Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

SOME SOURCES OF THE PRESENT IDEOLOGICAL DISCORD93example. “The exodus from the village communes is proceedingat a forced pace.” True. What is your conclusion?...“It is obvious that the break-up by the landlords will be successfullycompleted and that in the course of a few years,precisely in those extensive areas of Russia where quite recentlythe agrarian movement was taking the most acuteforms, the village commune will be destroyed and with itthe chief cradle of Trudovik ideology will disappear. Thusone of Proletary’s two prospects, the ‘bright’ one, is eliminated.”It is not a question of the village commune, dear ComradeMartynov, for the Peasant Union in 1905 and the Trudoviksin 1906-07 demanded that the land be transferrednot to the village communes but to individuals or free associations.The village commune is being destroyed both bythe landlords’ breaking up of the old system of land tenureunder the supervision of Stolypin and its breaking up by thepeasants, i.e., confiscation for the creation of a new orderon the land. Proletary’s “bright” prospect is not connectedwith the village commune or with Trudovism as such, butwith the possibility of an “American” development, thecreation of free farmers. So by saying that the bright prospectis eliminated, and at the same time declaring that “theslogan of expropriating the big landowners will not go bythe board” Comrade Martynov is making an unholy muddle.If the “Prussian” type is established this slogan will go bythe board and the Marxists will say: we have done everythingin our power to bring about a more painless developmentof capitalism, now we must fight for the destruction ofcapitalism itself. If, on the other hand, this slogan does notgo by the board it will mean that the objective conditionsare at hand for switching the “train” on to the American“line”. In that case the Marxists, if they do not wish to becomeStruve-ists, will know how to see, behind the reactionary“socialist” phraseology of the petty bourgeois, expressingthe latter’s subjective views, the objectively real struggleof the masses for better conditions of capitalist development.Let us sum up. Disputes over tactics are vain if they arenot based on a clear analysis of economic possibilities.The question of Russia’s agrarian evolution taking a Prussianor American form has been raised by the struggle of