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

290V. I. LENINorder. That is its fundamental idea. Social-Democracymust not bind itself by decisions which pledge it to supportany particular form of economy. In this struggle of thenew social forces against the foundations of the old order,it is necessary to cut the tangled knot with a decisive stroke”(p. 125 of the Minutes). All that is quite true and splendidlystated. And it all speaks in favour of nationalisation,because the latter alone really “breaks up” the old medievalsystem of landownership, really cuts the tangled knot,and allows full freedom for the new farms to develop onthe nationalised land.The question arises by what criterion are we to determinewhether the new system of agriculture has alreadydeveloped sufficiently to have the division of the land adaptedto it, and not to have a division that will perpetuatethe old obstacles to the new farming? There can be butone criterion, that of practice. No statistics in the worldcan assess whether the elements of a peasant bourgeoisiein a given country have “hardened” sufficiently to enablethe system of landownership to be adapted to the system offarming. This can be assessed only by the mass of the farmersthemselves. The impossibility of assessing this at thepresent moment has been proved by the fact that the massof the peasants have come forward in our revolution witha programme of land nationalisation. The small farmer,at all times and throughout the world, becomes so attachedto his farm (if it really is his farm and not a piece of thelandlord’s estate let out on labour-service, as is frequentlythe case in Russia) that his “fanatical” defence of privateownership of the land is inevitable at a certain historicalperiod and for a certain space of time. If in the present epochthe mass of the Russian peasants are not displaying thefanaticism of private property owners (a fanaticism whichis fostered by all the ruling classes, by all the liberal-bourgeoispoliticians), but are putting forward a widespreadand firmly held demand for the nationalisation of the land,it would be childishness or stupid pedantry to attributeit to the influence of the publicists of Russkoye Bogatstvo 114or Mr. Chernov’s pamphlets. It is due to the fact that thereal conditions of life of the small cultivator, of the smallfarmer in the village, confront him with the economic prob-