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

316V. I. LENINAnd that question inevitably leads to the Marxist criticismof the private ownership of land. That form ofownership is a hindrance to the free investment of capital inthe land. Either complete freedom for this investment—in which case: abolition of private landownership, i.e.,the nationalisation of the land; or the preservation of privatelandownership—in which case: penetration of capitalby roundabout ways, namely, the mortgaging of landby landlords and peasants, the enslavement of the peasantby the usurer, the renting of land to tenants who own capital.Marx says: “Here, in small-scale agriculture, the priceof land, a form and result of private landownership, appearsas a barrier to production itself. In large-scale agriculture,and large estates operating on a capitalist basis, ownershiplikewise acts as a barrier, because it limits the tenantfarmer in his productive investment of capital, which inthe final analysis benefits not him, but the landlord.” (DasKapital, III. Band, 2. Teil, S. 346-47.) 127Consequently, the abolition of private landownership is themaximum that can be done in bourgeois society for the removalof all obstacles to the free investment of capital in agricultureand to the free flow of capital from one branch of production toanother. The free, wide, and rapid development of capitalism,complete freedom for the class struggle, the disappearance ofall superfluous intermediaries who make agriculture somethinglike the “sweated” industries—that is what nationalisation ofthe land implies under the capitalist system of production.6. THE NATIONALISATION OF THE LANDAND “MONEY” RENTAn interesting economic argument against nationalisation wasadvanced by A. Finn, an advocate of division of the land. Bothnationalisation and municipalisation, he says, mean transferringrent to a public body. The question is: what kind of rent?Not capitalist rent, for “usually the peasants do not obtain rentin the capitalist sense from their land” (The Agrarian Questionand Social-Democracy, p. 77, cf. p. 63), but pre-capitalistmoney rent.