by force in their property relations against their will. Further, we can work to see that even today the struggle of the capitalists and big landowners against the small peasants is waged with as few unlawful means as possible, and that outright robbery and cheating, which occur only too often, are prevented as far as possible. That will succeed only exceptionally. Under the developed capitalist mode of production nobody knows where honesty ends and cheating begins. But it will always make a considerable difference whether the public power is on the side of the cheat or of the cheated. And we are, after all, decidedly on the side of the small peasant; we shall do everything at all permissible to make his lot more bearable, to make his transition to the co-operative easier if he decides on it, and even, if he cannot yet bring himself to that decision, to give him a longer time to think it over on his plot. We do this not only because we regard the small peasant who works his land himself as virtually belonging to us, but also in the direct interest of the party. The greater the number of peasants whom we can save from actually sinking into the proletariat, whom we can win for ourselves while they are still peasants, the more quickly and easily will the social transformation be accomplished. It would not serve us to have to wait with this transformation until capitalist production has developed everywhere to its utmost consequences, until the last small handicraftsman and the last small peasant have fallen victim to capitalist large-scale production. The material sacrifices to be made in this sense from public funds in the interest of the peasants may appear, from the standpoint of capitalist economics, only as money thrown away; but they are nevertheless an excellent investment, for they will perhaps save ten times the amount in the cost of social reorganisation as a whole. In this sense, therefore, we can deal very liberally with the peasants. This is not the place to go into details, to make definite proposals in this direction; here we can only be concerned with the general outlines.

Accordingly, we can do no worse service, not only to the party but to the small peasants themselves, than by promises that give even the appearance that we intend to maintain small holdings permanently. That would mean directly barring the peasants’ way to their emancipation and degrading the party to the level of rowdy anti-Semitism. On the contrary. It is the duty of our party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism rules; that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their small holdings for them as such; that it is absolutely certain that capitalist large-scale production will run over their impotent, antiquated small production as a railway train runs over a wheelbarrow. If we do this, we act in the direction of the inevitable economic development, and that development will open the small peasants’ heads to our words.

For the rest, I cannot leave this subject without expressing my conviction that the authors of the Nantes programme too are in essence of the same opinion as I am. They have far too much insight not to know that the land now held in small holdings is also destined to pass into common ownership. They themselves admit that small holdings are bound to disappear. The report of the National Council drawn up by Lafargue for the Nantes congress fully confirms this view. It has been published in German in the Berlin Sozialdemokrat of 18 October of this year. The contradictory manner in which the Nantes programme expresses itself in itself betrays that what the authors actually say is not what they intend to say. If they are not understood, and their statements are misused, as has in fact already happened, that is admittedly their own fault. At all events they will have to explain their programme more fully, and the next French congress will have to revise it thoroughly.

Let us now come to the bigger peasants. Here, chiefly as a result of divisions of inheritance, but also of indebtedness and forced sales of land, we find a whole sample-card of intermediate stages, from the smallholding peasant to the big peasant who owns his full old Hufe and even more. Where the middle peasant lives among smallholding peasants, he will not differ essentially from them in his interests and views; his own experience must tell him how many of his like have already sunk to the level of small peasants. But where middle and big peasants predominate and the farming generally requires the help of farm servants, men and maids, things are quite different. A workers’ party must, of course, stand first of all for the wage-workers, that is, for the men and maid servants and the day labourers; this of itself forbids it to make the peasants any promises that include the continuance of the wage-slavery of the workers. But as long as the big and middle peasants continue to exist as such, they cannot manage without wage-workers. If, then, it would be plain folly on our part to hold out to the smallholding peasants the prospect of continuing permanently as smallholders, it would border directly on treachery were we to promise the same to the big and middle peasants.

Here again we have the parallel with the handicraftsmen of the towns. They are already more ruined than the peasants, it is true, but there are still some who employ journeymen besides apprentices, or with whom apprentices do journeymen’s work. Let those of these master craftsmen who want to perpetuate themselves as such go to the anti-Semites until they have convinced themselves that they will get no help there either. The rest, who have realised that the ruin of their mode of production is inevitable, come over to us, but are then also ready to share in the future the lot that awaits all other workers. It is no different with the big and middle peasants. Their men and maid servants and day labourers are, of course, of more interest to us than they are. If these peasants want a guarantee that their farms will continue, we absolutely cannot offer them that. Their place is then with the anti-Semites, the Peasants’ Leaguers and similar parties, which take pleasure in promising everything and keeping nothing. We have the economic certainty that the big and middle peasant too must infallibly succumb to the competition of capitalist farming and of cheap overseas corn, as is shown by the growing indebtedness and the decline of these peasants, visible everywhere. We can do nothing against this decline except recommend here too the pooling of farms into co-operative undertakings, in which the exploitation of wage-labour can be eliminated more and more, and their gradual transformation into branches of the great national producers’ co-operative, with equal rights and equal duties, can be set in motion. If these peasants realise the inevitable ruin of their present mode of production, and draw the necessary conclusions from it, they will come to us, and it will be our business to make their transition to the changed mode of production easier too, as far as we can. Otherwise we shall have to leave them to their fate and turn to their wage-workers, among whom we shall find a response. Here too we shall probably refrain from forcible expropriation, and for the rest can count on economic development making these harder heads also accessible to reason.

Only with big landed property is the matter quite simple. Here we have undisguised capitalist production, and no scruples of any kind apply. Here we have rural proletarians in masses before us, and our task is clear. As soon as our party is in possession of state power, it has simply to expropriate the big landowners, just like the industrial manufacturers. Whether this expropriation takes place with or without compensation will to a great extent depend not on us but on the circumstances under which we come into power, and in particular also on the attitude of these gentlemen, the big landowners, themselves. We by no means regard compensation as inadmissible in all circumstances; Marx told me—how often!—that in his opinion we should get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole gang. But that does not concern us here. The great estates thus restored to the community we should have to hand over for use to the farm labourers who already cultivate them, organised into co-operatives, under the control of the community. On what terms, nothing can yet be laid down. At any rate the transformation of capitalist production into social production is here already completely prepared, and can be carried out overnight, just as in Herr Krupp’s or Herr von Stumm’s factory, for example. And the example of these agricultural co-operatives would convince even the last smallholding peasants who might still be resisting, and probably many big peasants too, of the advantages of large-scale co-operative production.

Here, then, we can open up to the rural proletarians a prospect as brilliant as the one that beckons the industrial worker. And thereby to conquer the farm labourers of Prussia east of the Elbe can only be a question of time for us, and indeed of a very short time. But once we have the farm labourers east of the Elbe, a different wind will at once blow throughout Germany. The actual semi-serfdom of the East Elbian farm labourers is the main foundation of the rule of the Prussian Junkers, and thereby of the specifically Prussian supremacy in Germany. It is the Junkers east of the Elbe—more and more given over to indebtedness, impoverishment and parasitism at the expense of the state and of private persons, and clinging to their rule all the more violently for that very reason—who have created and maintain the specifically Prussian character of the bureaucracy as of the army’s officer corps; whose haughtiness, narrow-mindedness and arrogance have made the German Empire of the Prussian nation so hated at home—for all the recognition that it is, for the moment, unavoidable as the only form of national unity now attainable—and so little respected abroad, for all its brilliant victories. The power of these Junkers rests on the fact that in the compact territory of the seven old Prussian provinces—roughly a third of the whole territory of the Empire—they have at their disposal the landed property, which here carries social and political power with it; and not only the landed property, but, through the beet-sugar factories and the distilleries, the most important industries of this region as well. Neither the big landowners of the rest of Germany nor the big industrialists are in a similarly favourable position; neither the one nor the other has a compact kingdom at its disposal. Both are scattered over wide areas and in competition for economic and political supremacy, with one another and with the other social elements around them. But this position of power of the Prussian Junkers is losing its economic basis more and more. Here too, despite all state aid (and since Frederick II this has formed part of every regular Junker budget), indebtedness and impoverishment are spreading irresistibly; only the actual semi-serfdom sanctioned by legislation and custom, and the boundless exploitation of the farm labourers that it makes possible, still just keep the sinking Junkerdom above water. Sow the seed of Social-Democracy among these workers, give them the courage and the cohesion to insist on their rights, and the glory of the Junkers is at an end. The great reactionary power, which represents for Germany the same barbarous, conquering element as Russian tsarism does for the whole of Europe, will collapse like a pricked bubble. The “crack regiments” of the Prussian army will become Social-Democratic, and with that a shift of power will take place that carries a whole revolution in its womb. That is why winning the rural proletarians east of the Elbe is of far greater importance than winning the small peasants of western Germany, or even the middle peasants of southern Germany. Here, in Prussia east of the Elbe, lies our decisive battlefield, and that is why the government and the Junkers will do everything to bar our access to it. And if—as we are threatened—it should come to new measures of violence to prevent the spread of our party, it will be above all in order to protect the rural proletariat east of the Elbe from our propaganda. It is all the same to us. We shall win it all the same.