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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY317By money rent Marx means the payment by the peasantto the landlord of the whole of the surplus product in theform of money. The original form of the peasant’s economicdependence upon the landlord under the pre-capitalistmodes of production was labour rent (Arbeitsrente), i.e.,corvée then came rent in the form of produce, or rent inkind, and finally came money rent. That rent, says A. Finn,“is the most widespread form in our country even today”(p. 63).Undoubtedly, tenant farming based on servitude andbondage is extremely widespread in Russia, and, accordingto Marx’s theory, the payment which the peasant makesunder such a system of tenancy is largely money rent. Whatpower makes it possible to extort that rent from the peasantry?The power of the bourgeoisie and of developingcapitalism? Not at all. It is the power of the feudal latifundia.Since the latter will be broken up—and that is thestarting-point and fundamental condition of the peasantagrarian revolution—there is no reason to speak of “moneyrent” in the pre-capitalist sense. Hence, the only significanceof Finn’s argument is that he emphasises once morethe absurdity of separating the peasant allotment land fromthe rest of the land in the event of an agrarian revolution;since allotment lands are often surrounded by landlords’lands, and since the present conditions of demarcation ofthe peasant lands from the landlords’ lands give rise tobondage, the preservation of this demarcation is reactionary.Unlike either division of the land or nationalisation,municipalisation preserves this demarcation.Of course, the existence of small landed property, or,more correctly, of small farming, introduces certain changesin the general propositions of the theory of capitalistrent, but it does not destroy that theory. For example, Marxpoints out that absolute rent as such does not usually existunder small farming, which is carried on mainly to meetthe needs of the farmer himself (Vol. III, 2. Teil, S. 339,344). 128 But the more commodity production develops,the more all the propositions of economic theory becomeapplicable to peasant farming also, since it has come underthe conditions of the capitalist world. It must not be for