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

314V. I. LENINtortion of its propagandist tasks in the revolution. Thecriticism of private landownership in speeches in the Duma,in propaganda and agitational literature, etc., was madeonly from the Narodnik, i.e., from the petty-bourgeois,quasi-socialist, point of view. The Marxists were unable topick out the real core of this petty-bourgeois ideology, havingfailed to understand that their task was to introducethe historical element into the examination of the question,and to replace the point of view of the petty bourgeois(the abstract idea of equalisation, justice, etc.) by the pointof view of the proletariat on the real roots of the struggleagainst private ownership of land in developing capitalistsociety. The Narodnik thinks that repudiation of privatelandownership is repudiation of capitalism. That is wrong.The repudiation of private landownership expresses thedemands for the purest capitalist development. And wehave to revive in the minds of Marxists the “forgotten words”of Marx, who criticised private landownership from thepoint of view of the conditions of capitalist economy.Marx directed such criticism not only against big landownership,but also against small landownership. Thefree ownership of land by the small peasant is a necessaryconcomitant of small production in agriculture under certainhistorical conditions. A. Finn was quite right in emphasisingthis in opposition to Maslov. But the recognitionof this historical necessity, which has been proved byexperience, does not relieve the Marxist of the duty of makingan all-round appraisal of small landownership. Realfreedom of such landownership is inconceivable withoutthe free purchase and sale of land. Private ownership ofland implies the necessity of spending capital on purchasingland. On this point Marx, in Volume III of Capital, wrote:“One of the specific evils of small-scale agriculture, whereit is combined with free landownership, arises from the cultivator’sinvesting capital in the purchase of land” (III,2, 342). “The expenditure of capital in the price of the landwithdraws this capital from cultivation” (ibid., 341). 125“The expenditure of money-capital for the purchase ofland, then, is not an investment of agricultural capital.It is a decrease pro tanto in the capital which small peasantscan employ in their own sphere of production It