Polemic on General Line of International ... - From Marx to Mao

“collectivization is the same as expropriation” 1 and is a pathwhich “preserves serfdom and poverty in the countryside forthe longest possible time”. 2 It advocates the ridiculous ideathat the development of agriculture should be “based on thefree competition of economic forces”. 3While dissolving many of the peasants’ working co-operatives,the Tito clique has promulgated one law and decree afteranother since 1953 to encourage the development of capitalismin the rural areas, granting freedom to buy, sell and rent landand to hire farm hands, abolishing the planned purchase ofagricultural produce and replacing it with free trading in thissphere.Under this policy, the forces of capitalism spread rapidly inthe rural areas and the process of polarization quickened.This has been an important aspect of the Tito clique’s workof restoring capitalism.Polarization in the countryside is firstly revealed in thechanges occurring in land ownership. Slavko Komar, formerlyYugoslav Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, admitted thatin 1959 poorer peasant households with less than 5 hectaresof land each, which constitute 70 per cent of all peasant households,owned only 43 per cent of all privately-owned land,whereas well-to-do peasant households with more than 8hectares of land each, which form only 13 per cent of all peasanthouseholds, owned 33 per cent of all privately-owned land.Komar also admitted that about 10 per cent of the peasanthouseholds bought or sold land every year. 4 Most of the sellerswere poorer families.1Edvard Kardelj, Opening Address at the Ninth Plenum of theFourth Federal Committee of the Socialist Alliance of the WorkingPeople of Yugoslavia, May 5, 1959.2Vladimir Bakarić, Speech at the Sixth Congress of the Leagueof Communists of Yugoslavia.3Edvard Kardelj, “On Some Problems of Our Policy in the Villages”Komunist, Belgrade, No. 4, 1953.4Slavko Komar, “Some Problems Concerning the Countryside andthe Peasant Households”, Socializam, No. 5, 1962.149