Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY273To answer this question we must first try to envisage,more concretely the conditions of a bourgeois-democraticrevolution in agriculture, and then compare those conditionswith the two paths of capitalist agrarian evolution thatare possible in Russia, as we have outlined above.The conditions of the bourgeois revolution in agriculturefrom the standpoint of agrarian relations have beenvery strikingly dealt with by Marx in the last volume ofTheories of Surplus Value (Theorien über den Mehrwert, II.Band, 2. Teil, Stuttgart, 1905).After examining the views of Rodbertus, exposing thegreat limitations of the theory of this Pomeranian landlord,and enumerating in detail every single manifestationof his stupidity (II, 1. Teil, S. 256-58, erster Blödsinn—sechster Blödsinn des Herrn Rodbertus*), Marx turns toRicardo’s theory of rent (II, 2. Teil, §3b, “The HistoricalConditions of Ricardo’s Theory”). 107Speaking of Ricardo and Anderson, Marx says: “Bothstart out from the view, regarded as very strange on theContinent: (1) that no landed property exists as an obstacleto any investment of capital in the land; (2) that there thetillers pass from better to worse soils. For Ricardo thispremise is absolute—leaving out of account interruptionsin development through the reaction of science and industry;for Anderson it is relative, since the worse soil is againtransformed into better; (3) that capital, the mass of capitalrequisite for application to agriculture, is always available.“Now, as far as points 1 and 2 are concerned, it mustappear very peculiar to those on the Continent that in thecountry where, according to their notions, feudal landedproperty has been most strongly preserved, economistsstart out from the idea that landed property does not exist.Anderson does so as well as Ricardo. The explanation is asfollows:“first, the peculiarity of the English law of enclosures’[i.e., the law relating to the enclosure of the commonlands] which has absolutely no analogy with the continentaldivision of common land.* Vol. II, Part I, pp. 256-58, first nonsense—sixth nonsense ofHerr Rodbertus.—Ed.