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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY301Only a person who understands nothing about Marx’stheory of rent could write a thing like that. But the patronisingcondescension with which the incomparable PyotrMaslov treats the author of those rough notes is truly superb!This “Marxist” is too superior to think it necessaryto familiarise himself with Marx before trying to teachother people, to study at least the Theories of Surplus Value,published in 1905, in which the theory of rent is made soplain that even the Maslovs should be able to grasp it!Here is Maslov’s argument against Marx:“Absolute rent is said to arise from the low composition of agriculturalcapital.... As the composition of capital affects neither theprice of the product, nor the rate of profit, nor the distribution of surplusvalue among the entrepreneurs in general it cannot create anyrent. If the composition of agricultural capital is lower than that ofindustrial capital, differential rent results from the surplus value obtainedin agriculture, but that makes no difference as far as theformation of rent is concerned. Consequently, if the ‘composition’ ofcapital changed, it would not affect rent in the least. The amount ofrent is not in the least determined by the character of its origin, butsolelyby the above-mentioned difference in the productivity of labourunder different conditions” (op. cit., pp. 108-09. Maslov’s italics).It would be interesting to know whether the bourgeois“critics of Marx” ever went to such lengths of frivolity intheir refutations. Our incomparable Maslov is completelymuddled; and he is muddled even when he expounds Marx(incidentally, that is also a habit of Mr. Bulgakov and allother bourgeois assailants of Marxism, who, however,differ from Maslov in that they are more honest, since theydo not call themselves Marxists). It is not true to say thataccording to Marx absolute rent results from the low compositionof agricultural capital. Absolute rent arises fromthe private ownership of land. This private ownership createsa special monopoly having nothing to do with the capitalistmode of production, which can exist on communalas well as on nationalised land.* The non-capitalist monopolycreated by the private ownership of land preventsthe levelling of profits in those branches of production* See Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 208, whereMarx shows that the landowner is an absolutely superfluous figurein capitalist production; that the purpose of the latter is “fully answered”if the land belongs to the state. 121