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

296V. I. LENINstrengthening of small farming, the substitution of “equality,fraternity, and liberty” for “inequality” (i.e., the landlordlatifundia)—that expresses nine-tenths of Narodnikideology. Equal right to land, equalised land tenure, socialisation—allthese are merely different forms of expressionof the same ideas; and all are mainly negative concepts,for the Narodnik cannot conceive the new order asa definite system of social-economic relationships. TheNarodnik regards the present agrarian revolution as atransition from serfdom, inequality, and oppression ingeneral, to equality and liberty, and nothing more. Thatis the typical narrow-mindedness of the bourgeois revolutionarywho fails to see the capitalist features of the newsociety he is creating.In contrast to the naïve outlook of Narodism, Marxisminvestigates the new system that is arising. Even withthe fullest freedom of peasant farming and with the fullestequality of small proprietors occupying the people’s, orno man’s, or “God’s” land—we have before us a system ofcommodity production. Small producers are tied and subjectedto the market. Out of the exchange of products arisesthe power of money; the conversion of agricultural produceinto money is followed by the conversion of labour-powerinto money. Commodity production becomes capitalistproduction. And this theory is not a dogma, but a simpledescription, a generalisation of what is taking place inRussian peasant farming too. The freer that farming isfrom land congestion, landlord oppression, the pressureof medieval relations and system of landownership, bondage,and tyranny, the more strongly do capitalist relationshipsdevelop within that peasant farming. That is afact to which the whole of the post-Reform history of Russiaundoubtedly testifiesConsequently, the concept of nationalisation of the land,in terms of economic reality, is a category of commodityand capitalist society. What is real in this concept is notwhat the peasants think, or what the Narodniks say, butwhat arises from the economic relations of present society.Nationalisation of the land under capitalist relations isneither more nor less than the transfer of rent to the state.What is rent in capitalist society? It is not income from the