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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY3238. DOES NATIONALISATION MEAN TRANSITION TO DIVISION?If nationalisation is regarded as a measure most likelyto be achieved in the epoch of bourgeois revolution, such aview must inevitably lead to the admission that nationalisationmay turn out to be a mere transition to division.The real economic need which compels the mass of the peasantryto strive for nationalisation is the need for the thoroughrenovation of all the old agrarian relationships, for“clearing” all the land, for readapting it to the new systemof farming. That being the case, it is clear that the farmerswho have adapted themselves, who have renovated thewhole system of landownership, may demand that the newagrarian system be consolidated, i.e., that the holdingsthey have rented from the state be converted into theirproperty.Yes, that is indisputable. We arrive at nationalisationnot from abstract arguments, but from a concrete calculationof the concrete interests of a concrete epoch. And, ofcourse, it would be ridiculous to regard the mass of smallfarmers as “idealists”; it would be ridiculous to thinkthat they will stop at division if their interests demandit. Consequently, we must inquire: (1) whether theirinterests can demand division; (2) under what circumstances;and (3) how this will affect the proletarian agrarianprogramme.We have already answered the first question in the affirmative.To the second question no definite reply can yetbe given. After the period of revolutionary nationalisationthe demand for division may be evoked by the desire toconsolidate to the greatest possible degree the new agrarianrelations, which meet the requirements of capitalism. Itmay be evoked by the desire of the given owners of land toincrease their incomes at the expense of the rest of society.Finally, it may be evoked by the desire to “quieten” (or,plainly speaking, to put down) the proletariat and the semiproletarianstrata, for whom nationalisation of the landwill be an element that will “whet the appetite” for thesocialisation of the whole of social production. All thesethree possibilities reduce themselves to a single economicbasis, since the consolidation of the new system of capital-